The Prestige TV Podcast - ‘Widow’s Bay’ Season 1 Finale: For Whom the Bell Tolls

Episode Date: June 17, 2026

Jo and Rob accept their fate to recap the Season 1 finale of ‘Widow’s Bay.’ (0:00) Intro (3:49) How the message got lost (6:40) The rules (11:26) The trolley problem: Ruth and Tom (24:10) Bechir’s role (26:19) ‘Lost’ references (28:47) The teens (31:39) What’s next? Email us! [e-mail] Follow us on IG and TikTok! Subscribe to the Ringer TV YouTube channel here for full episodes of ‘The Prestige TV Podcast’ and so much more! Hosts: Joanna Robinson and Rob Mahoney Producers: Kai Grady and Devon Renaldo Additional Production Support: Justin Sayles and Jacob Cornett Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome back to the Presti-TV podcast feed. I'm Joanna. I'm Rob Mojone. We are live to cover the Widows Bay finale. It ended mere moments ago on the Apple platform. Yeah. Linear TV-ish. Yeah, is. I don't know how appointment television watching Widows Bay is. The Apple release, I think people tend to watch sort of here and everywhere.

I think a lot of people were like, isn't this a Wednesday show? It's a Tuesday night show, folks. Here's the thing. If anything was going to establish that level of instant credibility, we have to be on top of it. It does seem like Widows Bay has people. people frothed, you know? Kind of appointment television. So episode 10, we hope you enjoyed your time, directed by Hiramurai, written by Katie Dippold.

So, like, the All-Star team is here. That's incredible. I also think that do is going to be on the watch this week. That's what I heard. Oh, that's thrilling. Yeah, I know. Very exciting. Here's what we're going to do.

Usually we start with a mailbag. There's too much to talk about. We're not going to start. We have some emails. We'll get to them. But I want to start, well, I guess first and foremost, did you like this episode of television, Rob Mahoney? I adored this episode.

Tell me why. I really loved it. I mean, to me, it's less about the big mystery stuff. We talked about that some last week. Turns out there's another secret warrant. Great. And more of the friends we made along the way. It's less even the friends we made along the way than the friends we may or may not be deciding to kill along the way.

And the way that we have this mystery reveal and then we're just kind of dancing around it with a big philosophical conversation that only one member of the conversation even knows that they're having. Yeah, I love that. And I think that, you know, from the start, I would. was excited that Kay Callan was in this cast who plays Ruth because I know her from the Superman show from the 90s, but also she was a Knives Out. And she's just like, she's a real like, like, stealth, like star. And she's really the star of this episode. Steels it. Absolutely. Though, of course, Matthew Reese, incredible this episode. And the way that Matthew Reese inside of this like little horror comedy conspiracy show, the drama, like, I felt like I was

watching the Americans for a second with like his conflict, like the way his, his brow was wrinkled as he's just sitting there, marinating in the, like, grief and guilt over what he felt like he had to do to Ruth. I thought that was, like, it's a funny episode, as is all Widows Bay. It's a tense episode. But, like, I just think it's a very, like, well-acted drama moment for Tom. There's so many individual moments that I want to, like, spotlight within this episode. But the moment where I knew they had this finale dialed in,

not a surprise given the way the season is gone. But I was like, okay, I feel like I'm in a sense. especially good hands to close out this story in the way that is going to be satisfying to me personally is when Tom shows up and Ruth, after he kind of catches her by surprise on the treadmill where she's, you know, just doing a casual two miles, no big. No big. And she gives him the like, oh, like I thought you forgot about me. And the brief pause as Matthew Reese goes full Americans, the inner torment of Tom before he lets out the never.

Yeah. I was like, okay, we are cooking with something. We are in a register that I think this is just really going to hit. Speaking of which, I can't remember we've talked about this already, but there's been a bit of a sort of resurgence on the Americans as people are discovering what Matthew Reese can do. A Riesississants? Okay.

A Rhesus? Yeah. Maybe. That sounds like it's about Reese Sons. That's true. Oh, Matthew Riseson. Yeah. Have you heard of it?

I get it. We're live. Okay. We are drinking sunset cocktails. As one does. As configured by our producers and wonderful producers. Okay, here's the first question that I want to talk about. How the message got lost.

This is a question that you've been asking all season is like, who knows what? Yeah. You're like, there has to be people around who know what this means. You know, and we hear from, like, Ruth, and we'll get to it, a litany of strange and unusual things that have happened to her family. But here's what I pieced together from the context clues that we got in this episode. So Ruth mentions Mayor Howard the Coward And she says,

Surprise when he left. I was surprised when he left, but people get scared, right? So if there was a process of passing the message down one mayor to another, and we got an email about this that we haven't heard anything about Tom's predecessor,

you know, if Howard the Coward, I don't know if he was like named as Tom's direct predecessor, just someone that Ruth worked for. I think there probably would have been a gap just based on the time. Timing.

Yeah. But if he left and didn't, like, perhaps he found out what he had to do and he just got the fuck out of there rather than do it and didn't pass that information down to the next person, that's one way the message could have gotten lost. Rosemary's predecessor saying don't go down there into the basement. So Rosemary's predecessor knew, like as recently as that. Yeah. But didn't tell Rosemary why not to, you know? Even her predecessor might not have known exactly. It's just like one of these things that becomes an urban legend, you don't know.

go into that place. And then I was thinking about Reverend Bryce's predecessor, right? The note that Reverend Bryce found to the rector of the church, I pray that this burden will never fall to you, but should the bell toll, these are the steps you must take on the north side of the rectory, there is a chamber where you will find dot, dot, dot. Yeah. Reverend Bryce, instead of taking on that job killed himself. Yeah.

Right? So like, how does something this big, this mass conspiracy, this social contract of the island, get lost? and it's just sort of like one by one by one, the message did not get passed down to the person who took it. That's sort of my assessment of what's going on. Do you agree? Well, and what's even happening with the...

