Last week, in my recap of Widow’s Bay episode 9, I said I was surprised that the last descendant of Richard Warren was ole Ruth Livingston, played by Katherine Callan. I was anticipating it would be Evan, Tom’s son, with his late mother as a distant descendant of the Warren clan.
The show has more or less telegraphed a twist of that kind of caliber all season long; it’s just been a matter of how the show gets there. So I was quite shocked how Widow’s Bay took a quick left turn to put the spotlight on Ruth, who up to this point has been a pretty minor character to the point some of us (me, shamefully) might have forgotten who she was if Tom didn’t remind us she’s Evan’s occasional babysitter. But one week later and on the eve of the show’s finale, I might not be wrong at all.
Since “Emergency Shelter” premiered on Apple TV last weekend, a single fan theory has popped up across YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, and outlets like ScreenRant. Even Dustin Rowles over at Pajiba endorses it. The theory goes like this: Ruth Livingston is still not the last descendant of Richard Warren—only the last one that Rosemary was able to trace.
Instead, Ruth may have birthed a child out of wedlock. (How no one noticed her baby bump, or how she safely went into labor, isn’t really an important question here.) That child would be Lauren, Tom’s late wife who was born on Widow’s Bay, thus making the last living descendant Evan. That brings us neatly back to where I thought we would be all along: Tom must now face the possibility of killing his own son to not fulfill his dreams but to save the people of Widow’s Bay.
There’s evidence to support this theory. Rewinding back to episode 8, “Your Baggage,” Lauren’s handwritten letters to Evan allude to more than one maternal figure in Evan’s life. “Everyone has two mothers. A mother and a secret mother,” she wrote (and which Evan read aloud in the episode). Of course, the letter directly referred to Lauren’s illness, in which she wrote that she is “your secret mom, and I live in a secret house,” meaning the psychiatric hospital. (They might have still called it asylums in Lauren’s lifetime.) But it’s easy to see Lauren’s letter as a bit of foreshadowing to Ruth being Evan’s grandmother, or the “secret mother” in his life. After all, why was Tom so comfortable with making Ruth watch him all the time?
Here’s a less likely, far wackier theory that feels eerily right for Widow’s Bay: What if Ruth is Evan’s mother? I know, I know—gross. And I hear you, episode 5, “What to Expect on Your Trip” flashes back to Lauren’s delivery of Evan. Or did it? There’s been enough supernatural illusions and misdirections on the island to obscure even objective reality. (The episode “Beach Reads” comes to mind.) Could the island have somehow tricked Tom into thinking Evan was his and Lauren’s son, when in fact he’s Ruth’s son? That would be a shocking enough twist few of us could have seen coming, even if it barely makes any logical sense. Then again, what does in Widow’s Bay?
Ultimately, I’m choosing to go with Ruth as Evan’s grandmother. It’s tight, neat, and the show doesn’t have to bend so far backwards to explain any obvious holes. And it gets right to heart of the matter quicker. The point isn’t who has Warren blood in them. It’s about what Tom, our main character, is willing to pay for his dreams. If Tom is willing to kill Ruth, but not his own son, then what does that say about Tom? What does it say about Tom that he’s willing to cross the point of no return for someone that doesn’t “matter” to him, but he’s not willing to do the same when it’s his own kin?
You simply can’t choose like that. The trolley problem does not care about blood. You either kill for a supposed greater good or you do not. There is no picking and hem-hawwing based on who is rope-tied to the tracks. For Tom, he’ll have to decide exactly how much Widow’s Bay’s survival—and to a larger degree, his own personal ambitions—really mean to him if he’s willing to kill for it.
The show is still a comedy, by the way.
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