{"id":33396,"date":"2026-06-13T14:31:02","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T14:31:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/13\/in-widows-bay-history-is-hard-to-kill\/"},"modified":"2026-06-13T14:31:02","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T14:31:02","slug":"in-widows-bay-history-is-hard-to-kill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/13\/in-widows-bay-history-is-hard-to-kill\/","title":{"rendered":"In \u2018Widow\u2019s Bay,\u2019 History Is Hard to Kill"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-0\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-140ip4z e1me5xab0\">We don\u2019t know what state the New England island community of Widow\u2019s Bay is in, except for the state of terror. It is plagued by unnatural fog and storms, serial killings, a history of cannibalism and violence, the occasional revenant and a generations-old curse visited upon it by a demonic pact.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-140ip4z e1me5xab0\">And it is the most delightful place I have visited this year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-140ip4z e1me5xab0\">\u201cWidow\u2019s Bay,\u201d approaching the end of its first season on Apple TV, works for many of the reasons good TV works. It is impeccably cast with character actors. If you told me that Jeff Hiller, Toby Huss and Stephen Root were all in the same series yet none gave its greatest supporting performance, I would not have believed you \u2014 but it\u2019s true, and the honor goes to Kate O\u2019Flynn as the neurotic and formidable mayoral aide Patricia Moyer.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-140ip4z e1me5xab0\">Its tone is perfectly executed. The series is that tricky chimera, a horror-comedy, and it is equally \u2014 and more impressive, simultaneously \u2014 effective at both. A laugh and a scare are different outcomes of the same achievement, a good surprise, and \u201cWidow\u2019s Bay\u201d has more of those than there are fish in the sea.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-140ip4z e1me5xab0\">Give me all that, and I\u2019m ready to call this the most fun new show of the year to date. What elevates it to the <em class=\"css-2fg4z9 e1aqkag00\">best<\/em> new show is how it reinvents a well-worn TV trope \u2014 the cozy backwater full of adorable kooks \u2014 and how it turns the town\u2019s history into its biggest monster.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-1\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-140ip4z e1me5xab0\">You\u2019ve visited this kind of idiosyncratic hamlet before, be it Schitt\u2019s Creek (in the series of the same name) or Stars Hollow (in \u201cGilmore Girls\u201d) or Pawnee (in \u201cParks and Recreation,\u201d on which the \u201cWidow\u2019s Bay\u201d creator, Katie Dippold, served as writer). In some series, like <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/01\/02\/arts\/television\/josh-charles-best-medicine.html\" title=\"\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u201cBest Medicine,\u201d<\/a> this kind of setting promises a light diversion; in others, like \u201cTwin Peaks,\u201d it promises dark secrets.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-140ip4z e1me5xab0\">\u201cWidow\u2019s Bay\u201d delivers both. It begins as Mayor Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys, in his best role since \u201cThe Americans\u201d) is orchestrating a publicity campaign to turn the languishing town into the next Martha\u2019s Vineyard. The locals are dubious of bringing in tourists. The loudest objector is Wyck Crawford (Root), a briny and crotchety mariner who warns that the island\u2019s deadly spirits are showing signs of reawakening.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-140ip4z e1me5xab0\">The mayor pushes ahead. Change may be scary, he argues, but without it, Widow\u2019s Bay is doomed to decline. (The population is sustained mainly by the belief that it is deadly for anyone born on the island to leave it.) He laughs off the horror stories as so many fish tales \u2014 until a stay in the local haunted inn and a run-in with a sharp-clawed sea hag convince him otherwise.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-140ip4z e1me5xab0\">In its heightened way, \u201cWidow\u2019s Bay\u201d is a familiar small-town story of change versus stagnation. Tom, born off-island but anchored there by his job and his troublesome teenage son (Kingston Rumi Southwick), makes the perfect, overwhelmed focal character. He is both insider and outsider; he has responsibility but lacks respect.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-140ip4z e1me5xab0\">There are blessedly no overt politics in the series. (Tom won his thankless office unopposed.) But the conflicts are echoed in communities everywhere. Do newcomers owe deference to long-timers, or do the preservationists need to step aside and let the future roll in? How do we deal with the buried secrets of our ancestors?