I do concur, especially that kind of chain of command, right? It's not as simple as mayor to mayor to mayor to mayor, because whether they were cowardly, whether they drew a line in the sand morally, whether they just refused to believe that any of this supernatural stuff was real, even as people were getting bitten by animals and turning into those animals,

every mayor is able to draw the lines for themselves. And that's where, yeah, pastors, priests, citizens of the town, other people might have gotten involved at various points to keep the chain going, to keep the island surviving to whatever extent it has. Well, there was a council. Like, a council that was formed,

which we saw in the flashback episode, and then in the reel-to-reel that Dale watches, there is, like, a council mentioned, right? So there was a council, like, who was on it, and how did it dwindle, and how did that message get lost? Let's talk about the rules as we understand them. every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings.

And also every time the bell rings, the island is demanding a soul because it's hungry. You mentioned this, like that the bell was a dinner bell, right? For the island, feed the island. Right. In the flashback, we saw, we heard five bells toll on the night of Sarah's wedding night in the flashback. And so that's when the mayor knows, I got to go. you know, Richard Warren's like, I got to go kill some people, right?

Nine bell tolls earlier this season. One guy gets fed to the hatch. Now it's eight. And then there were eight. So the island's still hungry. Still demands eight souls. Well, this is an amuse-boosh. You know, we're just wetting the appetite.

Appetize, yeah. I mean, do you think the island is growing? You know, from Richard Warren's time to now, is it just going to get to be more and more and more every single time. Well, we did get an email of someone noting, you know, when I went through the timeline the other day of sort of the things that have happened on the island, they were like, you'll note that there's sort of like a mass casualty event. Every so often. And so what's the chicken and the egg, right? Like, is it the storm is created

because the island is hungry and angry. Yes. Or, you know, and that creates the crash or a shipwreck or cannibalism, or whatever the case may be. And then the island is sated because it has been fed those souls. But if they're eating each child, you know, and that's, you know, other that they're not feeding the hatch. So I don't know if that counts. Well, this is the trolley problem within the trolley problem, right? If you're creating a council, as far as we understand from the reels, democratically vote who you want to feed to the island.

Who's bad? Who are the bad guys? Yeah. Who can we live without? Yeah. I mean, Joe, if we had to do this at the ringer, if we had to democratically vote someone to sacrifice to our metaphorical island here at the studio. Yeah.

Do you have any nominees? Is there anyone you're going to give up? In order to preserve my relationship with everyone, I will throw myself into the hatch. I don't believe that for a second. And your answer is, I simply wouldn't vote. I also would vote for you. No, but really, who should we put into the hatch? I don't know.

Well, we obviously can't throw, like, Kai or Dev or Jacob into the hatch. No, no, not our team. Not our team. No, no, no, no. We're the council. We're safe. I mean, wouldn't Chris Ryan want to do what's best for us? Speaking of Chris is, do you think Chris is going to go?

like shitty Chris and on Widows Bay is going to go into the Hashneck season? He sucks. She's the worst. I thought you were talking about I thought the guy is the guy not also named Chris who is fussy about the MREs?

Oh, that's, that guy struck me as an off island douche. Oh, he's an off island douche. I mean, you can't trust anyone off the island. By is like the newness of his fleece, he seems like an off island douche bag.

You don't think they're getting new fresh fleece? They don't even have cell phones. I don't think there's not a North Face on here? No. It's tough. You didn't. want to shout out LLB again. You're going to North Face.

Okay. So, yeah, there's a council of some kind, or once upon a time in at least the 50s or 60s, which is buy that guy's short sleeve, collared shirt, and tie. That's a win that real to real. A council of some kind votes on who descended to the pit. The bad times will not end until the covenant is honored and honored fully. One soul for each belt hole. Their fear is necessary.

They say it likes the taste. I don't like that. Who is it commuting to that it expresses its desire for the choice? taste of fear. Well, clearly, Richard Warren was in Congress with The Beast. Tom has been. You think other people are mushrooming and sort of intoning into the darkness?

I don't know how many people are even allowed, right, to summon, to be a part of those particular conversations. These are senior staff only, you know, upper level management. Something that we should note is that when Evan, who, by the way, for the slanderers of Evan, Evan was the only teen who did not run away

and, like, abandon what was happening in that hatch. He tried to get that door open as best he could or whatever. Not his fault. The door unlocked itself, right? Yeah. Or the entity unlocked it. I don't know, which is worse.

And then the hatched doors are slightly ajar. Were they always a jar? I don't think they were always a jar. No. And the trails of blood and the lit flashlight. Oh, yeah. You know. We know where it went, but I'm just saying the fact that the door is still open

and bothers me. Like, you know, the entity wasn't like, I'm all full until the next eight and close the door is like the door is still ajar. As someone who has been at this office, basically from SunUp until now, has it occurred to you that these doors might not unlock until it's done with you? Why are you outing the fact that I have been here all day? You work hard and I want the people to appreciate it. All right. Let's talk about Ruth and Tom and the trolley problem.

You know, something I noted when we were asking sort of who the Warren to send. And by the way, thank you for your one million emails being like, hey, dumb dumbs. it's probably still Evan. It's obviously Evan. You guys are so dumb. We are quite credulous sometimes. I don't know what to tell you. Why did you just think it's Ruth?

