'It's Not Over' on 'Widow's Bay'

That’s not quite a wrap on the first season of Apple TV+’s Widow’s Bay, easily one of the best new series of the year (there are two episodes remaining). There’s nothing else like it on television right now: a small-town dramedy mashed up with genuine horror. It’s funny. It’s quirky. And it is legitimately scary.

The backdrop of the series is that the small island town is cursed. As we learned in last week’s flashback episode, back in the 1700s, Richard made a deal with the devil — or the island, or some malevolent force — to sacrifice residents in exchange for prosperity. The catch? Richard was granted eternal life (most of which he’s spent buried underground in a coffin), and the curse would persist for as long as someone from his bloodline remained alive on the island. It also meant that anyone born on the island would die once they left.

Wyck and Tom thought they had finally exorcised the curse by dragging Richard beyond the perimeter of the island’s dark influence, where his body crumbled to ash and bone. Curse lifted, right?

Not so much. In this week’s episode, the Boogeyman reclaimed his mask from the island and embarked on another killing spree, focusing his wrath specifically on Patricia. In one of the funniest — and at times, legitimately terrifying — sequences of the season, the Boogeyman (a sort of Jason Voorhees/Michael Myers hybrid) slowly stalked Patricia through town as she desperately tried to flee while wielding a nearly dead taser (always charge your tasers, bro).

Patricia sought help from the mostly sleeping townspeople before finally barging into the home of Kris, who berated her for allegedly fabricating details about her previous encounter with the Boogeyman. Patricia copped to it — then tased Kris anyway, because she’s annoying. The Boogeyman had ample opportunity to kill Kris and her friends but instead leapt from a second-floor window, making it abundantly clear he has only one target: Patricia.

Fortunately, Patricia eventually manages to kill the Boogeyman in another hilariously unhinged sequence — he gets run over by a car, set on fire, and finally shot to death (not before he takes out a paramedic and leaves Bechir with a non-fatal knife wound). Patricia, wisely, keeps her shotgun trained on his head all the way to the coroner’s office and stands watch until he’s cremated, because she is absolutely not taking any chances.

(Worth noting: Wyck knew the Boogeyman was on the loose after discovering someone had stolen his mask from the museum, and he was very likely the driver who sent the Boogeyman hood-first into the pavement. Also worth noting: Patricia insisted to Bechir that he take his pregnant wife away ASAP so she would not give birth on the island, because she knows the curse hasn’t been lifted.)

Over in the other storyline, Tom is so relieved the curse has been lifted — or so he believes — that he snaps up Red Sox tickets for his son Evan and races home to surprise him. Tom, however, gets a surprise of his own: Evan has been digging through old photos of his mother, Lauren, and it turns out she did not die in childbirth the way Tom always told him.

The truth, at least according to Tom, is that Lauren suffered a preeclampsia stroke after delivery and was never the same again — as evidenced by the fractured, disjointed notes she left behind, which suggest she existed in two states simultaneously: the woman institutionalized in an asylum, and the woman Tom married. In either respect, Tom tells Evan that Lauren died two years after giving birth from a brain aneurysm.

Tom manages to move Evan past this gut-punch by producing the Red Sox tickets and telling him he can finally leave the island — maybe even tour some colleges. The good news, however, doesn’t last long: Wyck shows up at Tom’s door with four words. “It’s not over.”

What Is Actually Going On?

“It’s not over” obviously refers to the curse, and if the curse hasn’t been lifted, that can only mean one thing: someone from Richard’s bloodline is still alive on the island. Two candidates stand out — Patricia and Evan. If Patricia is the surviving bloodline member, it might explain why the Boogeyman has been singularly fixated on her. Maybe he doesn’t kill indiscriminately at all. Maybe he’s been trying to wipe out Richard’s descendants and end the curse himself.

The other possibility is Evan, which makes more dramatic sense. Maybe Tom isn’t his biological father. Maybe there’s far more to Lauren’s story than we know — maybe she’s even still alive. And maybe in season two, Tom will be forced to wrestle with whether to sacrifice his son for the sake of the island, or find some other way to break the curse (I’m partial to the Flatliners method, personally).

It’s been an almost perfect horror-dramedy that has more than earned a second season. With two episodes remaining, it hasn’t been officially greenlit yet for a season two, but don’t lose any sleep over it. Apple TV+ isn’t canceling this one.