You Have Never Seen a Show Like “Widow’s Bay”!

I’m not the biggest fan of TV series. Most of the time, I get bored with the premise around season 3. And it certainly doesn’t help that so many shows run on for over 10 seasons and overstay their welcome (looking at you, Supernatural). But every now and again, I come across a show that not only piques my interest but also makes me eagerly anticipate further seasons. Created by Katie Dippold (who created Parks and Recreation), Widow’s Bay takes place in the fictional New England island of…Widow’s Bay. Mayor Tom Loftis (played by Matthew Rhys) wishes to open the island up to tourists so that the island may prosper financially while also giving his son, Evan (played by Kingston Rumi Southwick), a proper social life. But little does he know that the island has a long, complex history soaked in sacrilege, bloodshed, and a mysterious entity and curse that prevents those born on the island from ever leaving…

What separates Widow’s Bay from many other shows is the absence of a “chosen one” destined to defeat the evil (looking at you, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Castlevania). Tom Loftis is neither a hero destined to save the island from evil nor a super-agent who cracks witty one-liners after defeating a room full of bloodthirsty fiends. He is just a concerned father who wants the best for his son, but he unintentionally put more people’s lives in danger by opening the island up to tourists. In fact, he’s a coward who covers the island’s dark history with colorful buzzwords. The best example of this is in Episode 2, where he opens the Breakwater Inn to tourists yet hesitates to stay the night himself. After a brief verbal altercation with the town’s legend extraordinaire, Wyck Crawford (played by Stephen Root), where Tom calls him a “dumb hick,” he’s challenged by Wyck’s friends and the other locals to stay at Breakwater.

Tom accepts the challenge, but there is another caveat: he must record and document his entire night as proof of his stay. The second he enters the inn is when a heavy sense of dread hangs in the air. You feel something sinister is about to unfold, but everything actually goes smoothly, almost like the show is tantalizing your danger senses. Towards the end of the night, Tom encounters another guest, a normal-looking man no older than 40, named William. Tom and William bond over their shared disdain for the island’s “superstitions,” and then William tells Tom that he is doing a great job as mayor. It’s here that we also learn that Tom got his job because he ran uncontested. Before heading off to bed, William encourages Tom to finish documenting his last challenge: to record himself crawling to the very back of the inn’s crawlspace. This is where the episode releases its steady tension, building into a nonstop horror fest ripped straight from the pages of a Stephen King novel.

Even though Tom is the main character, that doesn’t mean the show revolves entirely around him. Plenty of secondary main characters get their chance in the spotlight, such as Tom’s assistant and my personal favorite character of the show, Patricia Moyer (played by Kate O’Flynn), who is a survivor of a serial killer named “The Boogeyman.” You may think this makes her a local legend, but the opposite is true. The other women hate her because she survived while so many of their friends died. Patricia goes about her life as a loner. It’s this feeling of alienation and loneliness that allows her mind to be twisted by the island’s entity. It’s this brush with the darker side of the island that brings the unlikely trio of her, Tom, and Wyck closer together to uncover more of the island’s dark past and put an end to the nightmarish hauntings.

We hardly ever get TV shows surrounding proper small-town horror. I know you may be thinking, “Mike, Stranger Things was about a small town being terrorized by a Lovecraftian entity!” Yes, it was. But not like Widow’s Bay. Unlike its pricier and more ambitious Netflix counterpart, Widow’s Bay doesn’t have a big budget for computer-generated special effects. Rather, it relies on minimalistic practical effects, unreliable storytelling, and extremely clever writing that forces you to read and watch in between the lines to uncover a chilling horror. Take Episode 4, for example. We are treated to everything Patricia sees. The party she throws in an attempt to gain more friends seems a bit awkward, but it is done in good faith. Her party outfit is elegant, with a hint of teenage fun seen with the tiara on her head. But it’s only at the beginning of the climax that we see the full truth. Patricia’s party is revealed to be a demonic ritual; the punch she serves is made of animal carcasses, and her “tiara” is made of a dead deer head and straw. Another example is seen in Episode 5, where Tom is forced to go through his daily routine after accidentally ingesting hallucinogenic mushrooms. We never see the full scale of his hallucinations; rather, we get this unnerving sense of what he’s going through from the unsettling close-ups and Dutch angles.

Most horror shows plunge you headfirst into the horror aspect, often at the expense of other qualities, such as character development or pacing. But Widow’s Bay takes time to break away from its horrific tension with smart comedic timing that you can’t help but either let out a chuckle or break out into a gut-busting fit of laughter. In most shows or movies, this can easily be viewed as a cheap way to get laughs. However, in the hands of an amazing script, it can easily serve as a tasteful way to catch your breath while not detracting from the heavy plot. This type of humor is on full display in the final three episodes (and by far some of the most thematically heavy episodes). It’s very rare to find a show that successfully does this in an age dominated by the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s “fast-food” jokes aimed at brain-rotted teenagers who are heavily addicted to TikTok.

It’s extremely rare to come across a show this original and engaging in an age where every idea is a simple copy and paste from previous films and stories while being lauded as original. But Widow’s Bay proves that a modest budget and low-stakes premise can indeed triumph over the high-stakes but low-impact blockbusters or multi-season mainstays. Even though the first season was only 10 episodes long, each episode utilizes every minute to maximum efficiency. Further buoyed by superb and natural acting from the entire cast, main, recurring, and guest, Widow’s Bay is a show that rewrites the script for horror shows that come before it and maps out the blueprint for future shows to follow. If you want to check it out, the show is on Apple TV and has most recently been renewed for a second season.