It's also Evan. Okay, so it is Evan. Or is it? Yeah, it is. Okay. But Tom, as I noted when we were discussing Evan as a possibility earlier this season, I think in every single episode,

Tom asks some version of Is Evan okay? Right. And he does so again in this episode. You know, like tells Patricia to look after Evan over the walkie is asking if Evan is okay. So I just really liked, you know, not only establishing Tom's genuine care for him,

but just sort of like the question of the show is, is Evan okay? Like, is he going to be okay with this, like Tom has his information now? Yes. And going into season two where I think I had always been, for some reason, thinking about the finale, if it was going to be Evan,

that it was going to be Tom who was left with this choice potentially of like, what do I do? Right? Would he even be willing to sacrifice his son? Obviously not for the sake of the island. And where does that drive story? Where does that drive drama? If he's not going to be willing to give up his son, where is the conflict? You got to find eight people to feed into the hatch. You got to find a bunch of people. And now I think we have this great tension going into season two where Bashir knows that somebody is a secret Warren, but doesn't know who. And Tom is protecting Evan clearly, but also needs to get his own Richard Warren on and be smuggling some bodies down into the cellar if he wants to keep Evan. out of trouble. Is that what the future seasons are? It's sort of like Little Shop of Horrors Feed Me thing where like he's going to have to like feed Randos. That's a musical's reference. I understand. You know well

that I'm familiar with Little Shop of Horrors. How dare you? I've never been condescended to more than during the middle of this episode when we were rewatching it together and you're like as Phantom of the Opera. I don't know. How dare you? You're anti-musical and you're like I know, Dwayna, but like listen, there's a lot you don't know. You can tell me when it's like a jellical ball reference and that I'm not getting, please do.

Yeah. But come on. Fan of the opera. Okay. Little shop of horrors. Yeah. All right. We'll get the list of all the musicals you know later.

The approved materials. But yeah, like, we'll wrap this up with like who knows what and what that means going. Because what I like about this episode is like a bunch of different people get little pieces of the puzzle. Exactly. But no one has the full puzzle. So Ruth and Tom. The medical chart. Ruth's medical chart.

You and I both laughed. How did you feel about that? Just her thyroid levels? Wow. I want that on my chart. We can all be so lucky. I do have, like, for some reason, incredibly good blood pressure. And every time, I think doctors expect I won't have good blood pressure.

And they take my blood pressure. And they're like, you have the blood pressure of a teenager. I'm like, thank you. There's so many other things wrong with me, but I do have that going for me. It's nice to prove people wrong sometimes, you know. Oxycodone and diazepine. Yeah. I just don't think a person should be on those two things, even if they have a note that says

don't take them together. I did Google this. You should, in fact, not taking it together. Seems like a bad idea. I don't, I didn't, I did not have, the narc in me knew that you did not have to, I did not have to Google that. Have you ever snooped through someone's medical medicine cabinet? No. Okay.

I've never really seen the appeal. Like, am I going to, what am I going to see in there? Hemorrhoid cream? Like, what's the great secret? I, yeah, what are people ashamed of medically? Yeah, yeah. It's cool, man. Yeah, we're pro-mental health.

You need those, you need that well-butrin. Yeah. You take that well-butrin. The rain slicker, like Tom standing outside of her house in the pouring rain, in the rain, in the rain slicker. Mary, I know what you did last summer, very serial killer. Oh, yeah. And he's so cold, like, emotionally in those moments when he's first getting to the house. Because he's trying to, like, you know, steal himself.

To do this. I love structurally how Tom spends the vast majority of this episode, like trying to talk himself into and excuse himself. Not only that, get Ruth to tell him it's the right thing to do. He wants her to forgive him before he even does it. Spends most of the episode doing that and then just like the last flickering instance trying to find every reason to save her. And it's like that, that's just like a great way

to set up a finale like this. I really agree. What do you think Ruth listens to on her treadmill? Is she a podcast girl? She is definitely not a podcast girl. Okay. Does she know about podcasts? So it's like big band,

doop. Polka. Polka. Yeah. I mean, I'm Czech. Maybe I'm just inclined to think that old ladies listen to polka, but that's where I come from.

I don't think of it. Older women, if you were listening to this podcast, what do you listen to on your treadmill? I think the BPMs are good for Polka, to be honest with you. I think it could really get the heart going. Yeah, you're right. The jaunty brass. That's all you really need. Okay.

Herb garden situation. Here's the deal. Okay. First of all, I have a small herb garden. That's do I. Yeah. That herb garden's gone in that storm. It's not surviving that storm.

Depends all what plants. Basel? You couldn't flamethrower that thing. Secondly. The camomile and lavender tizan that she makes, like there's no way you can smuggle pills into that thing. Not only is it gritty, they would be bitter. Would they not be?

And like a lavender camomile, if it's like a sturdy cup of Earl Grey, like a bitter cup of Earl Grey, like you could, that's folks if you're listening at home, that's the tea to drug. That's what you do. Don't tell people that.

But in herbal design, like you can't, You can't smuggle it in under those light floral flavors. You can't do it. Well, especially the greater context of this entire sequence when Tom first gets to the house is like showing all the ways in which Ruth is living a rich and full life. This is not the kind of what. Like she knows inside and out the taste of every herb that's in that tea. Like she would know if anything is off much less texture, much less bitterness.

Like this is not the woman you can pull a fast one on despite everything we were kind of told earlier in the season. All season we were like, this is a this is an elder. lady's got nothing. But she's like, she's tired in the middle of the day. She needs a nap. But when she's alert, I get alert at night,

you know. And she's tired in the middle of the day because she also needs the excuse to go help her other elderly friend up and down her porch steps. Deirdre. Shout to Deirdre, a real one. I'm going to come back to that.

I mean, of all the things I love and admire about this episode, one of them is we don't get here to this particular end game. If Tom cared about Ruth enough to actually show up to her house earlier in the season. Right.

