What’s the only thing better than a new episode of widow’s bay? That’s easy: two new episodes of widow’s bay. The quirk of this week’s Apple TV schedule makes a lot of sense once you look at “Our Story” and “Seasickness.”
There’s a certain character whose arc carries them quite memorably through both episodes, while also bringing new context to The growing danger of the island.
Last week “What to expect on your trip“It followed Mayor Tom on a mushroom-enhanced journey through space, time, reality, and property damage. It ended with Tom’s desperate plea to God to protect his son, Evan.
To his utter horror, he received a response that seemed the opposite of divine. Was that guttural growl simply a drug-related auditory hallucination? Or did Tom hear that sound because the mushrooms opened a new communication channel?
“Our History” delves into that dilemma while also offering some clarity in the opening scene of “What to Expect on Your Trip.” Do you remember that silhouetted figure seen devouring a patch of black mushrooms? We know him very well in both “Our Story” and “El mareo”.
It’s Richard Warren, previously mentioned in the historical society as the founder of Widow’s Bay. His formal titles are Reeve Prime of the Colony and Lord Island Protector. The first mayor, basically. He guided the first settlers to the island in 1681. And it’s also the reason Widow’s Bay carries such a peculiar curse.
In “Our Story,” we meet Sarah Westcott Warren (Betty Gilpin), Richard’s second wife, who arrives from the continent in 1702 to marry a man she has never met, thinking it is a step up from bachelorhood. She records her nervous excitement in the diary we glimpsed in the museum. She’s ready to start a new life!
But there are immediate warning signs. For starters, there is a violent plague ravaging the island. people react very Curiously when Richard appears in the conversation. Richard’s five children seem happy about her arrival, but her new husband barely pays her any attention. Instead, he is consumed by his mysterious “job”, which has him out at all hours.
(fans of Midnight mass—a different show about a cursed island with a misplaced leader—should especially appreciate the casting of Hamish Linklater as Warren. Both he and Gilpin are A+ additions to the widow’s bay cast.)
In addition to being distant, Warren is also threatening and violent. On their wedding night, Sarah finds her husband locked in a disturbing trance with a cylindrical object (the same one he carries in his museum portrait) placed on the table next to him. When he realizes Sarah is there, he yells at her to leave him alone. Then, on their second night there, Sarah watches him beat a visitor to death after the man raises too many questions about Warren’s devilishly strange connection to the island.
The next day, he discovers a trapdoor and a hidden room. Later, he realizes that it is actually a network of tunnels, including a creepy chamber where there is a lone chair in front of a large set of doors. (We’ve seen something like this before, in episode one.)
You don’t even have to be a deeply religious person, as Sarah is, to suspect that the forces of darkness are involved here. When she asks the local pastor for help, he tells her that many The islanders have come to believe that Richard is in league with the devil. He then almost forces her to be part of a communal murder plot. But when Richard is attacked that night by a knife-wielding intruder, he somehow doesn’t die.
In this interlude, we see Sarah writing that ominous last page of her diary, which Richard then snatches from her. He’s curious to read what she’s been writing about him there.
A second attempt is needed, with the help of Richard’s son, who rescues Sarah by hitting his father on the head and explaining, “He killed my mother,” before the Colony’s Reeve Prime is successfully, albeit temporarily, subdued. Sarah and the Warren children take a small boat and escape.
Or them? The townspeople decide that the only way to neutralize Richard is to tie him up and bury him, but not before they get some answers.
About that cylinder: “He doesn’t want you to open it,” he says, then clarifies that “that” is “what has kept us alive.” Furthermore, “it’s not the devil. It’s our God.”
There’s more: “You can’t get rid of me. He won’t let it. This is my burden.” If they let him go, he will forgive everyone and continue to carry the burden.
He begins to panic as the villagers rush to throw him into a grave. “We must respect the pact! The pact that saved us that first winter!” he shouts. “He spoke to me through mushrooms!”
Well, that sounds familiar. Warren says they must “sacrifice a life…life for life. Everything I have undertaken has been for the welfare of our people. Keep the covenant and the plague will stop! But if you don’t, the terrors will not cease! They will only deepen!”
Warren pleads with the people not to punish their children for their mistakes. But as the pastor tells him, his children are currently on a ship leaving Widow’s Bay with Sarah. Warren knows what that means: as we’ve certainly seen, if you’re born on the island, you can’t leave.
Her panicked moans fade as we watch the boat row away with Sarah and the children on board. Then, we move on to today. Wyck is in the cemetery with a shovel, carrying out his attempt to see if Warren was buried with his cursed necklace.
With that much background, we dive right into “Mareo.”
An emaciated and shell-shocked Tom is still hunched over his toilet. many hours later. Those mushrooms put it out of circulation longer than I thought. It gets dark again as he drives to the museum to meet Wyck and Patricia.
