Widow's Bay Creator Katie Dippold on the Aftermath of the Season 1 Finale

[Warning: The following contains spoilers for the Season 1 finale of Widow's Bay, "We Hope You Enjoyed Your Time!"]

Widow's Bay concludes its first season with a cascade of disasters. In his personal life, Mayor Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) has to confront the fallout of a momentous lie, after his son Evan (Kingston Rumi Southwick) discovers the truth about his mother. Tom always told him that she died in childbirth, but in reality she was institutionalized after a mental breakdown: another victim of the Widow's Bay curse, which prevents locals from leaving the island. 

As a deadly storm hits the island and the rest of the townspeople shelter in an underground bunker, Tom sets out to break the curse by killing his elderly secretary, Ruth (K Callan), the last living descendent of Widow's Bay founder Richard Warren. Ruth, however, turns out to have a secret of her own: She's Evan's maternal grandmother, meaning that Evan is now the last Warren descendant. This leaves Tom with a newly horrifying secret to hide, knowing that in order to lift the town's curse, his own son would have to die.

Already renewed for a second season, Widow's Bay has earned glowing reviews for its distinctive approach to horror-comedy, driven by the oddball personalities of its ensemble cast. Almost two decades ago, showrunner Katie Dippold used an early draft of the pilot to land a writing job on Parks and Recreation, and over the years her vision evolved into a darker style of comedy, with Atlanta director Hiro Murai helming several episodes this season. In its final form, Widow's Bay is atmospheric yet hilarious, poking fun at the frequently absurd ways that the locals handle living in their terrifying hometown.

Speaking to TV Guide in time for the season finale, Dippold shared some insight into the show's creative background, discussing the meaning behind its New England setting, the callbacks to classic horror movies like Jaws and Carrie, and how far Tom Loftis has come over the course of this season.

A lot of this season is about uncovering dark and forgotten history. For instance, in the last couple of episodes, Dale discovers those  ilm reels about human sacrifices, and it feels like that tradition should exist within the memory of older citizens. I'd love to hear more about that theme, the idea of the town hiding secrets from itself.
Katie Dippold: Yeah, I think there's the horror of learning what your founding father or founding fathers have done to build the country or land that you live in, and then there's also the horror of what's been going on since then. To realize that in recent history people have been continuing this system is another level of horror to me.

I have a friend from Massachusetts, and she keeps talking about how excellent this show is at portraying the New England setting. It's not just aesthetic, it's that idea of repressing history and repressing your trauma.
Dippold: That's really a big theme of this entire show. I mean, as someone that's always in therapy, it's a very tough process, and that's what we're watching Loftis go through. And the town itself is also hiding things. That's something I always felt walking around Massachusetts when we're scouting. 

A really interesting part of Tom's emotional journey in those last few episodes is, you know, he spends the whole season effectively fighting back against that idea of covering up the town's history, but he himself is covering up this dark secret from his own son.
Dippold: I think at first he's truly in denial. He knows deep down that his wife was probably right, and what happened to his wife… it's exactly what he had heard before, that you can't leave the island. I don't think he wants to believe it, but I also don't think he's going to take a risk and find out. So his plan is to suppress it, but also bring tourism to the island, so his son can still have a good life.

In the finale, that conversation with Ruth and Loftis is really summing up how I think about the entire show, and how you get through life. Like, I think life is a goddamn nightmare. There's a reason I'm a comedy writer, and I think for me growing up, some of my favorite moments are when something really bad has happened, and it's a really dark moment. If I'm in tears, but someone is able to make a joke out of the situation, going from feeling bad or sad to laughter is something I've always really cherished. So I wanted to kind of try that on the screen. 

One of the amazing qualities of this show is how the horror and the comedy are both so rooted in character. I'd love to hear more about how you developed this cast of fallible and self-absorbed and unheroic heroes who are so interesting to watch.
Dippold: It was such a long trial and error, and by long I mean like twenty years, because this started at first as my Parks and Rec spec that got me hired there. But it was different. It was much more comedic.

I always start from a place of what's fun to surround Loftis with. Who are these people that he has to deal with? Thinking about Wyck [Stephen Root's Wyck Crawford], Wyck is a thorn at his side, someone that gets people riled up saying, "This guy doesn't know anything about our history, he's not fit for leadership, he's a coward." Loftis has a chip on his shoulder about that, because of his own father issues.

I would just keep thinking along those lines. If this is a man dealing with very intense situations and just trying to survive, putting someone like [Dale Dickey's] Rosemary that just has her cigarette and her Diet Coke, that's just constantly slowing him down or telling him stories he doesn't want to hear. Or having an assistant like Ruth that goes home to take naps, but he feels like he can't complain because she's an older woman then he seems like he's ageist. But also you want people that aren't just in his way, like [Kate O'Flynn's] Patricia giving him someone that he could actually talk to and vent to. She's kind of his right-hand woman.

I think they have a kind of codependent platonic relationship, where if she's someone that doesn't feel seen and thinks no one cares about, I think she likes being next to the mayor and having his ear. She's someone that he can rant about the locals with, and she's always willing to pull up a chair and listen, so it's a very fun dynamic. And I think Matthew Rhys and Kate O'Flynn are just so funny together.

She puts this amazing spin on the slasher movie episode, Episode 8. That was something I'd be curious to hear about, because a lot of this show is playing with these horror tropes and pastiches. You know, Tom is a kind of protagonist version of the mayor from Jaws. What kind of movies were you drawing from, and how did that play into the creative process?
Dippold: I mean, that's like a riff on all slasher movies, but John Carpenter is my hero. I just love all of his movies. And this isn't a movie, but we reference Stephen King all the time. We talk about Carrie a lot. It's hard to not think about The Shining or "1408" when you're thinking about [haunted hotel episode] 102. Really, there's so many movies, I wish I could list them all, but I would say the main ones we talked about would be Jaws, Halloween, and Stephen King.

