The Wonderful Widow's Bay Season Finale Takes a Hammer to the Trolley Problem

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

No one likes the mayor of Widow's Bay, not even the mayor of Widow's Bay. This is the conflict that drives Apple TV's breakout comedy-horror (or is it horror-comedy?): Its protagonist openly, pathetically sucks. Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys, incredibly committed and egoless) is a loathsome little guy, more invested in saving his own reputation than doing anything for his constituents, whom he openly resents. Unfortunately for Loftis, the island's hauntings can no longer be dismissed as a mere coincidence, and he has to admit he crossed a line, and needs to cross one more. 

"We Hope You Enjoyed Your Time!," the season finale of Widow's Bay, is impressive in how ugly it gets. Written by series creator Katie Dippold and directed by Hiro Murai, the episode roots its kind of ridiculous apocalyptic stakes — a storm that will level the island unless someone is sacrificed, a ritual that Dale (Jeff Hiller) learns has been practiced throughout the island's history — in an awful personal crisis for Loftis. Convinced that the island's curse can be lifted for good if the last living descendant of its founder (Hamish Linklater) is killed, Loftis spends much of the episode in a gut-wrenching effort to kill that person: Ruth Livingston (K Callan), his elderly secretary. 

It's one last brave tonal shift for a show that has deftly executed many, going as far as to pivot from homage to parody in the same scene. Loftis' antagonistic relationship with his community and coworkers has driven a lot of the comedy of the show, letting the horror come from external sources: a sea hag, a serial killer, a ghost clown. In the final episode of Season 1, Loftis is the horror. He wants to take responsibility for bringing tourists to Widow's Bay and spare their lives from the supernatural storm, but his method for doing so results in the most horrific decision in the series. And to rationalize it, he turns to what's become the favored ethical dilemma of internet debate champs and otherwise lousy people: the Trolley Problem. 

You're probably familiar with the Trolley Problem, but Loftis explains it to Ruth, just in case: There's a trolley on a track bound to hit five helpless people, and you are in front of a switch that will divert it to hit one person. What do you do? 

Loftis explains the Trolley Problem to Ruth, asking if she would pull the lever. Ruth, very quickly, says she wouldn't, and Loftis immediately sputters, unable to comprehend why she would say that. Ruth patiently explains that Loftis' frustration illustrates the problem with the thought experiment: You're supposed to say you would pull the lever. The choice is an illusion. 

(Of course, you could say not doing anything is also a choice with moral implications, but as fans of The Good Place will know thanks to that show's episode on the Trolley Problem, there is no right answer to a thought experiment. There is just the point you want to make.)

"The runaway trolley is life. The lever is me. You can't control the bad things that happen in life, Tom," Ruth says. "But if I pull that lever it's a choice, and I'm choosing to kill that person, and I could never do that." 

By framing Widow's Bay's big climactic conflict around one of the most familiar ethical dilemmas in popular culture — the engine fueling basically every episode of The Walking Dead and all of The Road's many imitators — Dippold deftly stands in opposition to what's become a genre cliché. It's also a compelling case for why Widow's Bay is a story worth telling at this particular moment. 

The world is in danger of being reduced to a neverending series of Trolley Problems. The most powerful figures in the United States and beyond have been stoking unrest with this logic as justification, each tying a different marginalized group to the trolley tracks — be it immigrants, those who reside near planned data centers, or the trans community — so they can position themselves as the people tough enough to make the Hard Choices. This is a small way to look at the world, overrepresented by lazy thinkers lacking in imagination. 

In her rebuttal to Tom, Ruth turns to a Tennessee Williams quote, found in James Grissom's biography Follies of God: 

"The world is violent and mercurial — it will have its way with you. We are saved only by love — love for each other and the love that we pour into the art we feel compelled to share: being a parent; being a writer; being a painter; being a friend. We live in a perpetually burning building, and what we must save from it, all the time, is love."

What makes Ruth's rejection of the Trolley Problem so effective is how straightforward and principled her resistance is; Ruth simply cares about people too much to accept a framework that demands she care about them less. That Ruth is the person who delivers this casual takedown — Ruth, unassuming and overlooked by even the viewer, Ruth who Tom has decided is expendable, Ruth who has lived such a wonderful and dramatic life that we are only learning about now — how could she not be right? Pulling that lever is a mistake. 

Tom still makes that mistake. He commits to making it more than once. First drugging Ruth, then getting a pillow to smother her when he realizes that she's not taken a fatal dose, just a loopy one. It's circumstance that spares Tom, as the delirious Ruth suddenly starts talking about a bygone affair, which resulted in a daughter she gave up for adoption, who became Lauren Loftis (Meredith Casey), Tom's wife. Tom has to then sit in the layered horror of knowing that he nearly killed the wrong person, and that the right person is his son. It gets even more wrenching when Sheriff Clemmons (Kevin Carroll) shoots Ruth as Tom is attempting to get her to a hospital, because Clemmons' child is about to be born on the island, and he doesn't want his child to be cursed. 

This is all appalling, a grim climax to a show that has worked very hard to make even its most frightening moments fun. But there's no real levity here, just a series of cascading nightmares, driven by people who looked at life in all its uncontrollable wildness and decided they ought to have their hands on the lever. Luck, not virtue, bails them out repeatedly. Ruth survives being shot, and deep in the forgotten tunnels of the emergency shelter, Tom's son, Evan (Kingston Rumi Southwick), and his friends unwittingly lock a man in the island's sacrificial chamber, causing his disappearance (or death) and the storm to break. 

ALSO READ: Widow's Bay creator Katie Dippold on the aftermath of the season finale

Katie Dippold and her collaborators on Widow's Bay had no way of knowing their show would take off the way it did, so it's remarkable that it ends in such a ballsy place, with so many of its characters making terrible choices but only narrowly avoiding actions they can't ever take back. Thanks to a second season renewal, we know that this is not the end of the story, and if or how the series digs into the repercussions of "We Hope You Enjoyed Your Time!" will be something to watch for. But as it stands now, as the finale to an astonishingly clever, bold debut season of television? What a pointed and queasy place to leave us, uncertain of the truth at the heart of Widow's Bay and its supernatural secrets, but certain that the answers will never be found as long as we are willing to throw one another into the meat grinder. 

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