[SPOLIERS AHEAD FOR WIDOW'S BAY SEASON 1 FINALE. Read only if you have watched the episode.]
"I wanted him to have a truly impossible dilemma, with no easy answer."
The "him" that Widow's Bay creator and showrunner Katie Dippold speaks of is Mayor Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys), the in-way-over-his-head main character of her sleeper Apple TV horror-comedy hit. The show just wrapped its 10-episode first season with a finale full of shocking moments and difficult choices.
Titled "We Hope You Enjoyed Your Time!," the episode finds Tom, who has spent most of the season struggling to bring tourist dollars to his cursed New England island community, in a dilemma: As a single parent, will he save the lives of everyone in Widow's Bay by taking the life of one of its oldest residents, Ruth (K Callan)? When Tom discovers that Ruth has ties to a deadly bloodline that goes back to the town's centuries-old origins — and the beginning of its supernatural troubles — he realizes the best way to free Widow's Bay from the evil that plagues it is to kill Ruth.
After Tom poisons Ruth's late-night tea, she confronts him with another startling revelation: Years ago, Ruth had an adulterous affair that resulted in a secret child she put up for adoption. That child grew up to be Tom's deceased wife and the mother of their only child. So, in order for Tom to save the town from a nightmare that would make Stephen King blush, it's not only Ruth he must kill but also her grandson — and Tom's son — Evan (Kingston Rumi Southwick).
That's just one of many gut-punch revelations and jaw-dropping twists Dippold and her fellow writers packed into the freshman show’s first-season ender. But the "trolley problem"-esque storyline involving Ruth, Tom and Evan was something Dippold had in place when she first sold the show in 2024.
"In my pitch to Apple, I knew that would be [Tom's] final dilemma," Dippold tells the Television Academy. "That after a whole season of Loftis proving that he's going to do these terrifying things to save this town and try to make right what he's done by bringing tourists here, I knew I wanted him to have a truly impossible dilemma."
Tom Loftis (Rhys) struggles with a key dilemma in the season finale that Dippold had baked into her original series pitch.
As fans eagerly await to see how the fallout of Tom's dilemma affects the recently announced second season, Dippold walks the Television Academy through some of the finale's most memorable (and emotional) scenes. She also reveals which character was originally meant to die before the season ended.
Television Academy: There are a lot of significant character beats in the finale, but the one that really lands is when Tom comes home to discover that his son, Evan, has found the letters his mentally unwell — and maybe possessed — mom wrote to him. When Evan reads the disturbing content of those letters, his dad just sits there and takes it. How did you and the writers' room come up with that?
Katie Dippold: We knew that we wanted the story of the mom to be that she was just never the same after she tried going to the mainland. [Editor's note: The show establishes that, if you are born on the island, doom and death will follow those who attempt to leave it.] So, we started thinking about the shame Loftis felt about encouraging her to go to the mainland, and the shame he felt having to put her in a home, because she wasn't safe to be around the son. The letters felt like a way to [dramatize] that shame he felt. It was an emotional scene but also a little bit absurd in the details of what she wrote in those letters — which, tonally, felt in line with the show.
Matthew is so wonderful in that scene, though. He doesn't have anything to say, and he doesn't have to. You see it all in his eyes. I know I'm biased, but I just think he's truly the greatest actor of all time. I really, honestly think that.
His acting skills are further showcased in the long and tense sequence where Tom has come to take out Ruth to save the town. Was that element of the story in your original pitch for the show?
Yes. In my pitch to Apple, I knew that would be [Tom's] final dilemma. That after a whole season of Loftis proving that he's going to do these terrifying things to save this town and try to make right what he's done by bringing tourists here, I knew I wanted him to have a truly impossible dilemma with no easy answer. Because a lot of this show and his arc is about exploring leadership. I often get frustrated that there's very little nuance in conversations around and about leadership. So, I wanted to put Tom in a real dilemma to explore that a bit. I knew the Ruth thing was going to happen. I knew it would involve the bloodline, and the reveal that Ruth was going to tell him, so we were planning that all along. The scene plays like Tom is feeling a large amount of guilt over what he has decided to do to this very sweet, old woman who bakes birthday cakes for [his son]. And that guilt is there, but the baking cake thing also tees up that this woman is doing that for a reason.
Dippold and Widow's Bay director/ep Hiro Murai 
But it was really interesting — in the pitch, I didn't know how it was going to end. I didn't know exactly what he was going to do. In the writers' room, there was a really fun debate, because I do think the scariest thing of all is how humans act in the face of fear. And it's always so surprising how people do what they do.
It was interesting, in the writers’ room, hearing all the different answers to "What would you do if you were Loftis?" And there were very different answers. So, I know the audience will have very different opinions.
The bell tolls on the island nine times — "one soul for each bell toll," as the orientation video instructs. And once the island gets its souls, the "curse" or whatever goes back to sleep.
Yes, that's correct. And the episode ends with the island not quite satisfied just yet.
But in that orientation video that Dale (Jeff Hiller) watches, we learn that past inhabitants offered up human sacrifices to satisfy whatever entity or creature is kept confined in an underground bunker. That video feels similar to the ones we saw on Lost, from the Dharma Initiative — in a good way. How challenging is it, with that video, to find the balance between answering some island mysteries and leaving some unanswered?
Initially, I wasn't planning to give that much information, honestly. But I'm so glad I did. And I think it was originally going to land on more of a cliffhanger. I think it was Apple that encouraged us to give and reveal more. And, I have to be honest, I am so glad they did, because I do not want this show to feel like a show that's just a "mystery box." It has mysteries in it, obviously, but I don't want it to feel like a show you have to watch just to get answers to those mysteries in the next episode. That's one of the things I love about Pluribus — I love watching that show, because each episode is such a lovely story, where explaining or answering the "big questions" is secondary to the characters and telling a satisfying story with them. But I am glad we went with more, because I would rather give too much information than too little now.
Also, Jeff Hiller's character, Dale, was originally supposed to die earlier in the season.
What?! Gasp.
Jeff Hiller as Dale
I know. I originally had a character named Dale that was really only in there to die in a very big way. I called Jeff — he’s an old comedy friend of mine from our 20s — and said, "Listen, I have a part. It's not as big of a part as you deserve, and you're going to die. Do you want to do it?" And he was like, "Yeah, why not?" I just love him. He's so great and so funny. So, I ended up rewriting the show to have more and more for him to do. He's just the best.
I assume we will see more of him in the second season?
More of him than ever, absolutely.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
Widow's Bay is now streaming on Apple TV.
