'Widow’s Bay' Episode 8 Recap & Ending Explained: Why Did The Boogeyman Return?

Last week, we got not 1 but 2 episodes of Widow’s Bay. In episode 6, we were taken to the 1700s to show us Sarah’s marriage to Richard. Sarah found out that Richard was “communing with the devil,” and hence was essentially immortal. Sarah tried her best to help Pastor Collins and his co-conspirators take down Richard. But it was actually Richard’s eldest son who came in clutch (to avenge his mother) and incapacitated Richard, which allowed him, his siblings, and Sarah to use the escape route that had been paved for them by Collins. Sarah managed to hit the open seas with Richard’s children, in the hopes of catching the merchant vessel that was supposed to take them to the mainland, while Collins and his friends buried Richard alive. In the present day, Wyck exhumed Richard’s body to access the pendant that supposedly had the heart of the island trapped in it, only to find Richard alive and not very well. 

After settling Richard down in his house (which had been turned into a museum), Wyck and Patricia called in Tom, who had just awoken after crashing out due to the mushroom-induced trip, to communicate with Richard. That’s when we learned that Richard had made a pact with the island (either its spirit or the demon that controls the island) where he had to sacrifice people to keep the horrors at bay. He was given eternal life so that he could carry out that task forever. Since things had gotten out of hand, Richard told Tom and Wyck to take him across the border, where the island’s curse supposedly ended; if he went beyond the island’s cursed reach, he’d die, and if he died, the curse would be lifted. Tom and Wyck carried out his request, and even though Richard tried to walk back on that self-sacrificial decision, they managed to kill him. Now, before dying, Richard had said that as long as someone from his bloodline existed, the curse would remain active. The closing scenes prominently featured Evan and a painting featuring one of the surviving children of Richard, thereby heavily insinuating that Evan belonged to Richard’s bloodline, which meant that the curse hadn’t been lifted. What happened next? Let’s find out.

Spoiler Alert

The Boogeyman Is Back

Episode 8 of Widow’s Bay opens with Tom, Wyck, and Patricia basking in the glory of what they think they have achieved (they are under the impression that killing Richard has lifted the curse on the island) while having their meal at the Salty Whale. Tom is so happy that the town is finally going to run smoothly that he prevents Wyck from paying the bill. Wyck appreciates the gesture and bids them farewell. A few minutes later, Tom leaves too. Since Patricia is in the mood to sit there for a while, he gives her the money so that she can pay the bill when she’s ready to leave. Later on, at night, we see Patricia return to her house to unpack her dinner and pair it with some red wine, only to find out that somebody has completely botched her order. Patricia calls up Driftwood Diner to leave a harsh complaint on their voicemail. Meanwhile, Wyck pays Gerrie a visit at the historical society building to give her the picture of her with him and Mark, and maybe confess about the incident that led to Mark’s death. But Gerrie’s husband interrupts the conversation, thereby prompting Wyck to leave. As he’s leaving, he notices that the case with the Boogeyman’s mask in it has been smashed, and the mask itself is gone. Gerrie’s husband assumes that the tourist kids might have stolen it, but given how Wyck is paranoid, he goes straight to the Boogeyman’s house to see if something fishy is going on. 

A chill runs down Wyck’s spine as he notices that the door of the house has been shattered from the inside, which means that the Boogeyman is on the prowl (and he’s the one who stole the mask). Going back to Patricia, while winding down for the night, she hears the alarm on her bus-library going off. She goes to inspect it, and while exiting the house, she makes sure that she closes the front door behind her. She switches off the alarm and makes her way back into the house, but she fails to notice that the front door is open. She just assumes she might have left it open; so, she shuts it and goes to her bedroom. That’s when she feels a presence in her house. She slowly goes downstairs, takes her taser (which doesn’t have a lot of juice), and exits through the front door. She patiently waits to see if someone follows her outside. Fortunately or unfortunately, her worst nightmare becomes a reality, as the Boogeyman (who looks like a cross between Michael Myers from Halloween and Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th) starts chasing her with the intention of murdering her. Patricia bolts and knocks on every door along the way, but nobody responds to her cries for help (probably because they are all asleep). Wyck arrives at Patricia’s house and, of course, he finds no one in there, because Patricia and the Boogeyman are partaking in a murderous marathon across Widow’s Bay.

