Black Widows
Audrey Webster (Theresa Saldana) is soon to be married, and just can't wait to leave her trailer park home in California and start her own life with her fiance Robert (Joe D'Angerio), against the wishes of her reclusive mother Mildred (Margaret O'Brien). When Aurdrey's wedding night comes around, she suddenly kills Robert and devours him from the inside, and what she finds especially troubling is that she didn't feel any shock or horror after the deed. Mildred, aiming to comfort her daughter, sits down to have an important conversation, where she reveals why she's so reclusive, why Audrey never met her father, and a dark secret about her family.
Tropes:
- Affably Evil: Mildred is a half-spider mutant who eats men alive, yet she's friendly with her daughter and genuinely finds nothing wrong with it.
- Babies Ever After: Audrey gives birth to a baby girl at the end of the episode, and the glimpse we get of the child indicates that its spider traits are more active than the human ones.
- The Bad Guy Wins: Though Mildred genuinely doesn't see anything wrong with what she does, she and Audrey end up eating the salesman, Robert, and Reverend Joy while getting off scot free.
- Berserk Button: Mildred hates killing, especially of spiders, making it a point to kill and eat the salesman when he crushes a spider crawling on his leg.
- Big Eater: Given that Mildred eats mens' innards for food, she's notably large and takes pride in it, suggesting that Audrey eat "the right kind of food" so she doesn't waste away. She also doesn't like the idea of Audrey marrying Robert because of how thin he is, yet despite this, Audrey eats him anyway, then complains that it feels like she ate a horse.
- Black Widow: It's the very title of the episode, and it also comes into play both physically (with Audrey and her mother turning into giant spiders) and figuratively (the pair eating the men they fall in love with).
- Call-Back: "Wheel of Fate", the game show from Season 1 episodes All a Clone by the Telephone and It All Comes Out in the Wash, can be heard on Mildred's TV set throughout the episode's first half.
- Cobweb Jungle: After finally transforming in full, Audrey covers her room in a giant spider web before ensnaring and eating Reverend Joy.
- Death Glare: Mildred shoots one to the salesman after he smacks a spider on his leg, after she explicitly told him not to. Seconds later, she eats him.
- Disposing of a Body: It's not known what happens to Robert's husk of a body after Mildred and Audrey get through with it, but she lies to Reverend Joy that Robert got caught in the undertow and drowned on his and Audrey's honeymoon.
- Does Not Like Men: Mildred thinks of men as food after they serve their purpose, stating to the salesman that she and the rest of the women in the family never have more than one at a time.
- Double-Meaning Title: The title represents both the species of spider which the Webster family's women can change into, and the fact that they kill any man they fall in love with.
- Establishing Character Moment: Audrey enters the trailer boasting how her wedding is coming soon, and after that, there's Mildred sprouting spider claws and eating the traveling salesman she was talking to after he kills a spider.
- The Family That Slays Together: The women of the Webster family can transform into giant spiders starting on their wedding night, whereupon they feed on their new husbands and any man they desire afterwards. Audrey is horrified at this legacy at first, but the ending indicates that she's accepting it.
- Fat Bitch: Mildred can be considered one, as she's plump from snacking on men's innards all the time, but she's notably proud of it and hopes that Audrey (who she's sweet and kind to) will be the same.
- Foreshadowing:
- Mildred's mention of letting the world come to her like a spider's meals, stated below.
- Reverend Joy is said to stop by Mildred's trailer every morning. He later appears at the end of the first and second acts to check on Audrey, who eats him in her transformed state.
- As Audrey learns that she's pregnant, several articles of clothing can be seen hanging from her room. When Reverend Joy checks on her at the end, we learn that they're hanging from the giant web she made up there.
- The beginning of the episode has Audrey state that she and her mother lived in three different states before settling in California. The end reveals that this was because Mildred ate all their neighbors and likely attracted the law's attention.
- Friendly Neighborhood Spider: Mildred may be able to turn into a monstrous spider to feed on men, but she genuinely treats her daughter with kindness and is eager to engage both her and Audrey's victims in pleasant conversation before feeding time.
- Giant Spider: The Webster women are capable of transforming into these creatures, whereupon they kill and digest the men who fall in love with them.
- Half-Human Hybrid: Audrey is an implied case, as it's hinted that her father was human. Her baby at the end of the episode is a similar hybrid, though the spider parts are more dominant than the human ones.
- It Runs in the Family: The Webster women are half-spider, and they often transform to devour hapless men. When Audrey learns that she's pregnant with a girl, she refuses to give birth to her because she's afraid it'll be like her and her mother, though the ending shows that she’s accepted that fate.
- Karma Houdini: Mildred and Audrey suffer no punishment for killing and eating three men over the course of the episode, including a priest.
- The Killer in Me: Audrey evidently blacks out when she transforms and eats Robert, though she remembers the latter part quite clearly.
- Lazy Bum: Fitting the eventual reveal of her nature, Mildred prefers to stay in her trailer all day and let the world (and her meals) come to her, much like a spider in its web.
- Literal Maneater: Being spider monsters, Mildred and Audrey kill men and devour their innards for sustenance. The former is angry and disappointed that Robert, who her daughter plans to marry, is notably thin and doesn't eat much.
- Meaningful Name: The Websters are a family of human-spider hybrids, though it's primarily the women that possess metamorphic abilities.
- Mundane Utility: The ending reveals that Audrey created a spider web on her ceiling to hold her laundry.
- Nothing Is Scarier: We never see the full spider forms of Mildred, Audrey, or Audrey's newborn baby (most likely due to budgetary and technical restraints). The closest we get are claws, webbing, and unearthly screeches/roars, so we can only imagine what they must look like in full spider form.
- Really Moves Around: Audrey and her mother are said to have lived in Maine, Arkansas, and Oregon before settling in California, which prompted Mildred to complain that each place was too cold, too hot, and too rainy, respectively. It's revealed at the end that this was because Mildred actually ate all their neighbors, likely bringing the police into the picture.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Audrey tells her mother off for withholding the family secret from her, which caused her to eat the love of her life. She also says that if she was told sooner, she could've married and ate someone she didn't love, like a murderer.
- Right Through the Wall: Audrey noisily has sex with Robert, then transforms and eats him, in the room across the hall in her mother's trailer. Reverend Joy thinks that the newlyweds couldn't wait until the honeymoon to consummate their marriage, but it's only after he leaves that Audrey emerges from the room, covered in blood, shell-shocked, and dropping Robert's hollowed out body, miffed at her mother for not telling her the family secret.
- Spiders Are Scary: Though she and Audrey can transform into giant spiders, Mildred's trailer also has several spiders hiding in nooks and crannies that come out at random, and Mildred vehemently refuses having anyone kill them. When the salesman crushes one right after she refuses him doing so, he's promptly eaten.
- Spider People: The women of the Webster family can transform into giant spiders once they come of age. Audrey's metamorphosis first manifests on her wedding night, and her mother spends the rest of the episode calmly explaining as much as she can about it as though she were experiencing puberty.
- Time Skip: A few of them are present throughout the episode, going from Audrey's wedding night, to the cover-up to Robert's death, and Audrey having her baby.
- Traveling Salesman: One of them selling textbooks comes to Mildred's trailer, and ends up becoming her first onscreen victim after crushing the spider on his leg.
- Wham Shot: Mildred sprouting a pair of spider-like claws offscreen and devouring the salesman who comes to her trailer, revealing that she and her daughter are spider hybrids right at the end of the opening act.
