SPOILERS: This post contains details about the Widow’s Bay Season 1 finale ‘We Hope You Enjoyed Your Time!’

Although Season 1 of Widow’s Bay has come to a close, the storm clouds have parted on the show’s sophomore season.

With Apple TV renewing the series for Season 2 last week, creator Katie Dippold told Deadline how Wednesday’s finale ‘We Hope You Enjoyed Your Time!’, now available to stream, sets up the show’s future after Mayor Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) makes a tragic discovery.

“God help him if anyone on the island finds out,” said Dippold.

With the discovery that the centuries-old curse on Widow’s Bay will only be broken once the bloodline of founder Richard Warren (Hamish Linklater) is dead, Loftis finds out that his elderly Ruth Livingston (K Allan) is the last living descendant… as far as he knows.

While working up the nerve to kill her, Loftis discovers that Ruth is secretly the mother of his late wife Lauren (Meredith Casey), making his son Evan (Kingston Rumi Southwick) the final descendant. And with Widow’s Bay still under the curse, he and everyone else born on the island will die if they leave.

“For Loftis, who has had dreams of getting off this island, first he wants to make it a better place because deep, deep down, he knows his son probably can’t leave because of what happened to his wife,” explained Dippold. “You learn in the finale that deep down, he’s known all along, and a lot of this show for me was about acceptance.

“I’ve had this experience in my life where if you’re repressing a lot and you just, instead, sort of have this overly optimistic idea of what life should be and then you at a certain point have to come to terms with what life is, that it’s not going to be Martha’s Vineyard, so to speak. There’s going to be highs and there’s going to be very low lows, and Loftis is coming to terms with this, and so it’s about acceptance. And so the finale, to me, is him realizing that he’s never going to leave this island, that his son can never leave this island, and coming to terms of what that means and how much of what Ruth has said to him has landed on him,” she added.

Read on about the Season 1 finale of Widow’s Bay and what Katie Dippold has in store for Season 2.

DEADLINE: I really enjoyed Widow’s Bay, and there were so many influences I picked up on, but I’m curious what was your driving inspiration. What first sparked this story? 

KATIE DIPPOLD: Well, I would say the initial spark is a feeling I’ve been trying to capture ever since childhood—I always talk about going to this this boardwalk in New Jersey in Long Branch. Once a summer, I would go with my family, and when I say I was way too young for it, I mean I was like 6, and this place was lawless and terrifying. But I loved it. I was just so giddy, the anticipation of going in, and I would scream and I would laugh. And then once we left, I’d run out screaming, but then I would immediately want to go back in again. It was almost kind of a dangerous excitement. I used to get into all sorts of antics when I was young, me and my friends going to check out the abandoned house and then running off, and I just love that feeling because you’re so scared, but you’re laughing so hard, and I just wanted to get that feeling on television. So, that’s sort of where it started.

And then eventually, I wrote it as a spec script for Parks and Recreation, but that version was much jokier. It was more comedic, and I think it gave a good idea of my sense of humor. But I don’t know that I would have watched that show, because I think it could have felt more like a spoof, and as a horror fan, I just wanna be immersed into the island. I wanna feel like I’m in New England. I wanna feel like I am isolated, and I wanna feel like I could go explore this island and find all the little nooks and crannies and terrifying little spots. That’s my dream, but I’m strange. So, that’s sort of how it started.

DEADLINE: I’m a big Parks and Rec fan, so now I just can’t help but imagine Widow’s Bay with Leslie Knope as the mayor. And I do appreciate this show’s comedic element. How do you balance that with the horror of the show? 

DIPPOLD: I mean, it took a long time to figure it out because this was something I kept going back to for—I mean, I was 28 when I submitted this to Parks and Rec, and I’m nearly 29 now. No, I’m just kidding. I’m 46, so it’s been 18 years and basically, I would take it apart and there was like a stretch of time where I would strip out the jokes and I would think about the history of the island and the mythology and adding a sense of mystery and treating it more serialized than episodic, even though there’s a monster-of-the-week element to it. The kind of shows I watch, I wanted just a bigger story as well and characters you’re really following on a journey. So, there’d be stretches of time where it was neither scary nor funny, and then that would be very horrifying for me, very difficult. But I don’t know, I just kept going back to it, I just kept revisiting it. I would just always bring a notebook anytime I was on the East Coast and just flesh out ideas of what this world could be like. And then I started thinking about making sure that you never used humor that would undercut the tension and trying to find this juxtaposition where they feed off of each other rather than taking away from each other. And the approach in the writer’s room too, was there would be jokes that would make me laugh so hard, but I just felt like, “OK, that’s gonna ruin what we have planned in the sequence.” So, you have to really be brutal. So, there’s a lot of restraint. And I think another thing I would say is for this show, I think for the horror intention to work, a lot of the humor has to be pretty subtle. And there’s a lot of blink-and-you-miss-it kind of moments, and it’s having to be OK with people might not pick up on that joke, but that’s OK. Some people will, and that’s great, but if they don’t, it’s better that than shining a spotlight on it so much that you think, “oh, I’m watching a comedy show,” and then that takes you out of the world. … but the goal is to give enough so the audience wants to lean in more and then when they’re leaning in, if something scary happens, it makes it more fun, if that makes sense. 