To pivot to some questions about world building, I think there's going to be more and more fan theories about what's going on in the island, and one topic I was intrigued by is time. Several points in this season, time seems to move at different speeds for different locations. Like the haunted bedroom at the hotel, and there's an old man being described as 37 years old. Can you share any thoughts on that?
Dippold: I should actually clear that up. I've seen those theories online, and it's delightful, but actually, the age of Shep in the hospital was just a joke on how terrible that hospital doctor is. Dr. Morgan does not run a tight ship. It was a standalone joke, they got it wrong in his medical file. And the moment in the captain's suite, that's just very specific to the haunt of that inn.

The other world-building thing I'm intrigued by is, viewers might interpret the island as this kind of organism. It reminds me a bit of Stephen King's IT. It's preying on people's fears, and you could potentially interpret the whole place, the tunnels, the fog, the storm, as a single entity. Is that accurate to say?
Dippold: I think the thing I could say right now is, I would point out what Richard Warren says to Loftis, when he says it knows that frightened men will do terrible things.

What we are indicating is that there's something that wants to terrorize people to do things. It indicates in the finale what it wants them to do, and there'll be long periods of rest, and it can go a really, really long time before it stirs again. But when it does, it's going to ring these bells, and it will terrorize you until you do what it wants.

The townsfolk of the island have created these kind of collective coping mechanisms, like the storm shelters, and the sacrifice thing. That feels like it's in opposition to the idea of Tom trying to put himself forward as this singular leader. Is that something you were thinking about in an allegorical way?
Dippold: This has been a very intense time in America, so I think you'll probably feel a lot of that in the show. I'm never trying to hit anything too hard on the head, but I feel like we're in a place where no one is really talking to each other, and I think he's being forced to talk to people he would usually rather not, because it's life and life or death right now. I don't know if that comes across, but that's something I thought about a lot.

It definitely comes across in his relationship with Wyck. This sort of white collar guy and this blue collar guy.
Dippold: Yes, yes. I love therapy, I love couples counseling, and in couples counseling there's no real winning. Like, you can't win a session. I do think about that a lot for him working with these people on this island, but the comedic goal is to make that as hard as possible. So he bites his tongue, he puts his chin up, he has to ask their opinions to survive.

That's where the fun comes in, where he has to ask their opinion. But then he gets stuck having to deal with Rosemary's chain smoking, or acid reflux, or she goes on tangents that he has no interest in hearing. So it's both. There's a message to it, but it's also comedic to me, like now that he's trying to do better, or now that he's trying to talk to these people, they're just making it as hard as possible for him.

I think Matthew is so great, you see everything in his eyes. He's trying to be composed and listen to these people, but you can just see in his eyes that he's thinking, "Just get the hell away from me."

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To talk about something more technical for a moment, I'm obsessed with the production design in this show, and I wanted to ask about the graphic design behind things like newspapers and posters. There are so many amazing visual punchlines, like the board games in Episode 2. Was that something you discussed a lot in the writers' room?
Dippold: Yes, this was a real collaboration. In the writer's room, we came up with the jokes for the games, that was one of the funnest times, that day of brainstorming board games. But then we have this production design team that is incredible. Steve Arnold, our main production designer, he's done all sorts of things like Midnight Mass, House of Cards, and he just builds these amazing sets that feel so lived in. He has a magical quality of aging things just the perfect amount. 

I didn't even notice at the time that the book Patricia has is by Lucy Fors, like Lucifer.
Dippold: The island is just doing its best. What I like about the book is when it's trying so hard to be a normal self-help book, but it can't. Something's off, you know? Like when it asks her to circle her least favorite parts on her body, the design of the body is weirdly specific in the genital area. It's like it's trying to be a normal self-help book, but it just can't help be really strange and off and uncanny.

The other side of that, the visual style of the show, is that it's so beautiful and eerie in Widow's Bay. That's something we don't always associate with the more comedic side of the horror genre. How did you collaborate with your directors to figure out how the town would look and feel on screen?
Dippold: My dream was Hiro Murai to direct this pilot. I think Atlanta is so cinematic, and I think he's so great at building a rich, layered, grounded world where you can still do absurd comedy in it.

We talked a lot about having this world feel not perfect, but quaint and lived in, and well-worn. A guy had once gone to this diner in Marblehead, Massachusetts, called the Driftwood, and it's perfect. Just plaid curtains, locals sitting at the counter talking about their day, and mismatched coffee mugs, and people smoking cigarettes outside. We talked a lot about that, like how to get that atmosphere and how to build a world that makes you want to go to it, but you feel like there's something lurking underneath the surface. So when any director came on, Hiro was able to talk to each of them on a technical front about the look of the show, and then I would talk to the directors about the script and how I wanted things to feel. 

I'm sure you can't say much due to spoilers, but now Tom is in a very different kind of emotional place — what kind of things might viewers expect to see in the future of the show?
Dippold: In the original pilot that got me the Parks job, he was already well aware that the island was haunted and we were living in that world. And then I decided to go further back with the show, watching him in denial and then going to acceptance. So I think Season 2 you could have a lot more fun.

I know that's not giving much, but I think there's a lot more to do. There's a lot of character stories we haven't been able to do that we would have loved to do this season. There's definitely more to discover on the lore of the island that we've talked about a great deal in the writer's room, that we didn't want to put in Season 1.

The Season 1 finale of Widow's Bay is now streaming on Apple TV.