If he knew anything about her. He would actually know about her. life. He probably would have known the reveal four episodes ago if he had actually been helping her to work. Yeah. She might have told him about Lauren, possibly. And so Tom is out here doing a bunch of things he says are for the good of Widows Bay. And Ruth is out here living for the good of Widows Bay. Like, she's the one who wants to be a part of a community who wants to help other people. Like, she is a genuinely good person who is offering hands to everyone around her. She's the one who will take in, Evan, in part because it's her grandson, but. On the one hand, yes. On the other hand,

when she gets good and doped up and starts telling her story, like, that's not necessarily like a good person story. Well, she's lived a life. She's made some choices. She's made some choices. And she's rectifying with those choices in a way that Tom, it takes him way too long to do the very same. Her cross-stitch quote, a Tennessee Williams quote, the world is violent and mercurial. It will have its way with you. We are saved only by love, love for each other, and the love that we pour into the art we feel compelled to share. Being a parent, being a writer, being a painter, being a friend. We live in a perpetually burning building, and what we must say from it all the time is love.

Shout out Tennessee Williams. Really impressed with her dexterity and eyesight that she was able to cross-stitch that entire massive quote in two tiny letters onto her cross-stitch. Well, she couldn't read her own stitch handwriting by the end of it. Listen, it's tough. But the philosophy that pours out of Ruth in this sequence when she talks about like the trolley is life

and I'm the lever. Like, all of that is just really good stuff, really well performed. I just think this whole conversation and that debate, like, this is an action set piece. You know, like, this is high drama. And it is, like,

when I think about what I want out of finale, yeah, you want Bashir coming in with the gun. You want some kind of monstery element here on Widows Bay. But, like, I want people having these kinds of conversations and really reckoning with what it means to live in a place like this and what you're willing to excuse.

And with all due respect to Patricia, who I won't say a bad word about, she hasn't really had time to articulate her perspective on not killing Ruth other than it's a bad thing to kill a person. Right. What Ruth is saying here is it's not just bad to kill a person, but the act of choosing to kill a person for this reason is the choice you never come back from. And I am not willing to do that. Like I am willing to live in a chaotic world. I am willing to try to bring love into it however I can at the end of the day, Tennessee Williams style. But it simply wouldn't be me.

Can we put Tennessee Williams style on the quote card for this week? I think that, and what I love about the way that this finale works out because she's not dead despite being shot in the head. I think we need to talk about that. Yeah. But she's not dead. And so, you know, first of all, Bashir, of course, is the one who pulled the trigger. So Tom has plausible deniability there. But like...

It's at least partly his fault. Oh, it's definitely partly his fault. But he hasn't really fully pulled that lever yet. But that decision is that trolley problem. There's just eight more people on the trolley than he understood there to be. But he's still got to decide whether or not to pull that lever. Or can he like weasel his way around it and figure out how to make other people pull the lever for him or something like that? It's true.

I mean, I think it's such an interesting refraction of the stuff we get from Wick and Tom earlier in the season about how he's a coward. Right. Him being a coward kind of stops him, at least at least gives him after poisoning roof the moment of clarity to want to go save her. Yeah. Like I think those things are folded in. to each other. But it also does just leave open the window for Bashir to come in and do something dangerous and violent and impulsive.

But he's also doing that thing for the same reason that Tom has been doing so many things we learn over the course this season. Like when Ruth is unconscious because he drugged her and he's kind of giving her his last confession before what he assumes will be her death, what he says is that his wife warned him about all of this. And then when she had her stroke, it basically confirmed for him that the curse of Widows Bay is real, that all of the supernatural shit is really. real and dangerous. And he knew that. And the father in him wanted Evan to have as rich a full life

as he could and wanted to bring other stuff to Widows Bay. And the mayor in him, who should have known that's a terrible fucking idea, invited it all in anyway. Here's what I think is really interesting. A question you and I have been sort of debating all season is sort of like, what did Tom know, when did he know it, what does he believe in? And the answer was more complicated than either of us were sort of drilling down on because you were like, well, surely he knew because he didn't take Evan off Island. And it's like, he knew on some level. Yeah. He was in deep denial about it.

But what I love about this is like, it's very final season of Breaking Bad. Like, I did it because I liked it. When he says, I wanted more for him. Yes. And then he says, and myself. Like, he is looking at himself in the mirror here and he's just sort of

like, let me be really honest. Again, Matthew Reese delivering that whole speech of like, I laughed it off, I teased her about it. I don't understand why I didn't just listen. And this is sort of like a larger theme of the season. I have this like working theory in terms of like how did the message get lost? I don't know if this is over-reaching.

But there's this idea of like, do we listen to our elders? Like, do we listen to people? And it's just like people have been telling us all season about what's going on. And Ruth rattles off like, you know, all of these strange, you know. My dad got taken by a monster in the lake. Yeah. My Aunt Betty just stopped talking. You know what I mean?

We tried to build a trolley and all the workers disappeared. But like what Rosemary knows? Like all the old timers in the bar who were like goading Tom into going into the hotel, right, for the night. And then the old timer that they literally shut the door on in last week's episode. But like, if you listened to these old people, perhaps we would have more pieces of the puzzle than we have at this point, you know? It's just everyone who's a little bit younger feels like they have all the answers or all the resources or all the resources or our, like agile to the modern world in a way that acclimates them better to solve these contemporary problems when these contemporary problems have been going on for hundreds of years because they

are surprised mythical and demonic in nature. It is not really a Patricia and Wick episode, which is fine because they've had their time in the sun. You know, Rosemary is also here and great as always, but she's had her time to shine. Bashir and Shell. I like Bashir's desperation. I like that we don't even have to see Patricia explain. to him what's going on. We're just like,

he's trying to get to the bottom of the case and then he shows up, you know? Like, I thought all of that was done really, really well. I thought his inclusion in this episode is perfect for the character he's been and what he's been going through all season and we've been laughing at his exasperation

and just like the reactions in those moments are really great for comedy. But when you really zoom out, he's a character who, despite the fact that he is in charge of the law enforcement on the island has been given no information. Or at least like two steps behind. I know.

Where did that information get lost? Right. Like Tom always knows more. Lately, Patricia and Wick have known a lot more than Bashir. And so the fact that he is constantly playing catch up as far as what they know is what makes him so desperate in this moment. Where for him, like the clock is ticking, right? Like he is acting in a way where his child's life will be decided by what happens in the next couple hours. That's his understanding.

