Note: This article contains spoilers from “Widow’s Bay” Season 1, Episode 10.
Nothing goes according to plan for Mayor Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) in the “Widow’s Bay” Season 1 finale, titled “We Hope You Enjoyed Your Time!” The increasingly burdened single father and self-appointed town leader spends much of the episode digging to the very bottom of his own soul, questioning whether or not he has it in him to kill his kindhearted elderly secretary, Ruth (K Callan), in order to save the rest of the island’s residents.
Convinced that Ruth is the last living descendant of Widow’s Bay founder Richard Warren (Hamish Linklater), Tom sees his secretary as the last thing keeping the town from prospering and his son Evan (Kingston Rumi Southwick) from finally knowing a life beyond the island’s shores. As he edges closer to poisoning Ruth’s tea, the weight of everything Tom has been carrying — his guilt over his wife’s death, his failures as a father and his culpability for bringing tourists to an island that is even more dangerous than he thought — comes bubbling to the surface.
His slow dissolution over the first half of the “Widow’s Bay” Season 1 finale is a masterclass in dramatic control and nuanced performance on the part of Rhys, an actor who is no stranger to playing haunted men on screen. Tom carries the weight of so many failures on his shoulders, and viewers feel that with every step and breath he takes over the course of “We Hope You Enjoyed Your Time!,” an episode that cements Tom’s season-long journey from an optimistic politician in perpetual denial to a somber, disillusioned leader.
“I think he finally accepts the truth of the island. It’s something I think that he’s been all too aware of and all too happy to ignore,” Rhys told TheWrap of his “Widow’s Bay” protagonist’s journey this season. “He finally accepts Wyck’s truth and Patricia’s truth — that all of this is true.”
“The acceptance of that is twofold. In some ways, it’s the making of him, to a degree, because he realizes that the three of them now have to step forward and conquer this,” Rhys reflected. “But it’s also the acceptance that his true dream might not come true and, therefore, his son might suffer as a result of that. It all just gets heavier and darker for him.”
Rhys signed on to “Widow’s Bay” after falling in love with series creator Katie Dippold’s script for the horror comedy’s first episode. He did not ask to hear more about what lay in store beyond that episode. He just knew Tom Loftis was a character he wanted to play, and that Dippold and executive producer and primary series director Hiro Murai were a creative duo he wanted to work with.
As a result, he had no idea that the “Widow’s Bay” finale would function for much of its runtime as a kind of chamber piece in which his character’s soul is laid bare and the rug is irrevocably pulled out from under him. He had no idea the series would take him to such dramatic, emotionally volatile places.
“It was like three days of crying! I remember saying to Hiro, ‘You pitched this as a horror comedy! I’ve never been so emotional in my life!’” Rhys recalled with a laugh about filming the emotionally devastating “Widow’s Bay” season capper, adding, “It really speaks to Katie’s writing. It’s all imbued with such humanity. It’s all so relatable. It’s a chamber piece because it’s so human and there are such enormous stakes in it.”
“Initially, when the two-line pitch for the whole project came in, I thought I was going to get to be like Kate [O’Flynn], like, ‘Oh, I’ll get to set someone on fire and I’ll run around screaming and that’ll be great!’” Rhys admitted. “And then I found myself weeping about the future of my son thinking, ‘This is like ‘Hamlet!’”
“That’s just a testament to the beauty of Dippold,” he said.
Ruth, of course, unknowingly survives Tom’s initial poison attempt. And before he gets the chance to finish the job, she hits him with a truth that rocks him to his core. When she was a younger woman, she had a baby in secret, who grew up to be Lauren (Meredith Casey), Tom’s late wife and Evan’s mother. Her confession reveals the horrible truth: That Evan is the last living descendant of Richard Warren. As long as he lives, so too does Warren’s covenant with the hungry entity that haunts and feeds on the fear and misery of Widow’s Bay’s residents.
The episode ultimately ends with Tom and Evan hearing the town’s church bells ring eight times. Neither Tom nor his son understand what the bells mean, but viewers do. The entity lurking within the island is still awake. It is still hungry. And it will not go back to sleep until eight more people have been sacrificed to it.
“With each moment in the finale, the severity of it all just gets kind of heavier and more incredulous really,” Rhys said of the “Widow’s Bay” finale. “I remember reading that moment [with the bells] and going, ‘Oh, how am I going to portray that with my face?’ Because it’s such an enormous moment for Tom.”
“It really is [the encapsulation] of what happens throughout the whole season to him,” he explained. “With each organic step forward, something just seems to get worse and bigger and he has to go, ‘How is this going to be overcome?’ It’s just beautiful storytelling.”
“Widow’s Bay” Season 1 is streaming now on Apple TV.
