‘Widow’s Bay’ Episodes 6 and 7 Reveal the Curse’s Darkest Secret, and That Final Shot Changes Everything

Apple TV’s breakout horror-comedy ‘Widow’s Bay’ just delivered its most ambitious double-bill yet, and the fallout is already shaking up the fan conversation. Episodes 6 and 7 arrived together in a special two-episode release on May 27, a treat that creator Katie Dippold and director Hiro Murai clearly designed to hit harder as a pair.

After weeks of creeping dread and supernatural intrigue in this fictional island off the coast of New England, the show finally handed viewers the origin story they had been waiting for, and it did not hold back. Here is everything that happened and what it all means going forward.

A 1702 Flashback Changes Everything in ‘Our History’

Episode 6 begins on September 16, 1702, with Sarah Westcott, played by Betty Gilpin, arriving by ship to marry Richard Warren, the founder of Widow’s Bay. The connection is immediate: this is the same Sarah whose diary entry Wyck had previously discovered in Reverend Bryce’s office. Sarah was in her forties and still unmarried, while Richard had recently lost his wife and found no one eligible on the island to become his second.

She immediately begins to notice that something is deeply wrong with the community she has just joined. There was a plague making people sick and enraging them to such an extent that they were murdering their loved ones, while Richard was getting high on mushrooms and allegedly communicating with the island itself via a pendant to get directions on how to deal with the issue.

Betty Gilpin, largely carrying the episode on her own, has drawn significant praise for the performance, which hands the reins entirely over to her in this dark flashback chapter that explains some of the town’s origins while still leaving plenty of mystery on the table.

The episode’s most brutal sequence arrives when a community member named Ezra confronts Richard about his leadership. Richard loses his cool and beats Ezra to death with a cane, while Sarah flees to bed and pretends to be asleep the whole time. The violence confirms what the audience has suspected: Richard is not a visionary, he is a monster who has made a pact with something ancient and terrible.

Richard Warren’s Devil’s Bargain, Explained

The mythology of ‘Widow’s Bay’ snaps into focus here with satisfying clarity. Richard Warren found black mushrooms in the frozen earth during Widow’s Bay’s first winter as a colony, when they were struggling to survive. What followed was a deal with something far beyond human comprehension. Richard claims the sacrifices keep the island alive, and according to him, the entity inside the pendant demands payment, with the threat that without that pact, everyone dies.

The black mushrooms clearly opened some doorway between Richard and whatever ancient force controls Widow’s Bay, with the island’s fog, the spreading violence among villagers, and the inability to leave all pointing toward something supernatural rather than simple madness. Whether Richard is a true believer in a doomed cause or simply a man who enjoyed the power the pact gave him remains the episode’s most interesting open question.

Sarah colluded with Pastor Collins to take Richard down, and Richard was ultimately buried alive after Collins and his committee bound his hands and surrounded him. At the very end of the episode, the narrative cuts back to the present day, where Wyck is in the process of digging him up, with Tom and Patricia joining him as they peer into Richard Warren’s open grave.

The Plan to End the Curse in ‘Seasickness’

Episode 7, titled “Seasickness,” picks up right where the coffin revelation left off, and it is very obvious why Apple TV decided to air it alongside the explanatory flashback chapter, since it works at once as a sequel to both the present-day and historical storylines. Critics have responded warmly, with the episode described as delivering hilarious comedy, some quietly chilling moments, fantastic writing, and superb performances, all while fleshing out the supernatural mystery.

Early on, the show has fun with the comical side of someone surviving hundreds of years. Matthew Rhys’s facial expressions alone are entertaining and demonstrate his incredulity, while Patricia’s constant interruptions add to the jokes since they happen for inane reasons but also provide jump scares.

Hamish Linklater is able to humanize Warren despite his monstrous appearance, and his emotional response upon seeing his children’s possessions is heartbreaking knowing how much time his character has lost.

Richard tells Tom, Patricia, and Wyck that the curse of Widow’s Bay will exist as long as his blood relatives are alive. He presumes he has no descendants, and therefore, if he dies, the curse will end.

In order to kill him, he must be taken to the sea past the forbidden point, past the range of the island’s hex, because that is when his aging will catch up to him. Wyck states the only way he will take his boat out into the sea is if Richard gets back into the coffin, and Richard agrees.

Is Evan a Descendant of Richard Warren?

The episode’s final moments are where ‘Widow’s Bay’ earns its reputation for slow-burn payoffs. In the final shot of the episode, a guest is being evicted from the hotel, and the camera focuses on a painting in the background that appears to depict a capsized boat, with a figure in the sea being rescued by someone out of shot.

This seems very much like the boat Sarah and the children escaped the island in, implying that the island did not claim all of them. One of the children, appearing to be the older boy who hit Richard with a log in the previous episode, survived, meaning that Richard’s bloodline endures and thus so does the curse. The bigger question is where that bloodline leads. While Richard is out with Tom and Wyck, Evan and Kelly snoop around Tom’s bedroom and break into his lockbox, hoping to find out what he has been lying about.

The final confrontation is quite suspenseful and exciting. On one hand, there is the struggle between Warren and Wyck and Loftis, while Warren’s cold feet is understandable as he reflects on his own mortality. The fact that he buries his thumbs into the skull of the bust rendered in Sarah’s likeness should be a pretty significant clue that he is not quite as altruistic as he claims.

With four episodes still remaining before the season one finale on June 17, the case for Tom being a Warren descendant is looking more compelling than ever. If you have your own theory about whether Evan carries Richard Warren’s blood, now is a very good time to share it.