Yeah. Shell is literally in labor. Right. Based on the information he has. And he has less than Tom. to process it. He has less than Patricia and Wick to process it. And so it's another case where if he had just been looped in earlier, he might be making different decisions in a moment like this, or it might be a collaborative conversation between the four of them in a moment like this.

Well, that's like, you know, something I've been thinking about a lot because we've been covering these Batman movies on House of Arr, these Christopher Nolan examination of a society in a city. It's really a Gotham. You were wondering which was going to break first Bashir's spirit or his body? Or his body. But I think that the social contract, the benevolent lie, the lies we tell to keep a society running, is it ever excusable? Does everyone, is this society better if everyone has all the information, you know, at the end of the day?

This is something we think about with The Last of Us as well. All right, Dale. Our guy Dale, we've been waiting for Dale, Jeff Hiller's character, to get a really big moment. I would say we still haven't seen all that Jeff Hiller can do. No. But like... But he got a job. Run for your life.

The death trap is really good. But this is where I want to talk about an amalgamation of loss references. I mean, this is just your moment. Can we just get a spotlight in here right on Joe for this? Well, listen. Okay. So the television series lost. Yeah.

I've heard of it. I love to bring up a drop of a hat that you binged recently, I think, so that you would like be able to understand what the fuck I was talking about. Just so I could live in your general orbit. You know, Widow's Bay and Severance and all the other shows are like, of course, forever inspired by the fact that they go into shelter number three was really exciting for me because that means there's shelter number one and shelter number two elsewhere on the island, theoretically.

Other hatches, other stations. And this is a thing in Lost is like there's the Swan Station, there's the Pearl Station, there's a flame station, and there's like different information. And so, you know, they've got some pieces of the puzzle here, but are there other pieces of the puzzle in other shelters around the island. That's possible. Plus now that Dale is just like full on, he got a job with the Dharma initiative basically.

Right. The real to real. Yeah. So the real to real. We mentioned this, I think, when we saw like the VHS video earlier this season, but the real to real of like, so. So you're an offering.

So you're a ritual sacrifice. Like, that's so lost. Incredibly. Uncanny. And I'm like, I'm thrilled about it. I love that there's like a real for them, like for the sacrifices and for you. the one who's doing the sacrificing.

When I watched this episode at home and I saw the reel come on, I was like, Joe is going to be bust into talk about this episode. And then I don't think this is a lost reference, but I thought I'd bring it up anyway. When she's talking about Deirdre, there's this part in season one

where John Locke is hallucinating Boone in a very trippy, a drug-trippy sort of sequence. And Boone keeps saying, Teresa goes up the stairs, Teresa goes down the stairs. And I was like, a Deirdre goes up the stairs. Deirdre goes down the stairs.

Anyway, if you, press T.TV at Spotify.com, if you spotted other lost references that we missed. Could easily be. But that was just like really delightful and delicious to me. Just a dart in the middle of the board.

I really need a character like Mikhail with like an eyepatch who can't die. That would be really exciting to me. Well, I mean, PJ Glanville? Yeah, PJ Glanville. Could be. Let's talk about it. The teens.

I like that you were talking about sort of the younger the generations get the more that people think I know everything and I do like that it was the teens who did the most obviously reckless thing inside of

as we're gathering information here and there of course it's going to be the teens but like is PJ Glendville a cursed demon teen did he lure

Kelly and Evan into that hatch or was he for real looking for an escape in a way to smoke some weed I'm not even willing to give Kelly that benefit of the doubt

these all silent girls they are up to No good. Do you think Kelly is an agent of evil? I mean, I know we're still a bit away from full-on Odyssey talk, but like the level of charm, kiss, coercion that Kelly lays on Evan in this episode. I'm just saying, like, we're in some like, I don't know, reverse siren territory. I don't know what's happening exactly. But the two of them.

You're ready for the classics. I mean, I always am. Okay. I am more open than ever to the idea. So out on fiction, out on musicals, and on the classics. Well, the Odyssey is nonfiction. Right. Right.

Historical epic. The Whirlpool is real. Yeah, yeah, yeah. PJ Glenville and or Kelly, I mean, they're either mere teenagers, which are a kind of demon, or they're straight up demons. I don't know. I could go either way for me. Yeah. I suspect that they're actually just teenagers doing a foolish thing.

Yeah. But. Kelly sat in that chair. She sat in that chair. PJ doing bits in the chair. That feels believable in a teenage way to me. But Locke and Kenny in here. poor Kenny

RIP RIP I should say we get a head count of who's in the shelter 137 Now it's 136 You got to sacrifice

8 out of 136 And let's strike that right now 8 out of 135 Because if you kill Patricia So help me There will be hell to pay it Patricia's off the table As far as who we're sacrificing

To the island Well I don't even know That everyone was in there Well she said everyone was accounted for except for Ruth, but I don't, like, because... Oh, and I guess we have Tom and Ruth to count in that head count as well. Right, but, like, Chris and the Mood, like, book club girls weren't there, or they didn't want to pay them to be in the episode.

Yeah, I think they're in the background somewhere. Okay, so you think the entire population of the island is 137 people, and you're also telling me that nobody knew that Shell was pregnant. I think the entire population of island is much smaller than 137. Because the off island girls and dishes. Yeah, people who are there as tourists. Yeah. Um, what is the population of Widows Bay?

I'm curious. I'm going to say, I'm going to say under 9. you know. That's tough, Rob. This is a two restaurant town, and one of them sucks. It's really tough. How do you bore in your graduating class in high school? 1,200 people.