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-2\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-140ip4z e1me5xab0\">It is certainly a wryly timed gift for America\u2019s 250th birthday, as the country wrestles with how to celebrate its own history and which parts to ignore.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-140ip4z e1me5xab0\">At the root of \u201cWidow\u2019s Bay\u201d is the residents\u2019 relation to their quaint, oppressive home. For some \u2014 like Patricia, still bullied in middle age by the mean girls she went to high school with \u2014 the town can be suffocating even before the masked murderers start to re-enter the picture.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-3\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-140ip4z e1me5xab0\">For others, it\u2019s simply home sweet hell. In the first episode, the local historian (Nancy Lenehan) chipperly tells a visiting travel writer about a colonial-era witch hunt: \u201cGreat source of pride. We caught \u2019em. We burned \u2019em!\u201d (This also recalls \u201cParks,\u201d in which municipal history murals depicted various colorful atrocities.)<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-140ip4z e1me5xab0\">Showrunners often like to say that the setting is a character. It\u2019s not \u2014 the characters are characters \u2014 but a well-imagined setting creates character. In \u201cWidow\u2019s Bay,\u201d the island\u2019s isolation has made it a human Gal\u00e1pagos, evolving odd creatures with peculiar ways.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-140ip4z e1me5xab0\">It\u2019s as if \u201cWidow\u2019s Bay\u201d were a period piece that happened to take place now. The setting is roughly the present, but people place calls on corded landlines, thanks to the lack of Wi-Fi and cell reception. They hang out at the old restaurant, and guests stay at the old hotel, and everything looks like you would expect it did in 1980. (This includes the title typeface, which appears lifted from a mildewy paperback you\u2019d find in your Airbnb.) The pumps at a gas station look as if they filled up Edsels; the installation of an espresso machine in a local shop is like the arrival of a spacecraft.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-4\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-140ip4z e1me5xab0\">We\u2019re trained to believe this sort of preserved antiquity is charming. It is! But in this horror-comedy, it\u2019s also <em class=\"css-2fg4z9 e1aqkag00\">wrong<\/em> \u2014 the byproduct of a deal with the devil struck by the island\u2019s imperious colonial-era \u201cLord Protector,\u201d Richard Warren (Hamish Linklater), to save the settlement from starvation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-140ip4z e1me5xab0\">The troubles of history, on \u201cWidow\u2019s Bay,\u201d often boil down to the legacy of patriarchs. Tom deals with a personal version of this, having spent summers on the island with his alcoholic father, who \u201cnever should have had a kid.\u201d (He confesses this in a surreal interlude at the haunted hotel, where he comes across a hilariously Freudian board game called \u201cDaddy\u2019s Home.\u201d) Now, he\u2019s trying to break the cycle with his own son, with mixed and awkward results.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-140ip4z e1me5xab0\">Eventually, we meet the island\u2019s prodigal dad, Warren, who has been entombed undying in his casket since the 1700s, a side effect of his eldritch bargain. Decrepit and weary, he agrees to let Tom and Wyck take him by boat outside the island\u2019s enchanted radius, in the belief that he will die and take the curse with him.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-140ip4z e1me5xab0\">Naturally, he changes his mind en route, and Tom has to subdue him \u2014 literally battling the father figure \u2014 to complete the mission. As it happens, Warren\u2019s return to dust is not enough to lift the enchantment. By the next episode, Patricia is confronting a seemingly resurrected murderer from her teen years, who requires gunshots and gasoline to dispatch.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-140ip4z e1me5xab0\">This is life in Widow\u2019s Bay, where your history keeps coming at you even after you\u2019ve killed it with magic, fire and buckshot. Maybe at some point the spirits will be dispelled and the island will finally be made safe for the mainlanders, with our cellphones and money and Instagram poses. What new curses will we bring in our luggage?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We don\u2019t know what state the New England island community of Widow\u2019s Bay is in, except for the state of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33397,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_animmysite_disable_animation":false,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/06\/13\/multimedia\/widows-gcfj\/widows-gcfj-facebookJumbo-v2.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[214],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-usa-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33396\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}