What, you didn’t think it was really over, did you?
With three episodes left to air, the chances that anyone actually thought the issues of Widow’s Bay had been finally resolved was pretty slight, unless someone out there truly believed we were going to get three episodes of incident-free tourism. However, while there was undoubtedly some unread small print concerning the vanquishing of Richard Warren, the real question wasn’t “is Widow’s Bay saved?” and was more “in what form is it going to start all up again?”. In many respects, “Your Baggage” is a return to the simpler, earlier episodes where some sort of horrible occurrence would single out a lone member of the cast. But while it may sound like Widow’s Bay is regressing slightly, the fact that we’ve fought, fled and freaked out with these people ensures the episode keeps that highly personal streak as it goes back to basics.
Richard Warren, the undying founder of Widow’s Bay, was finally been reduced to dust and bones and if Tom, Wyck and Patricia have gotten the lore right, the pact Warren made with the evil of the island should now be broken and everyone should now be safe. While there’s a lot of “shoulds” in that sentence, we find the trio congratulating each other on a job well done (even Wyck has a kind word to say about Tom), and the gang go back to their lives with the promise that tourism is still booming and nothing creepy and untoward should be occuring any time soon.
While Wyck attempts to reconnect with old flame Gerrie who runs the local museum and Patricia returns to her rather lonely, singleton existence, Tom goes home, eager to tell Evan that things are about to change for the better only to discover that his son has found out the deep dark secret about his mother. It turns out that Tom’s been lying about his wife dying in childbirth, but the version told was created to protect Evan from an even more tragic story: after suffering a stroke, Evan’s mother became mentally unstable and eventually had to be confined to an asylum on the island where she eventually succumbed to an aneurysm.
However, while watching Tom and Evan eventually reconcile now that the truth is out (tickets to a Red Sox game heals all ills, apparently), we can’t help but wonder if the evil is truly gone. Well, we get a fairly definitive answer when the legendary serial killer known as the Boogeyman returns and targets Patricia as she mulls over her botched takeout delivery. While the fiendishly patient masked murderer stalks Patricia all across Widow’s Bay, more truths will come to light involving her and her highly debated previous encounter with the maniac – but if the supernatural fuckery of the island is still going at full force, people have to be warned, especially the pregnant wife of chief of police Bechir, who cannot give birth on the cursed island under any circumstances.
After all the various messed-up things the island of Widow’s Bay has thrown at us over the past seven episodes, you’d think that offering up a simple, mere slasher would be fairly prosaic. After all, in the face of such things as zombie fog, sea hags and brain searing drug trips, your average overall wearing psycho admittedly sounds a little run of the mill compared to the most imaginative ends of the horror spectrum. However, even though the Boogeyman finally makes his long-hyped appearance, it isn’t the presence of a hulking, masked lunatic that makes “Your Baggage” so special, rather than the people involved. While the more basic, monster of the week episodes that opened the season were fun, we were still getting to know the belligerent group of losers who had to face down a slew of random horrors. However, after everything they’ve been through, we’ve come to feel pretty affectionate to this clutch of misfits, so while the threats are the same, our feelings about the locals are not.
This is beautifully illustrated by the scenes that finally have Evan confronting his father over the actual events of his mother’s death after realising that he’s been fed literally a lifetime of lies. For a show more famous for how well it juggles the subtle scares with the layered jokes, this proves that the show is pretty adept at exercising those dramatic joints too and as a fantastic Matthew Rhys finally caves and tells his son the truth, you find yourself barely caring that nothing overtly supernatural has actually happened yet. Similarly, as the title suggests, the other folks of Widow’s Bay have some hefty emotional baggage to shift and we even find Wyck attempting to renew his relationship with Gerrie and possibly tell her the true story of the seabeast that killed her brother back when they all were kids. However, the fact that he’s interrupted may have given something of the game away due to the death of Richard Warren failing to stop the curse. What if – bear with me now – someone else has made a deal with the evil on the island separate to Warren; surely the curator of the Widow’s Bay museum would have the know how after being well versed on centuries of unholy happenings. Whether my theory turns out to be accurate or I’m just spouting nonsense into the dark, time will tell, but until we find out, we get to sit back and watch Kate O’Flynn’s Patricia tackle her second, solo misadventure.
Lest we forget, her first was finding herself being manipulated by a haunted book to bewitch anyone who showed up at her cocktail night and send them loping into the sea, but her second turns out to be even more personal as it leads her to be pursued once again by the serial slasher known as the Boogeyman. Playing in the slasher sandbox is probably the most basic the show has ever been and it’s influences are incredibly obvious – it doesn’t take a PHD in horronomics to see that the blank, round face mask of the killer is an amalgamation of the adopted visages of both Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees. But while the actual mechanics of the stalk and slash genre are routinely followed (the fact that the Boogeyman never runs is especially well handled), it’s how Patricia deals with it that makes to episode so great. Firstly, while taking refuge at the home of the women who routinely bully her for her claims that the killer menaced her as a teen, Patricia finally admits that while she did hide from the Boogeyman all those years ago, she was actually lying about the creepy phone calls she received. However, redemption is at hand as she manages to eventually outwit her persuer thanks to some quick wits, a gas station, a taser and a hastily grabbed shotgun. It’s here we get the shows crowning moment that sees a montage of her, in a fit of understandable paranoia, holding the “dead” Boogeyman constantly at gunpoint while he’s processed, moved to a funeral home and cremated all to Enya’s “Caribbean Blue”. Beat that Laurie Strode.
As the end is now looming pretty close, the prospect of Widow’s Bay actually coming to an end fills me with a legitimate sense of sorrow. Still, with the promise of a more Bechir centered episode on the horizon (finally) still hints that more treasures are likely to follow. But until then, just enjoy the healing strains of Enya as Patricia triumphantly enters the ranks of the final girls – even if Tom enjoys pointing out she’s over 40.
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