Yeah. So we were slightly bigger than Widows Bay. But, you know, they make them of all size, as it turns out. It's true. All right. Who knows what and where do we go from here? So, okay, the storm breaks. Do you think Bashir gets back to the shelter and gets shell on a boat in time that she doesn't give birth on the

island or does she give birth on the island? Well, let's say this. Clearly, a lot of these things are left hanging so that the writer's room can go any number of directions with season two. They don't have to make any hard commitments on a bunch of different fronts right now, this one included. I don't think he makes it back in time because Bashir needs to be a critical part of season two based on what he both knows and doesn't know.

Oh, right. And if Shell gets off the island, then they're gone. They're out of there. They're never coming back. Y'all never see me again. Why would he stay? Okay. Our listener Eric said, the point is, like,

like Storm of the century, a decision will have to be made, one that pits Tom against the entire town. It seems like a neat way to close the season. So, like, in a big picture way. We're not there yet. We're not there yet because everyone doesn't know. So, Evan knows about the chair and what really, and what happened to Kenny. Yes. More so even than PJ and Kelly do. And that off-island girl.

They can draw their own conclusions. Yeah. But Evan knows. Okay. And the hatch is still partially open. Yes. You know that. But she knows Ruth was not the last.

But not who it was. Tom knows that Evan is the last descendant. He does indeed. Dale watched the reel to reel. I'm excited to have Dale more centrally in the plot. Well, actually, let's rewind to Tom for a second. Because Tom, I believe, based on the information earlier in the season with Reverend Bryce, he, I think, does know that the bell tolling means trouble. Right.

But not necessarily exactly what it's called for. Right. Dale has the mathematical equation. He does. One toll the bell, one soul. Um, Dale does not strike me as a person who is not going to share that information. Yeah. At least with like Rosemary and Patricia.

So they don't know yet. But I feel like the office is going to know something. It's going to be gossiping. Okay. The brooch is in the water. Tides come back in, Tom. I'm just saying to say that. I don't know what information would be gleaned from the brooch washing back up ashore.

But like, tides come back in. Well, I mean, especially if you believe. if you originally did believe that this daughter died out in the ocean, then the brooch washing up would be plausible anyway. So I thought it was just kind of putting our brooch watch finally to rest. I just think tides come back in. I think they do come back in.

So maybe we will see it again. As far as the broach itself, clearly that is a tying of a plot thread. We get the reveal that Ruth does have it, as we suspected, that she is among the war and bloodline. We kind of knew that coming into this week. And so it wasn't a big like, wow.

He's got the brooch. To me, it was more like, I appreciated the character beat we got over Ruth kind of like beaming with pride, over this family heirloom, over this thing that like cursed her to death. Well, and Tom having a concrete reminder of why he was there. Exactly.

He was just sort of like softening and sort of like easing out of his mission and then the brooch brought him back with laser focus. Snap to reality. Eight chimes of the bell at the end. So I'm sending Chris into the hatch. Are you sending anyone else? into the hatch. I already voted for you. I'm sorry.

Not me on the island. Not Chris Ryan. Not me. I mean, I think clearly there's got to be some random towns people who do not run the hotel and or wait. What was the name of the waitress who's very bad

at her job? Oh yeah, I don't remember, but sure. Whoever packed up that like the straight piece of meat. I feel like it's Kathy, but I could be wrong. And denied Patricia her like coconut cream pie and chicken parm. That person deserves to be voted into the hat. Okay. And who's doing the voting? I mean, like, it depends of the entire sort of like parks and rec department to get all the information or not.

If it were me, I wouldn't sacrifice any of my coworkers. But if I were in charge of this island and I were Tom and I was trying to keep my son alive, would I not keep luring off island people? And, you know, like, and sweetie totting, that's another musical reference. I'm also familiar with sweetie todding. Anything that has been a movie musical, I've seen it. I'm just not out here trying to go to theater. you don't like musicals because you saw the fucking Johnny Depp

Swinney Todd. It's actually real Sweeney Todd. It's actually pretty good. That's not true. I liked it. Don't like Johnny Depp, but what can I tell you? But like luring randos off, they're not one of us.

And we'll feed them to the hatch. But even that would have to be underhanded at a certain point. If the word gets out that when you go to Widows Bay, you've got an 80% chance of survival, I think it's going to stump tourism a little bit. Well, listen, if it's the next Martha's Vineyard, who's going to miss eight people? and we don't know how long the island will sleep after it eats.

So, you know. Yeah. It's going to need a considerable nap to buy Tom some time to lure in more people. I feel like we're going to feed, like, it could just be like one person per season goes in the hatch. You could like run this for eight seasons if you wanted to. But also, here's my bone to pick with the island, among many other things. The evil entity that is ruling the island. So you're good with like 90% of what it's doing, but this one thing.

Oh, yeah. As you know, I love terrorizing people. But like if people die because of the chaos on the island, so like the shaman Todd getting sucked up into the weather event, um, et cetera, whoever the boogeyman killed, I think it's unfair of the island to not count those as sacrifices.

I kind of interpreted that it did. If it was nine bells early the season and it's eight now, then only Kenny counts. Well, maybe it's interest, you know, the Vig. It's like it's a real thing. I don't think those other random,

I think you have to shove the person into, the hatch or sit them in the chair in order for it to count. So if it's just normal day in the life calamity of boogeyman or cyclone or hag, I see hag variety. Yeah. Which party, sunset cocktails. I guess that's true because in addition to,

you know, the guy got sucked up by the cyclone, like also everyone that the boogeyman killed, the EMT who got his like throat sliced or whatever, you know, we're not seeing chimes sloshed off on their account. And if you go back to Richard Warren, like there was the plague that was killing.

people, but there was also Richard actively killing people. That's a great point. You know what I mean? So like the plague is the island saying, I'm hungry, you fucked up, you haven't fed me, I'm going to cause a calamity. And Richard's like, if I drag these five people down the ladder and down

the tunnel into the chair, the plague will stop. Right? I think that completely adds up. I also like the way that that could set up season two, where I, personally, I would love to see a little more acceleration in terms of the island's hunger. I don't want it to be just like one person a season.

