Is Ruth really childless? This hidden Widow’s Bay detail changes *everything*

*Warning: Spoilers ahead for Widow’s Bay episode nine, ‘Emergency Shelter’*

Widow’s Bay episode nine is here, and with it the revelation that the island’s curse didn’t die with Richard Warren (Hamish Linklater) – but it might not die with Ruth (K Callan), either. 

Last week’s episode proved that the curse hadn’t left, despite the fact that Tom (Matthew Rhys) and the gang managed to kill Warren by taking him past the island’s threshold. 

That’s because contrary to popular belief, his daughter Frances managed to escape the boat. Though much of their bloodline died, one daughter made it through to the present day: Tom’s elderly assistant Ruth Livingston.

Given the storm is beginning to engulf the island, Tom, Wyck (Stephen Root), and Patricia (Kate O’Flynn) are left with an impossible decision: Kill Ruth and save the rest of the island’s residents or spare her and deal with the wretched consequences. 

Patricia doesn’t even want to entertain the idea of killing the woman who “bakes them birthday cakes”, but Tom solemnly says, “There are hundreds of lives at stake.” Wyck reluctantly agrees with Tom, saying if it has to be done, they’d need to make it quick and painless. 

They’re interrupted at the end of Widow’s Bay episode nine by a call from Mitch, who says it’s “all going” – it’s unclear whether he means the power, consequences of the storm, or something else entirely. 

Before he can find out, Mitch hangs up and the trio continue their argument. Wyck says it’s been “300 years of hell” at the island and that he’ll kill Ruth right now to finally end it all. But Tom being the mayor takes his duties very seriously, and he heads out into the storm. 

The episode ends there, meaning we’ll have to wait to find out if Tom can really go through with it. Either way, it seems they’re heading into the finale with the belief that Ruth is the last remaining descendant.

But is it true?

Not only do many fans (myself included) believe Ruth may have had a child no one knows about, but they could be linked to Tom’s late wife Lauren (Meredith Casey), and therefore their son Evan (Kingston Rumi Southwick). 

And there may have been a subtle clue to this in episode eight. In one of Lauren’s letters to Evan, she wrote, “Everyone has two mothers. A mother and a secret mother.”

Now, it’s easy to brush this off as ramblings – Evan reads out a bunch of nonsensical letters that were written after Lauren’s mental state deteriorated – but this does seem oddly relevant. 

As said by one Redditor, “It really stuck with me because, of all the weird things that seem to be in those letters, this strikes me like an oddly precise thing to say.

“Could it be that Ruth is in reality, Evan’s grandmother, which is why she is still very close to Tom, keeping Evan safe whenever she can, etc? Seems to me a very plausible possibility!”

Another wrote, “I’m calling it now, Tom will sit down with Ruth, make tea, planning to kill her and they’ll get to talking. 

“He’ll say something about how she never had children to psych himself up, and she’ll open up about getting pregnant and giving away the baby. But she kept track of her, and her daughter, his wife.”

A third added, “I am certain that it’s going to turn out that Ruth ‘had a summer where she went to go live with an aunt’ and the aunt ended up with a new baby or that she somehow hid the pregnancy and did a fire station drop off or similar. 

“She’s going to confess when she’s about to be murdered. That baby is going to end up being Tom’s wife.”

But they updated their comment with the fact that the math doesn’t quite add up, as episode nine reveals Ruth was Ms. Widow’s Bay in 1959 (fun fact: her pageant picture is up on the wall in the museum in episode one).

“I think there could be yet another generation if the wife would have been around Matthew Rhys’s age now (51),” they wrote. 

Or, Ruth may have had Lauren when she was in her 40s. And there may even be a clue about this. 

“Yes they make a point of showing Patricia’s surprise when she realises Beshir’s wife who is in her 40s is pregnant,” wrote one. “I wonder if that’s foreshadowing for Ruth having a secret baby out of wedlock in her 40s, as Lauren’s secret mother.”

If this is the case, Tom is going to have an impossible dilemma on his hands: Kill his own son who he’s doing all of this for, or just accept the island curse and the fact that Evan can’t leave Widow’s Bay ever again. 

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Featured images credit: Apple TV