Widow’s Bay’s Latest Twist Puts Mayor Tom in an Impossible Situation

This article contains spoilers for Widow’s Bay episode 9, “Emergency Shelter”

The penultimate episode of Apple TV’s phenomenal new horror-comedy series Widow’s Bay starts by confirming what everyone suspected when they first saw the hotel’s painting of Sarah Westcott Warren’s frantic escape from the island with founder Richard Warren’s kids, only for the camera to be drawn to the bottom right-hand corner of the painting, where a young girl reaches out to be rescued. This curse? Yeah, it’s far from over. One of Warren’s kids definitely survived.

After Wyck (Stephen Root) and Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) dug him up from his grave in surprisingly good condition, Warren (Hamish Linklater) was forced into a final death at sea during episode 7, supposedly ending his pact with the island’s demonic force. Yet his demise did not end the horrors of Widow’s Bay, something that Patricia (Kate O’Flynn) found out when she became the ultimate final girl in the Boogeyman-centric “Your Baggage” last week.

Indeed, Frances Warren survived Sarah’s fateful trip. As Rosemary (Dale Dickey) exhaustively takes us through her geneaology with the best TV slideshow presentation since Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s “Hush”, the excitement and trepidation grows between the gathered trio of Tom, Wyck, and Patricia as they discover Frances only has one living descendant still on the island: Tom’s elderly assistant Ruth Livingston, who is home alone during the biblical storm forcing everyone else to shelter underground until it passes.

It’s a surprising twist that subverts the audience’s expectations (and popular fan theory) that Frances’ last known descendant might somehow be Tom’s son, Evan. After all, that would be the worst possible outcome for Tom, who has put Evan through a rollercoaster of emotions in recent episodes, promising to take him safely off the island for the first time in his life, only to reveal that his mother didn’t die in childbirth as he’d always insisted. But with the curse still lingering, safe passage for Evan and everyone else born in Widow’s Bay is unlikely, including Bechir’s forthcoming baby with his wife Chelle. That is, unless Tom does the unthinkable and kills Ruth for “the greater good.”

Tom is now in an impossible situation as he grapples with the classic trolley problem dilemma. Will he sacrifice one person (Ruth) tied to a track by intervening and pulling the lever on a runaway trolley that is on course to collide with and kill a number of people tied to the other track? Or will he allow the trolley to continue and let the chips fall where they may, knowing he probably could have stopped it all from happening by acting when he had the chance?

Tom enquires about Ruth’s health, wondering how much time she realistically has left, while Patricia is astonished that Tom can even try to justify killing Ruth, the sweet old lady who bakes them birthday cakes and babysits Evan. “There are hundreds of lives at stake,” Tom explains. “And one of them is my son.”

Wyck sides with Tom as Patricia grows increasingly infuriated with the notion of killing Ruth, suggesting that doing so would make Tom a murderer. “When she dies, it ends. She lived a good life,” Wyck reasons, assuring Patricia that he’d have ended his own life if he’d turned out to be Warren’s descendant.

As the episode concludes with Tom making his way into the storm to find Ruth, it seems he’s already made his decision. We’ll find out what happens next in the finale of Widow’s Bay, but it looks like there’s no going back for the island’s beleaguered mayor, who seems determined to rid its residents of Warren’s demonic pact, no matter the cost.

Will Tom kill Ruth? Are there more twists yet to come? Drop your Widow’s Bay finale predictions in the comments!

Widow’s Bay concludes on Apple TV on June 17.