The Boogeyman Is Dead

Eventually, Patricia comes across Kris’ house, and she thinks she’s lucky because the lights are on in there (which means they are awake). However, when she barges into Kris’ house, interrupting Kris and her friends’ cardplaying session, she realizes that Kris is in no mood to help her out. Moreover, Kris is interested in exposing some of Patricia’s attention-seeking methods. Now, Patricia admits that she did lie all those years ago to get some attention, but she assures Kris and her friends that, currently, the threat of the Boogeyman is real and he is coming. Kris keeps insulting Patricia, which prompts her to tase Kris, because that’s the only way she’s gonna shut up. Patricia exits Kris’ house and notices that the Boogeyman is in fact on the second floor. Instead of killing Kris or her friends, the Boogeyman leaps out of the window and resumes his pursuit. This goes to show that the Boogeyman isn’t interested in random people; he has set his sights on Patricia and he won’t stop until he gets her. I guess he is aware of the fact that Patricia has tried to gain some fame by claiming she survived his attack. So, he wants to make it clear that nobody escapes his clutches unless he wants them to. As the Boogeyman is about to stab Patricia to death, someone runs him over with their truck (I think it’s Wyck). Both the Boogeyman and Patricia are knocked out. 

When Patricia regains consciousness, she sees one paramedic taking care of her, and another looking after the Boogeyman. Patricia urges them to kill the Boogeyman, but the Boogeyman kills the paramedic trying to help him and then starts going after Patricia again. Patricia tells the surviving paramedic to run before going on the run herself. Patricia gets to the convenience store, which doubles as a gas station. Bechir is already there to buy some stuff before he goes home. Patricia buys some oil and uses it to light (the barely-functioning taser serving as the firestarter) the Boogeyman on fire. Bechir and the convenience store owner are shocked at this sight, and they rush out with a shotgun and a fire extinguisher respectively. After the fire is doused by the convenience store guy, the Boogeyman chucks him into the forest and then disarms Bechir. He slashes Bechir’s stomach, and as he’s about to go for the kill, Patricia picks up the shotgun and incapacitates him. After that, Patricia keeps the gun pointed at the Boogeyman’s head until he’s cremated and turned to ash; all horror genre final girls should take notes on how to tackle their killer from Patricia. With that out of the way, she goes to the hospital, where she runs into that paramedic and Wyck. They don’t exchange any words; just nods of appreciation that they have made it through this ordeal in one piece. Patricia goes to Bechir’s room and spots Bechir’s wife, who is pregnant. As Bechir’s wife goes to the cafeteria, Patricia advises Bechir to not have the child on the island, because if they do, that child will be tethered to the curse. This shows that Patricia already knows that the curse is very much still active, and it’s not gonna stop ruining lives until there are no survivors. But if Patricia can survive the Boogeyman (for real this time), I’m sure she’ll devise a way to deal with all the other horrors that the island is gonna conjure.

Evan Confronts Tom About Lauren’s Photos

Tom goes to the office in high spirits, prints two tickets for a Boston Red Sox game, because he clearly thinks that he can travel to the mainland and watch baseball with Evan. Ruth arrives, listing all the calls that have come in in the past 2 days, and Tom assures her that everything’s gonna be just fine. After a good day’s work, Tom returns home to give those tickets to Evan, only to find Evan sitting in the living room with Tom’s box of secrets. By the way, the manner in which Evan calls Tom by his name, instead of calling him “dad,” has kinda convinced me that the internet is right about Evan not being Tom’s biological son. Yeah, fans have noticed that while both Tom and Lauren are both very White, Evan seems to have some Middle-Eastern genes. Couple that with Tom telling Evan about his difficult romance with Lauren, and the fact that Lauren was pregnant before marrying Tom, and you can kinda see what has led people to theorize that Tom isn’t actually Evan’s father. That said, it’s still just a theory. Going back to the plot, Evan confronts Tom about the letters and pictures that prove that Lauren didn’t die during childbirth. Tom immediately assumes that Evan went to the basement. Evan wonders why he thought that but since Tom doesn’t answer that question, and Evan focuses on the box, the basement comment goes unaddressed. Is Tom hiding something other than that box? Is there a sacrificial chamber, much like the one underneath the Salty Whale? I suppose we have to wait a few more weeks (or maybe until the next season arrives) to find out. 

