The vaguest of spoilers follow, if you want to go into Widow’s Bay completely unaware of what to expect.
It’s getting harder to tell whether or not a surprise spike in online fandom reflects a real-world interest in something. At least for movies and video games, those have reliable data to back up the veracity of an influx of posts and memes. Obsession’s box office numbers and Mina the Hollower’s sales make these undeniable hits that have officially broken social media containment. TV is murkier. Streamers are already shadowy about sharing watch metrics, and public Nielsen data is on about a month delay. There’s Google Trends, I guess. But even among the social media bots and clips, something still feels legit when it comes to the sudden fervor around Apple TV’s new show Widow’s Bay.
If you still aren’t familiar with the series, it’s understandable — Apple TV is infamously not great at marketing its new shows. Widow’s Bay, which started airing its weekly episodes on April 29, is a horror comedy from Parks and Rec writer Kate Dippold and stars Matthew Rhys as Tom Loftis, the hapless mayor of the titular New England island who is dead set on making it the next Martha’s Vineyard… despite the fact that it may or may not be deeply haunted. (And as the weeks go on: Confirmed, that place is super haunted.) Though Dippold has been open about the Stephen King influence, Widow’s Bay is a completely independent IP.
I’ve personally received (and seen in the online chatter) elevator pitches like “it’s like if the mayor of Jaws was in charge of a haunted island” and “Parks and Rec but spooky.” Both and neither of these things are perfectly apt for Widow’s Bay’s blend of its two genres; it’s legitimately scary and laugh-out-loud funny in a way that is unlike any recent show, which is part of what makes it so special.
Patricia (Kate O’Flynn) in Widow’s Bay. We love her! | Credit: Apple TV
I noticed the first spike after the fourth episode, “Beach Reads,” aired, where the born-and-raised islander and social pariah Patricia (the excellent Kate O’Flynn) accidentally dabbles in witchcraft with the help of an ominous book about how to throw a really good party. (For what it’s worth, “Beach Reads” was the episode where Widow’s Bay totally clicked for me.) The next spike was after the two-episode drop on May 27, “Our History” and “Seasickness,” which brought in Hamish Linklater (Midnight Mass) and Betty Gilpin (GLOW) in flashbacks as the terrifying founder of Widow’s Bay and his young wife. (“I am but four and ten years almost,” Gilpin says in a line that made the rounds.) Linklater’s comment to Decider about taking the role — “I don’t want to see anybody else run a little haunted island better than me” — also went medium viral. Thirdly, a 2-second GIF of Rhys yeeting himself off a bench wearing a bright orange life jacket from “Seasickness” had people celebrating his performance in that moment to the point where folks have (re-)discovered The Americans and were defending HBO’s Perry Mason reboot as underrated.
Look, I know I’ve algorithmically Widow’s Bay-pilled my own feeds. But these posts have often come from real people, critics and diehard film/TV posters who aren’t getting paid to engagement farm. Guillermo del Toro and Katya have been posting about their love for the series, which certainly makes it a little bit easier to reject the idea that the hype is only a dystopian flood-the-zone social media campaign. “#WidowsBay may very well be the best streaming series in a long time… and hands down one of the most mesmerizing acts of narrative prestidigitation in Horror,” del Toro wrote on X.
The thing that made it most real to me also represents the most accurate reflection of the tone of Widow’s Bay: A 10-year-old tweet from Dippold about going to a Halloween party dressed as the Babadook was resurfaced.
Screenshot from X.com
“It’s amazing you can have one of the best tweets ever and then 10 years later create a really good show,” TV writer Skyler Higley quote-tweeted.
Personally, I find the hype credible. It’s a good show! It deserves to have an audience excited about the fun performances and mysterious lore in the same way as Severance, another original Apple TV series that caught a fandom during Season 2. It’s not too late to hop on the bandwagon early this time: The season finale of Widow’s Bay comes out on June 17.
Leanne Butkovic (she/they) is an Editorial Project Manager at IGN, where they’ve also written about TV, movies, and games.
