Aaron Ploof
The following recap contains spoilers for Widow’s Bay S1E9, “Emergency Shelter” (written by Bobak Esfarjani and directed by Hiro Murai)
Well, we’re in a pickle now, aren’t we?
Widow’s Bay’s first season’s penultimate installment is extremely fast-paced, revealing a few interesting and clarifying twists. It leaves us uneasy and uncertain about what will happen when Season 1’s finale strikes. A few of my assumptions about where the series was going are laid to rest, and a huge moral dilemma is placed at the feet of the island’s would-be saviors.
A flashback opens the episode. We’re back with Sarah Warren and her adopted children as they attempt to escape Widow’s Bay in a rowboat. Sarah’s doing her best to navigate the fog, but as she tries to comfort the children, one of them comes down with a nosebleed. A wave hits the boat, and young Frances falls off into the sea. Sarah throws her a chest to hold onto, but she can’t reach Frances in the ever-worsening fog.
Fast forward a few hundred years, and Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) is in denial. Another angry force of nature, a tremendous storm, is on its way to the island. Patricia (Kate O’Flynn) is insisting that he signal the siren for emergency shelter. He’s frustrated that tourists will be left with memories of the time they almost died rather than something reminding them of Martha’s Vineyard. Tom can’t contain his frustration and starts kicking a desk. Moving on to bigger prey, he takes a stab at yanking Richard Warren’s painting off the wall. He’s successful, but the weight of the painting frame drags him down, and it collapses on top of him, pinning him to the floor.
Patricia rushes over to help and notices that the woman in the portrait is missing a finger. Instead of assisting, she rushes off to find the journal, leaving Rosemary and Kenny to lift the painting. In a moment of comic relief, Tom tries to speak but can barely talk without squeaking. Rosemary can’t lift the frame because of her sciatica, so Kenny finishes the job.
After Tom regains his breath, Patricia arrives with a revelation. The young woman in the picture is Frances!
Indeed, it turns out that the finger I assumed was cut off by Richard actually was run over by a wagon wheel, as Sarah mentioned in her journal. As shown in the opening of the episode, Frances survived the escape attempt and found her way back to the island. Patricia explains what this means: Richard was not the last surviving member of his bloodline. Frances carried it forward, and since the curse was not broken with Richard’s death, that must mean that there are people on the island who are his actual descendants.
Logically, Tom is at an impasse. As he explains to Patricia, running a genealogy would take time, and even if they did, what is he supposed to do? Round all the people up? Finally realizing the impossibility of a solution to their problem, he calls in the siren.
On the shores of the island, Sheriff Bechir Clemmons is getting impatient waiting for a ferry that may never come. His wife, Chelle, is tagging along, but she doesn’t know what the couple is up against. She doesn’t know that if she gives birth to their baby while on the cursed rock, her son/daughter will never be able to leave. Yet, as Wyck tells Bechir, the storm’s tremendous power and the fact that he will have to gas up the boat in the middle of it to even have a chance at making it across the sea pretty much solidifies his defeat.
With that, all of the main characters of the show are making their way to the office and into the survival bunker. Tom sees Evan, and they have a brief conversation. Evan doesn’t hold a grudge against his father for not taking him to the Red Sox game, as he says they can go anytime in the future. He also promises to stay in the shelter instead of going AWOL like he always does. I think we can truly believe him this time. Sadly, he doesn’t know anything about the curse.
Only then do Tom and Patricia find out that they’ll need a starter to keep the power going. Tom plays a funny game of “I’m here, you’re there” with Garrett using binoculars (the only person who has a starter), who makes it impossibly hard to communicate with him because he lives in the past century and doesn’t carry a cellphone. He travels to Garrett’s lighthouse by car in the ungodly storm. Tom fiddles with the radio controls in the car as music plays, but even when he shuts it off, it still runs. This is a haunted radio! He gives it a smack to shut it up. When he finally makes it to the lighthouse, he gazes back at the office with his binoculars, only to see Garrett waving through the window, having left for the emergency Tom contacted him for in the first place!
As Tom makes his way back to the office, Wyck finds the journal on the floor, next to Richard and France’s double portrait. He finds Rosemary in her room and requests something of her. This will come into play soon.
Hurrying back to the office, Tom is confronted by a giant twister. He makes it to the building’s doors, only to see Garret about to get on his bicycle. The poor man was actually going to go back to Tom at the lighthouse. Tom rushes him inside and has almost gained sanctuary, when the shaman back from Episode 5 arrives, carrying a bag full of…laundry? He drops a couple of socks on the ground and shouts, “I need these!” Tom is yelling for him to come inside, but alas, it’s too late, and the shaman is sucked into the giant raging tornado, leaving Tom to stare into the sky with awestruck horror.
As Tom enters the shelter a few minutes later, he informs Patricia that no one is to be let outside of the bunker. Patricia’s response is saddening. Ruth, Tom’s elderly assistant, is still at home, facing the storm all by her lonesome. Tom reassures Patricia that they’ll figure something out, but it’s not looking good. Then Wyck arrives. “There’s something you both should see,” he says.
He takes them back to Rosemary, who’s sitting with a slide projector. Wyck has had her a run a genealogy, all the way from Frances to the one apparently still surviving descendant of the Warren’s bloodline. Tom, of course, wants to hear the name right away, but Rosemary’s gossipy pride takes hold, and she runs through the entire family tree, making off-handed remarks about individual’s sexual preferences and looks. Patricia interrupts her here, telling her that it’s not that she used the world “lesbian,” it’s all about the way she said it. Rosemary doesn’t pay her any mind but continues down the list.
This scene is all about drawing out the tension, making us wait until the last possible moment to find out Richard Warren’s true descendant. And when we do, it’s a bombshell. Ruth, the winner of Miss Widow’s Bay in 1959, the old lady who is now over 80 years old and is facing the storm alone, is the unlucky one to have Warren’s blood running through her veins. Once again, the show has surprised me, as I expected it to be one of the main characters. This turns out to be much more intriguing though, as it presents a classic moral dilemma.
The next scene posits the question: Will our heroes kill Ruth? Patricia is completely against the idea, as she argues, Ruth is a woman who bakes them birthday cakes, and who lets Evan stay in her home. Murdering her would be an inhumane betrayal of everything they have done for her. It would ruin Widow’s Bay forever. Would Evan really want to grow up on an island that was saved through such a horrific act? But Wyck and Tom both concur that Ruth has led a long life, and that Evan, and everyone else, shouldn’t have to live in a such a cursed place as this anymore.
With that, the phone rings. Mitch’s voice on the other end is hardly discernible, but what he says is ominous and frightening: “It’s going! It’s all going!” “What’s going?” Tom asks, but there’s nothing more said. With Wyck egging him on, and Patricia demanding to know what he’s going to do, Tom remains silent. He rounds the hallway, pulls up his hood, and exits into the dark, stormy, night.
I can say one thing for sure about where Widow’s Bay is going: I doubt it will be anything I expect. It’s not going to be as simple as killing Ruth, and even if she were to die, the curse must live on somehow. There’s been a complete season renewal since the airing of the last episode. I expect the finale to be shocking, filled with hard choices, and maybe even a twist.
Drop in next Tuesday to read my reaction to the season finale of Widow’s Bay.