I want to see a version of Tom that has to actively engage in like luring these people to their deaths. Yeah. In order to keep this secret. It's eight. That's a lot of people that he has to feed. I mean, I want to see him try to pull it off. You want to like a montage. I don't want a montage.

I want it to be like a dextery undercurrent of season two of like Tom has to live this double life. And find the, find the shitty people on the island. You know? How shitty do you have to be? Do you have to just be that like shitty off island douche guy who is like my MRI is, is more. like, fuck you. That guy can probably go. Do you have to be Chris who's kind of mean, or do you need to be a killer or something like

that? I think Chris is like worthy of a stun gun perhaps on occasion, but maybe not of sacrifice. Also like, so I didn't love this part, but in terms of amping up the fear, we see this sort of like cattle call, these offerings in their like underclothes, like tied up with bags on their heads. Yeah. Like sort of marinating in their fear in order to. sassiate the island. I mean, this is a thing. If I'm being forced to feed the island,

let's say, eight steaks, why do I have to pepper those steaks for the island? Like, it's a numbers game. Why do I have to, like, make it extra tasty for the island. I don't care if the island enjoys the sauce. No bernets for the island as far as I'm concerned. Jill, let me tell you, its satisfaction is very important. That seems to be dictating a lot of the terms around here. But isn't like, it isn't like, I'm spiritually hungry. It's feed me eight souls. And I'm like, done. I did See, I think you're fulfilling the brief But not the spirit of the brief Okay

To go back to our emails We did get a lot of emails Other than the people saying You're so dumb It's definitely Evan Why are you so dumb? Fair enough How do you have a podcast?

There is a lot of people wrote in to talk about Tom's drug trip episode And the fact that at the end of that episode When he sort of hunched over his own toilet staring into the abyss He makes a bargain with God

he thinks, you know. I'll do anything to... I mean, that's a dark mushroomy god. To protect my son. Right. I will do anything to protect my son. And then like the abyss talks back to him. So has Tom like officially entered into his own Warren pact?

Does that matter if like another lord protector of the island communes with the abyss or it's just a war? I mean, all of Tom's descendants are also a warring. descended anyway, so I'm not sure it much matters at the end of the day. Yeah, he's kind of looped in, both as like Lord Protector of the Island and looped into the bloodline by marriage. Right. I would think this responsibility would fall to him anyway, and he would be kind of tied

into this, but I also haven't seen him ink any bodily fluids to parchment yet. Wow. The options are limitless. I mean, you need it all, you needed three? I think there were more than I would have liked involved. Our listener Matt wrote in, a friend of the pod, Matt, wrote in to say he had already seen the episode, so he emailed us

this earlier in the week. Did you think that Ruth would shuffle off this mortal coil before naming her secret daughter? And that season two would launch with Tom and co. Using the few clues, e.g., married baby daddy, daughter worked in an ice cream parlor to ID her. And might you have preferred that to the comparatively expected Evan reveal slash conundrum? Yeah. I mean, I think that would have done a bunch of different things. For one, yeah, they didn't have to play detective in season two to try to piece the clues together.

Right. It would also lead to that moment of profound regret after killing Ruth. to find out the truth that this didn't actually do anything. And this is one of the areas on this episode where I'm a little mixed and mixed in a way where it's just going to have to wait to season two to figure out what to do with it. The idea that they didn't kill Ruth, not that I want Ruth to die, but in like a loose end sort of way, because if Ruth is alive, she knows what Tom knows, which is that Evan is her heir and could say that to anybody at any time in a way that could be explosive for the plot.

she also presumably knows that Bashir shot her in the back, and I don't know how you just like hand-wave that away. How does she know that? I mean, he's in the room. I guess she never acknowledges him in any way, but she at least knows that she was shot by somebody, no? I don't know. It depends how that head wound is manifesting.

I have a lot of questions about that head wound. But here's the thing. That part of the story and reveal and what's happening with Ruth, notwithstanding, the one thing I was really waiting for at the end of this episode that we never quite got was some kind of, of check-in with Patricia and Wick on the other side of it, right? These are two people who had been lobbying for opposite sides of what to do with Ruth and how she

deserves to be treated. Yeah. If Ruth doesn't know, Patricia does know, like exactly what happened here, that somebody shot Ruth and it was either Tom or Bashir. She has some information. She and Wick have some information, but is Tom going to tell them about Evan? No. No.

You know, and Tom doesn't know what Dale knows. It's true. And Dale doesn't know what Evan knows. And so in terms of like putting together the pieces of the puzzle There's so many. We've got plenty of runway in season two for that. And what I was looking for was not a complete clarity from any of these characters, Patricia included,

but an emotional response to this very impulsive decision. And like regardless of knowing all the facts, like you know Ruth got shot and you can start putting pieces together. And I would have appreciated some kind of check in with and this is kind of my larger consideration with this episode is Patricia and Wick just don't have a lot to do. No, but I'm kind of okay. Again, I'm kind of okay with it because Patricia just got her, like, boogeyman.

Patricia gets two full episodes to be the star. Yeah. Wick got his, uh, Jaws episode. You know what I mean? And so like they were very central in other episodes. So they took a, like, backseat in this episode. But they're so central. Like, to me, this was almost a moment where Dale gets his absolute shriek,

this place is a death trap. And like the physical comedy of that, I mean, the show is, Widows Bay is lousy with curses. And this show is lousy with amazing physical. comedy. I don't want to get rid of that Jeff Hiller moment, but I did have the thought

that it was like, why couldn't this have been Wick in the room? Right? Like, aren't we more tied to Wick's place into this story? And he someone... Because then Wick wouldn't tell anyone. He wouldn't...

I mean, Dale, I guess that's true. It's like, you need the blabber mouth to find out the information. Yeah. I guess I just want the characters that we've spent more time with to do yet even more. Well, here's where we agree.

