Ahead of the highly, highly. highly anticipated (at least here at FTN HQ) finale of Widow’s Bay season one – seriously, if you’re not watching this, you need to get on that asap – Apple TV has given us the very awesome news that it’s been renewed for a second season!
Sitting as the absolutely best new show of the year, Widow’s Bay merges comedy and horror is a way so sublime, nothing comes to mind that comes close, well, maybe Ghostbusters, but it has a very different feel, and the show now sits alongside Severance, Slow Horses and Silo, making Apple TV the clear contender for best streamer by a country mile.
As well as renewing the series, creator, executive producer and showrunner Katie Dippold has signed a multi-year overall deal with Apple TV – Dippold has written for Parks and Rec, Heat and was also the co-writer on Ghostbusters: Answer the Call and while that movie was far from a hit, it certainly seems to have laid the foundation for where Dippold went with Widow’s Bay, so far play.
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Matt Cherniss, head of programming for Apple TV, said: “From the moment audiences arrived in ‘Widow’s Bay,’ they’ve been hooked on every eerie mystery, unexpected laughs, and cursed secret… It’s become one of those shows everyone’s talking about, and we’re thrilled to see audiences continue to embrace it. We can’t wait to return for another season.”
Dippold partially traces her interest in the supernatural back to a ghostly encounter she had at college, saying she awoke at college to see a “dusty old professor” looking at her sleeping boyfriend before disappearing when Dippold looked at it, before going back to sleep. This feels like a scene from Widow’s Bay which has the scare of the ghost and then the surreal but funny, just going back to sleep, in fact, it brings to mind the scene in Beetlejuice when the Maitland ghosts are trying to scare a sleeping Delia Deetz (Catherine O’Hara,) wailing and moaning in her room, before Deetz abruptly wakes up, looks at the ghosts and turns the TV off before falling right back to sleep.
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Speaking about Widow’s Bay, Dippold says: “The main goal for me was to never undercut the tension with a joke and to make sure the two are serving each other. We have a cast that is so great at playing the truth of the scene, so when they react, it’s very real, and it doesn’t take you out of it.”
Along with the college ghost experience, Dippold said she was obsessed with a haunted house in New Jersey where she grew up: “I’ve wanted to recapture that feeling ever since, where you don’t know if you’re going to scream or laugh.”
With the first season being the mystery of what is at the heart of the titular island, with (hopefully) some answers coming in the finale this coming week, what will season 2 look like? Seems Dippold has already been pondering this: “Season one is a lot about denial and repression and acceptance. Going forward would be about really living in it. What kind of leader can you be in these circumstances?”
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I’m already dreading the season ending in the coming days, so I’m praying to God that season 2 is closer than we think and that we’re not in a Severance situation, where there are years between seasons, but whatever the case, we will all be waiting for our return to that little island just off the coast of New England, with baited breath.
Thoughts? I know you have them and I wanna hear ’em all.
Watch the season 2 announcement:
In “Widow’s Bay” something lurks beneath the surface. Mayor Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) is desperate to revive his struggling community. There’s no wifi, spotty cellular reception, and he must contend with superstitious locals who believe their island is cursed.
He wants these people to respect him. They don’t. They think he is soft and cowardly. And he is. But Loftis is determined to build a better future for his teenage son and turn the island into a tourist destination.
Miraculously, he succeeds: tourists are finally coming. Unfortunately, the locals were right. After decades of calm, the old stories that seemed too ludicrous to be true start happening again.
Blending genuine horror with character-driven comedy, “Widow’s Bay” features an ensemble cast led by Rhys, Kate O’Flynn, Stephen Root, Kingston Rumi Southwick, Kevin Carroll and Dale Dickey. The supporting cast includes K Callan and Emmy Award-winning Jeff Hiller.
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Sources: The Cut, Variety,
Marc
Marc is a self-confessed nerd. Ever since seeing Star Wars for the first time around 1979 he’s been an unapologetic fan of the Wars and still believes, with Clone Wars and now Underworld, we are yet to see the best Star Wars. He’s a dad of two who now doesn’t have the time (or money) to collect the amount of toys, comics, movies and books he once did, much to the relief of his long-suffering wife. In the real world he’s a graphic designer. He started Following the Nerd because he was tired of searching a million sites every day for all the best news that he loves and decided to create one place where you can go to get the whole lot. Secretly he longs to be sitting in the cockpit of his YT-1300 Corellian Transport ship with his co-pilot Chewie, roaming the universe, waiting for his next big adventure, but feels just at home watching cartoons with his kids….
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