After ten intense episodes, Widow’s Bay heads into its second season: Mayor Tom Loftis’s (Matthew Rhys) efforts to transform this small island into a tourist destination have been successful… but they’ve also revealed the darkest side of this cursed land.
Throughout the season, Loftis battles serial-killer clowns, witches, demonic entities, and murderers who seem to have stepped right out of a John Carpenter slasher film. All of these are legends rooted in the island’s corrupt identity, and while the mayor was initially completely reluctant to believe his fellow citizens, after experiencing a whirlwind of rather unpleasant emotions, he is forced to surrender to the evil of his homeland. But that’s not all: his son Evan is also caught in the middle, and the mayor is driven by the desire to protect him from the curse that prevents anyone born on the island from surviving without it. In short, it’s a toxic and possessive relationship from which escape is impossible—except through death.
What happens in the season finale?
In the season finale, Loftis discovers that the pact between the city’s founder, Richard Warren (Hamish Linklater), and the demonic force that “possesses” the island can only be broken upon the death of Warren’s descendants. Eliminate Warren, and the danger is gone. But that’s too easy: it’s initially revealed that the founder’s last descendant is Ruth, Loftis’s elderly secretary. And as if the moral dilemma weren’t already big enough, a plot twist is just around the corner: Ruth has always hidden the fact that she had a son—who is none other than Loftis’s late wife. So, with Ruth dead, Warren’s last descendant is actually his son Evan.
For the lead actor, the second season “will be crazy”
How will Tom cope with this burden? How does the second season unfold? Rhys discussed this with Variety: “I haven’t the faintest idea how it’s going to end [… [ Everyone has a plot twist, and the stakes are really high,” said the actor. “I don’t know how they’ll manage with food, let alone with Tom! It’s going to be crazy.”
Matthew Rhys revealed that he had tried to get some spoilers about the story’s development from Katie Dippold, the TV series’ creator, but had always come up empty-handed: “What’s going to happen to the island? Will it turn into a monster, or a volcano? Will there be a tsunami? I keep asking Dippold, but she just says, ‘I’ll never tell an actor that,’” the future of Widow’s Bay seems uncertain even to its mayor. But Widow’s Bay is certainly beloved by Hideo Kojima—though he probably wouldn’t go there on vacation.