Anyway, Evan questions Tom about the post-childbirth pictures where Lauren is clearly alive. Tom says that the reason he claimed that Lauren had died at childbirth was because she technically did. She suffered a preeclampsia-induced stroke which changed her behavior so dramatically that she wasn’t the “old” Lauren anymore. She became so dangerous that Tom admitted her into a care-home for the mentally ill (located on the island), where she suffered a brain aneurysm and passed away. Since Evan is young and hurting, he thinks this is a great opportunity to punish Tom for keeping all this info from him, and he starts reading Lauren’s letters (which actually prove that Tom was right about Lauren being a threat after giving birth to Evan). Lauren’s words show that her mind was fractured, and she thought that there were 2 versions of herself. If you wanna take those words literally, you can say that this is an Us-like situation, where Lauren had become aware of her evil clone-twin who lived on the island. But, after pulling out some old pictures of Lauren, Tom says that that statement is merely a metaphor for her unstable mind. On the outside, she was still Lauren, but on the inside, she was something else. Now, while everyone, including Evan, can choose to remember the bad phase of Lauren’s life or the good parts of her journey, Tom ignores it all, because even a tiny piece of memory about the time he had spent with her hurts him deeply. 

Wyck Informs Tom The Curse Is Still Active

Tom starts to realize that maybe he should have shared his feelings about Lauren with Evan a long time ago as it would have not only eased his burden, but it would also have given Evan the closure that he deserved. Speaking of closure, Evan wants to know why they can’t leave the island. Since Tom believes that the curse is a thing of the past, he reveals the Red Sox tickets and says that they are going to the mainland to watch the game. He doesn’t explain the curse, how it prevents people born on the island from leaving, or anything that has happened in the past 48 hours; he doesn’t need to, because Evan is too overwhelmed by this revelation to care about why he hasn’t been allowed to leave the island ever since he was born. While having dinner and watching a game, Tom gets a little too optimistic and tells Evan that, after or before watching the Red Sox game, they should scout for colleges so that Evan can permanently move to the mainland. These hopes and dreams are shattered as, in the ending of episode 8, Wyck arrives at Tom’s doorstep and tells him that the curse ain’t over, leaving Tom absolutely devastated (he knows how Evan is gonna react after he knows they aren’t going to the mainland. It’s evident that the thought that Richard’s descendant is still alive hasn’t crossed their minds. Maybe it will eventually, because that’s the biggest clue for why the curse hasn’t been deactivated. Even if they do, how long will it take them to figure out who this descendant is, and can Tom, Wyck, and Patricia kill them? 

After the manner in which the last episode concluded, I assumed that in this one, we’d get some more clues regarding whether or not Evan (and Lauren) is Richard’s blood relative, but we didn’t really get anything on that topic. I still believe that Evan is Richard’s descendant, and he needs to be killed to put a stop to the curse; Tom struggling to sacrifice his son for the betterment of the island will be the central conflict of the finale. However, given how this is the second episode with so much focus on Patricia, I have a sneaking suspicion that Evan is the red herring, and it’s she who is the descendant. Which leads me to my second theory: the monsters on the island are searching for this yet-to-be identified descendant so that they can kill them and free themselves of the island’s curse. I mean, much like the islanders, these creatures are trapped in a loop of killing and being killed. Therefore, maybe, they are the ones seeking freedom from the mortals? What are your thoughts on this theory? Also, do you believe that Lauren is dead for real? I don’t know why but I have a sneaking suspicion that Tom is still lying about Lauren and we are yet to get a better look at the trajectory of Lauren’s life. Don’t you? Let me know in the comments section below.

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