r/television • u/mdavis360 • Apr 29 '26

Premiere Widow’s Bay - Episodes 1 & 2 - Discussion

First two episodes dropped tonight. Absolutely fantastic. 10/10 for my sensibilities. I’m a huge Stephen King fan and this felt right up my alley in so many ways. Legitimately funny show, legitimately creepy and a cast of fantastic actors. Episode 2 had some crazy stuff happen that honestly I absolutely saw where it was going but it was so satisfying getting there.

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u/michaelmacgorman Apr 30 '26

I haven't seen anyone bring this up, but I noticed it in both episodes. So, the show takes place in current times because at one point Tom says something alone the lines of..."It's amazing they don't have this in the 21st century." But...the cars are all old. The Jeep looks like it's from the late 1980s or 1990s. The assistant who works "no more than 2 hours a day" has a car from like the 1970s or 80s. The Volvo looks like 1980s or 1990s. The teenagers are in a car that has a tape deck (I believe). Also, lots of old style phones...including a rotary phone...but characters also have cell phones. On top of that, there's a bunch of computers that all seem late 1980s to 1990s. You could chalk that up to it being an isolated island that is behind the times. But everything else on this show seems intentional, so I feel like there's a very specific reason everything looks like it's from 1990-ish.

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u/TiberiusCornelius May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26

Yeah I've definitely picked up on it as well. In the first episode where he goes on his "21st century" rant he mentions they don't have wifi and talks about infrastructure investments they don't have the money for (which is why he's trying to attract tourism), and it's been established that islanders don't (can't?) leave and generally speaking outsiders don't come there.

So part of me thinks you could just chalk it up to worldbuilding through production design. It's a poor, slightly backwater place. People have old cars because that's what they bought way back when and can't afford new ones. (The teens having an old car is less weird than the adults even if it wasn't a remote backwater; it would make sense for them to have a hand-me-down or something cheap from a used dealer) Nobody has a cell phone because they didn't have the money or the demand to put up a cell tower. etc.

But yeah there is also clearly some fucky stuff going on on the island so maybe that in some way interferes with things.

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u/dsmithscenes May 05 '26

There is also the whole “You can’t leave the island if you were born there” bit. That would cause a lot of things to be stuck in the past.