Since it started, Widow’s Bay has gradually worked its way up the ranks located within my brain to stand as one of my most anticipated treats of the week. That blend of subtle horror, encroaching dread and hilarious social awkwardness in the face of a supernatural disaster has managed to strike something of a unique balance that I just can’t get enough of. However, while the general quality has been wonderfully high, there was that nagging feeling that Widow’s Bay had more to give in order to push it over the top and reach a measure of Lovecraftian perfection.
Well, now it’s finally happened, and a great deal of it can be attributed to the one-two punch of episodes six and seven (calm down Gen Alpha) getting released on the same day. But while the previous installment, with it’s time jump back to the origins of the eponymous island, was the set-up, “Seasickness” is the punchline – and what a punchline it is.
Now that the sordid, godless tale of Widow’s Bay founder Richard Warren has been told, it’s time to skip back from 1702 to the present day to catch up on the desperate, sweaty souls trying to halt a localised armageddon. After his traumatic, inadvertent trip on psychedelic mushrooms, Mayor Tom Loftis wakes after sleeping away the bulk of the day to discover that Wyck and Patricia has decided to embark on a rather extreme plan B thanks to passages gleaned from the pages of Sarah Westcott’s journal. Basically, they’ve dug up Richard Warren’s body, but in their haste to get to the pendant around his neck, they couldn’t even have dreamed that the town founder would still be alive after his premature burial hundreds of years ago.
While Tom struggles with this information, he also has to grasp the fact that Warren will only talk to another leader of men, which means that barely an hour after waking from an immensely powerful drug trip, Tom now has to barter with a man who has been rendered immortal due to his pact with whatever evil lurks within the island. Obviously, being buried alive since 1702 means that Richard has seen better days, but while Tom manages to spark up an actual rapport with him, both he and Wyck cook up a plan to hopefully end all of the island’s curses once and for all.
Meanwhile, as Patricia finally clues Sheriff Bechir in on what’s going on in Widow’s Bay, Tom’s son, Evan, discovers some damning evidence that suggests that his father has been entirely truthful about the death of his mother. But after arranging a deal to take Warren out past the boundaries of the island to lift the curse, finally kill him and hopefully make everything right after his dammed bloodline ends, the undead founder suddenly has a violent change of heart that requires Tom and Wyck to team up and vanquish the man who caused all this trouble.
For the most part, all the various happenstance that’s plagued the cast of Widow’s Bay have felt a little like the underlings you’d have to contend with in a video game before you eventually get to a big, end of level boss to deal with. Well, the withered, pale form of Richard Warren certainly fits this bill perfectly, especially as we’ve only just learned his full backstory in the handily scheduled sixth episode; and thanks to this and some vintage Widow’s Bay performances, everything I love about the show comes together to arguably form its most perfect episode. Literally everything that’s made the show stand out once it first started is present, correct and honed to a fine edge, while those horror vibes once again bubble nicely under the surface – but it’s truly impressive how much the presence of Hamish Linklater’s undying founder can really bring the show together.
Taking point, as usual, is Matthew Rhys’ Tom Loftis, who has barely had time to recover from his epic drug trip from two episodes ago and a massive part of the humour of the opening episode comes from how utterly unprepared the Mayor is for the task Wyck and Patricia have dumped in his lap. I’ve come to adore Rhys’ ability to look utterly terrified while still stuck in the midst of following social niceties and it’s given its best outing thus far as he suffers an excruciatingly uncomfortable meeting with the ghoulish Warren. Be it rolling his eyes at some of the notes Patricia has written to try and communicate earlier (her note enquiring about whether Richard is upset at something she’s said is character based humour at its best), or the fact that Warren scares the shit out of Tom with his baritone voice when he reveals that he can actually still speak, the union of laughs and genuine tension is magnificent.
Similarly, the moments where Tom, Patricia and Wyck try to feel their way through such an unpredictable encounter and take their undead guest to the local museum also provides moments of great amusement and even genuine pathos as the man responsible for all of this mess finds that his daughter’s doll is one of the exhibits. But while all this proves to be insanely fertile ground for some big laughs, the episode also ensures that some other dangling plot threads are addressed. The fact that both the characters of Evan and Bechir have been sort of pushed to the side over the past few weeks hasn’t gone unnoticed, but it seems that both are due a bit of a narrative push in the final third of the season. Bechir finding out about what’s actually going on is funny enough, but it’s Evan’s discovery that his mother didn’t die in childbirth that’ll no doubt provide some dramatic meat in later episodes. There’s a good chance that the photographic evidence could just be the island throwing Tom’s son a deceptive curve ball, but all will be revealed soon(ish).
However, to close out the episode, we have a final sequence that sees Tom and Wyck trying to stay on the same page as they try and transport Richard by boat to the outskirts of the island’s evil influence that’s reassuringly known as the “dead zone”. When Tom isn’t engaging with a childish series of back and forth “fuck you”s with a re-coffined Richard, he’s giving in to peer pressure and letting the founder out to roam around the boat and mull over whether or not he actually wants to die. Unsurprisingly, the type of man who’d rather sell his soul than admit his colony has failed isn’t the kind of man who’d face death without a fight, and so after the cursed coloniser reneges on his deal, both Tom and Wyck have to try and subdue him long enough to pass the end zone and hopefully end the curse. This means that Tom finally gets a hero moment and even a word of praise from his most ardent detractor, but the question remains; with Richard Warren dead (for real this time), does this truly mean that the curse of Widow’s Bay has ended? With three episodes still to go, I wouldn’t bet on it…
Widow’s Bay hits its maximum potential with style as everything comes together to deliver the episode I’ve been patiently waiting for and the gradual ascension from endearing oddity to must-watch TV has been a jump worthy of a pact with some demonic force. But now we’re starting to enter the endgame, I can’t wait to see where the show goes from here – hopefully it’s nowhere good. Y’know, for the characters I mean – the show itself is exactly where it needs to be.
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