DEADLINE: I am also a big fan of Hamish Linklater, and his character Richard was just so perfectly him, especially like how he was talking about his “little haunted island” roles after Midnight Mass. Tell me about like bringing him into that with the flashback episode. 

DIPPOLD: He’s the best because he was so game. This is a ridiculous thing to ask an actor to do, you know what I mean? The first script they get for 1.06 is a very dry colonial period piece, and then they get another script that’s like, “OK, now you’ve been in a coffin for 300 years and you’re coming back.” It’s ridiculous, and [episode] 7 is much more comedic than 6. And he just didn’t really have any problems or questions. He was just on board. He just got it, just committed and was wonderful, and I’m so happy it was him. … I love Midnight Mass and I’ve seen Midnight Mass, and I thought he was so great in it, and I thought it was very fun to cast the guy from Midnight Mass because it’s another horror show and I like that sense of pop it gives, so that’s why I wanted to do that on top of him being a great actor. But after we were shooting, and then when I was in the edit, watching it, I was thinking about Midnight Mass again—I somehow forgot about it. I forgot he’s so different in this show that when I look at Midnight Mass now, I’m like, “Holy shit, that’s him.” I just think that’s how good he is. I brought him in because of it, but then I forgot. 

DEADLINE: Yeah, they’re very tonally different, but maybe equally as satisfying. 

DIPPOLD: I mean, I think he literally looks and sounds like a completely different person, you know what I mean? If someone told me those are two different people, I would believe it. 

DEADLINE: Yeah, totally. One episode I really loved was Patricia’s (Kate O’Flynn) slasher bottle episode, where we really get to see she was telling the truth the whole time. Can you tell me about putting a spotlight on that character?

DIPPOLD: It started with episode 4, that was the first departure episode, which felt possibly risky because if people were enjoying watching Loftis and Wyck (Stephen Root) just finally getting together, following this other character for an entire episode, you just don’t know if the audience is gonna think, “What are we doing now?” But fortunately, everyone was on board and really dug it, and so, we have this character that we love and Kate is so funny. I just feel like you could hold off on bringing the boogeyman back, I just didn’t wanna. I don’t know, there’s so much to do in this show, in this world, and with these characters. I didn’t wanna do the thing where you’re just like, “we’re gonna wait a long time for this.” I just want to give it everything we have as we have it and just keep doing it until we’re like, “Well, OK, then that’s it.” If you bring up the boogeyman, I want to see the boogeyman. I just don’t want to hold off, and I want to see Patricia react to seeing the boogeyman. Let’s just get to it.  

DEADLINE: And she did such an amazing job with that episode too. One development that I was really interested in, and I’m curious if you’re gonna explore it more in Season 2, is the fact that Evan is a descendant of Richard, the founder. 

DIPPOLD: I guess I would say, for Loftis, who has had dreams of getting off this island, first he wants to make it a better place because deep, deep down, he knows his son probably can’t leave because of what happened to his wife. You learn in the finale that deep down, he’s known all along, and a lot of this show for me was about acceptance. I’ve had this experience in my life where if you’re repressing a lot and you just, instead, sort of have this overly optimistic idea of what life should be and then you at a certain point have to come to terms with what life is, that it’s not going to be Martha’s Vineyard, so to speak. There’s going to be highs and there’s going to be very low lows, and Loftis is coming to terms with this, and so it’s about acceptance. And so the finale, to me, is him realizing that he’s never going to leave this island, that his son can never leave this island, and coming to terms of what that means and how much of what Ruth has said to him has landed on him. And also God help him if anyone on the island finds out that Evan is the last [descendant]. 

DEADLINE: And that was a very exciting part of the finale as well, finding out that he is a descendant and then, how the curse is seemingly satisfied when the storm stops at the end.

DIPPOLD: I would say that because of Kenneth (Michael Malvesti) being in that room, it sort of got what it needed for the time being, but the bells are still ringing, just one less. But it wants more. 

DEADLINE: Got you. And I was curious about the underground torture chamber since the beginning, so it was interesting to see that in the finale. What can you tell me about where that leads?

DIPPOLD: I mean, we’re gonna learn more about it later, hopefully, but it’s like what the projector videos describe, what Dale discovers, it explains it. That’s a system that they’ve come up with that you see back in 1702 when Sarah Warren finds that room, and it’s a system that they’ve modernized over the years to keep things quiet and safe and calm, and so that is that. And what exactly is under those doors, that would be for later.