Yeah. This was a longer episode of Widows Bay. And I loved it. All of the episodes of season two should be longer. And if this were episode, we're even longer, then Wic and Patricia would have something more to do than hand out MREs, etc. MREs at that.

Tough, really tough. The bite chart, before we go, I want to make sure that we mention this so we don't get emails about it. Human bite on the bite chart. Yep. Pretty interesting. I mean, clearly just everything going on in the storm shelter, even before we see the reels. This is not a great place.

The gun, the empty gun rack. The giant red alarm button is just sitting there waiting to be, pushed. Yeah. The how to subdue someone instructions on the wall. Yeah, all of the little breadcrumming that takes us to the eventual so you're an offering, I thought was really just superb. If you're reading this, I'm already dead.

If you're reading this, I'm already dead. So that was presumably from an offering. Yeah. Who was down there. Who was given the courtesy of a blanket and then wrapped it up in the blanket. Yeah. That was very, to me, like, video game lore, where you're playing a Resident Evil game and you find an abandoned blanket

and it has this note in it that someone has hastily scribbled and you can like read the note. I've played a video game. All right, anything else? I think we did it. How did you feel about this season overall? Fantastic.

And not only just fantastic, but like the joy of watching it spread and seeing like Yarmadil Toro or anyone else being like, hey, this is the best fucking thing I've ever seen. Hideo Gajima's making of video games? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then seeing more and more people, you know, people around the office here today

where I've been all day. We're eagerly talking about the Widows Bay finale. And coming off of something like Euphoria, which felt like a mixed bag in terms of worthy of our attention and going into something like Cape Fear, which like we're really excited about because it is like bananas, but it's not great. But Widows Bay is great television.

And we're so lucky it exists. And I'm just like, I don't know. I'm just like thrilled that this exists. And tons of people, it feels like tons of people watched it. I don't know if that's real or if I'm, in a silo, you know. I think anecdotally, it has become a sensation of a kind. Like, we'll see if the numbers ever get announced

as far as how many people are watching this show, but it is talked about and it is invested in. And I think most rewardingly, it is, like, paid off that investment. It's the kind of show where the deeper you go into it, like the lore is expansive, and the theories are real and validated or sometimes red herring. It just feels like the kind of show that's not just well-conceived but well-constructed.

Yeah. And I love that, like, what it's done for, like, like Cato Flynn, who people love as Patricia, like, what this potentially could do for her career. The, like, you know, Matthew Reese, the recessant as you, as you, I get it. Not to be confused. With the recessons. You know, and the appreciation for, like, better or not, you know, like, Dale Dickey has been around, you know, etc. So I'm just, I'm thrilled.

I'm thrilled with what it was bag. I couldn't be happier. Just make the episodes longer next season. Thank you so much. 12 episodes, an hour long. That's what I want next season. Three people go into that. As many as we can fit.

I don't think we've officially talked about this on the podcast. We may have mentioned in passing this episode, but if you have not caught up on the news, the show's already been renewed for season two officially. Yeah. Very exciting. Did that affect the way you watch this finale at all, knowing that we were going to get more,

or did the suspicion that we were going to get more already kind of flavor things? I felt like for sure we were going to get more. But I think I would have been. been really bummed if this finale came and, and A, it wasn't renewed or B, we didn't know whether I was going to be renewed. I think, so, yeah, knowing that we had more to come. I think

there's no way Matthew Reese doesn't win an Emmy. I know you don't give a shit about the Emmys, but like, I think there's no way that Matthew Reese doesn't win an Emmy for best lead actor and a comedy. Yeah. He already has an Emmy for primetime drama. That's two Emmys for Matthew Reese.

None for Carrie Russell. And that is a crime. So let's even up the That's a fucking war crime. At the Reese Russell household. You know, she's got her golden globe for Felicity. But, like, we need to get some Emmys. And I don't know if the diplomat's going to do it. Like, we need to get some Emmy brass up there for Carrie Russell.

I have fun with the diplomat. No, no, I mean, like, it's fun. But is it going to win her the Emmy she deserves? I don't know. Fuck it. Make her the island. You know, let's bring Carrie Russell into season two. I would love Carrie Russell to be season two.

Let's do it. I hope she, I mean, she was, her years of Felicity have really primed her for cozy sweaters. And I think she just, like, is born to be here. Maybe she is the poor off-island woman to be sacrificed and lured in by Matthew Reese. His charms clearly not lost on her. His new love interest, but eventually he has to shove her into the hatch to save his son. Yeah, what happened to the Bachelorette party?

We never saw that woman ever again. I think they caught a ferry and got the fuck out of there. She did. She tried her damnedest to meet Tom where he was. After they all, like, walked into the ocean during sunset cocktails, I think they were like, bye, we're done. A brutal time for everybody. Cheers our sunset cocktails. Absolutely.

Cheers to us. Cheers to the sunset cocktails. Cheers to everybody who's been following along with our pods this season, Joe. This has been an unexpected delight getting to cover this show with you. Come join us for Cape Fear. It's bananas.

It's kind of great and kind of terrible, but really kind of great. This is a great primer, though. Like, if you've been living and dying with every loose end of Widows Bay, come dig in the trash with us. We're just like dumpster diving on Cape Fear.

Come raccooned up with us this summer, you know? It's just going to be a little grosser and a little more seedy, but I think it was, reward your obsession in a totally different kind of way. I really agree. Thank you to Kai Grady. Thanks to Devereignaldo.

Thanks to Jacob Cornett. Everyone's here pulling a late shift at the office. We really appreciate you. Thanks to everyone who tuned in live. Thanks to you if you're catching up later. Thank you to the demon teens. Of course. Thank you to Ruth's thriving social calendar.

Absolutely. Thank you to herbal tea. Of course. I'm a big peppermint tea fan, so I love that it's a fast steep. Camomiel get lost. Yeah, Cameril get the fuck out of here. All right, we'll see you same. Bye.