Start booking your stay at the Breakwater Inn: the writers’ room for Widow’s Bay Season 2 is officially open.
“The writers’ room started this week,” showrunner Katie Dippold announced at San Diego Comic-Con during Collider’s Showrunners on Showrunners panel alongside Greg Daniels (The Office, Parks and Recreation, King of the Hill) and Damon Lindelof (Lost, Watchmen, The Leftovers).
She added, “It’s a great room, and we’re gonna be in that writers’ room for the next 20 weeks,” with the goal being to start production in early 2027.
Dippold revealed that she knew about the Season 2 pickup “pretty close to when they announced it officially.” However, before Apple TV renewed the horror-comedy in June, she told the Comic-Con crowd, “I was still always hoping and thinking about it.”
Katie Dippold at the ‘Widow’s Bay’ premiereSteve Eichner/Variety
One of the major lessons she learned from working on Season 1 was that “the actors, as funny as they are, are playing it like a drama,” so her dialogue doesn’t need to be slapstick funny.
Someone known for comedy is Jeff Hiller, an Emmy winner for Somebody Somewhere and a nominee this year for Pluribus. Dippold revealed that his character, mayor’s office employee Dale, was supposed to be killed off last season, but they all loved Hiller’s performance so much that they edited the story to keep Dale alive.
Season 1 of Widow’s Bay received 19 Emmy nominations this year, the most for a freshman series, including two for Dippold as a producer and writer. It also earned six acting nods for Matthew Rhys, Kate O’Flynn, Dale Dickey, Stephen Root, Betty Gilpin, and Hamish Linklater.
As the showrunner, the buck stops with Dippold, but that doesn’t mean she tells the cast and crew every time something goes wrong. In fact, Rhys, who also serves as an executive producer, has told Dippold that he “doesn’t need to know” when there are major problems behind the scenes.
Matthew Rhys in Widow’s BayApple TV
Also top of mind going into Season 2 of Widow’s Bay is that the scripts don’t need to be so dense. “I spent a lot of time in Season 1 having to make cuts, so I’ll just be more mindful of that. I learned a lot about what you don’t need,” she explained.
Overall, the writers have “great senses of humor,” Dippold said, which helps set the show’s darkly comedic tone. “Someone will pitch something that’s very serious and dark, and it really makes it easier to pitch a joke on it. Because you have the grounded setup, it’s easier to find that unusual, surprising thing, so sometimes that pays off.”
The showrunner previously told Gold Derby, “We spent so much time in the writers’ room thinking about the history of this island. … In Widow’s Bay, there are some horrific events in the timeline that could be a throwaway joke, but that could come back to be its own terrifying episode.”
In other words, there may have already been some hints about Season 2 peppered in throughout the first season. That means it’s time for a re-watch!