They are both visibly shaken as they explain to Tom their findings: the page from Sarah’s diary and the decision to dig up Richard’s grave. While this last bit surprises you, you are in no way prepared for the next detail. The founder of the town of Widow’s Bay, who was buried in 1702, is still alive. In fact, he’s upstairs and won’t associate with anyone except the current leader of the city.
“An evil power sustains me,” he explains to a stunned Tom.
Linklater’s performance as the glowering 18th century Warren was fantastically sinister. Linklater’s performance as Warren, the 300-plus-year-old living corpse, is still sinister, but adds macabre comedy.
As we see, the necklace contains a piece of paper; he thought what was written on it would be his salvation. Almost starving that first winter, he thought about taking his own life…and then he saw the mushrooms.
“I thanked God, but something else came to me,” Warren says. He’s still not sure what it was. “A demon? The island itself? But I was hungry, and he was hungry too. The pact was offered for the salvation of my settlement, and I signed that pact with my own blood, feces, and semen.”
(Upon hearing this, Tom, who has just touched the paper in question, wipes his hands very carefully.)
Tom tells him that he thinks “something else” spoke to him too and asks Warren what he wanted. The alarmingly vague answer: “You know that frightened men will do desperate things.”
Warren asks to see what remains of his children: the few objects preserved in the museum’s display cases. You can tell that he truly loved them and is tormented by their inability to prevent their suffering. But he has no love for Sarah and angrily destroys the mannequin the museum uses to represent her.
(It’s unclear if he notices the cheesy Richard Warren merchandise on display. But how can he us get one of those t-shirts that say “Don’t say no to ‘Warren'” (Apple TV?)
“As long as there are men with my blood, you will be bound to the pact. But I am the last one,” he tells Tom. Warren believes that if he sails “past the point where sailors fear”—the same line that Lauren, pregnant with Evan, tried unsuccessfully to cross—without “the curse” around his neck, he may finally die. The curse will be lifted. Wow’s Bay will be free!
Wyck reluctantly agrees that they can use his ship, but on one condition: Richard climbs back into his coffin and stays there. The plan is for Wyck to get them as close as possible to what he calls “the dead zone,” which Wyck can’t enter, and then Tom will take Richard the rest of the way in the boat. What could go wrong?
First, there is a rare moment of closeness between Tom and Wyck. Wyck illustrates why it is best not to trust a man who knows he is about to die with a moving story from his own adolescence. It was another “bad island time,” but he and his friends decided to go fishing anyway. They were attacked and Wyck had to make the terrible decision to kick away the desperate, clinging hand of his best friend, Mark, brother of Gerrie, Wyck’s girlfriend at the time, as a tentacled beast began to drag him down.
That tendency toward desperation is why Warren must be contained. “Don’t let him out!” Wyck emphasizes.
Too late. Tom has already taken pity on the Lord Protector and is sitting in the ship’s cabin, looking very ghoulish, gobbling down canned Viennese sausages, singing sea songs, and suddenly realizing… that he doesn’t want to die after all.
There is a prolonged fight as the ship approaches the line. It is a harpoon. Suddenly, Richard is much stronger than he seemed before. But finally, Wyck and Tom manage to return him to the coffin.
As the ship’s alarm sounds frantically, signaling the proximity to the dead zone, Tom shoves a life preserver at Wyck and kicks him overboard, saving him just in time. However, the ship gets there and Warren turns into a dusty pile of bones.
Tom turns the ship around and, although he cannot find Wyck, the old sailor manages to find his way back on board. There is a joyful reunion. They did it! Richard Warren is gone, and that means the curse will be gone! They are heroes! Good?
There are a few other things that happen in “Seasickness” that deserve a mention. One is that Patricia tells some of the supernatural truth about Widow’s Bay to Sheriff Clemons. We don’t hear exactly what she tells him and he’s not sure he believes her, but he doesn’t mind sticking around to find out. He is willing to quit his job and leave the island as soon as possible.
Another is that off-island stoner girl, Kelly, who prompts Evan to rummage through his dad’s private things, trying to find out what Tom has been hiding. Evan is shocked to find photos of himself as a baby with his mother, proof that Tom has been lying all this time about Lauren “died giving birth.” We know more than Evan about that whole situation right now, but that difficult conversation is sure to come soon.
And finally, the creepy painting that the camera focuses on in the final seconds of “Seasickness”? He received a brief mention during Tom’s stay at the inn. Now it appears again. It is a small boat that sails surrounded by fierce waves.
But who exactly is that small, terrified-looking figure shown in the foreground?
Only three episodes left widow’s baywhich returns to its usual release of one per week starting next Wednesday.
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