Yellowjackets' Most Brutal Moments (Well, At Least So Far)

Yellowjackets is an excellent show... but not one for the faint of heart.

"What could be so harrowing about a show about a high school girls' soccer team?," you may wonder. That leads us to assume that a) you haven't spent a significant amount of time around competitive adolescent females, and b) you haven't yet tuned in to the Showtime series, which follows said soccer team when their chartered plane goes down in the Canadian Rockies. The action unfolds in dual timelines: the mid-1990s, as the crash survivors try to figure out how they'll stave off danger and starvation until they're rescued; and present-day, as the grown-up versions of those survivors — who've never publicly spoken about their very long ordeal — contend with the way the trauma changed their lives forever.

Oh, and someone's blackmailing the survivors (who are played by heavy hitters like Melanie Lynskey, Juliette Lewis and Christina Ricci). And there's a possible cannibalism subplot. And maybe the forest in which the girls are stranded is evil?

See? Lots of potential for scary/gross/disturbing-in-the-best-way scenes. Anyway, we've combed through all of the Season 1 episodes that have aired to bring you the series' most brutal moments so far. But before you dive in, a few notes. First, a big ol' Spoiler Alert — if you haven't seen the most recent episode, bookmark this page and return after you have. Second, our definition of "brutal" encompasses several interpretations of that word; not all of the interludes are bloody messes (but a lot of them are). And third, there are two more episodes coming up in the already-renewed drama's first season, so we'll be sure to update this list when and if the need calls.

Yellowjackets airs Sundays at 10/9c. Ahead of this week's episode, steel yourself, then scroll through the list of gut-punch moments below. And if you think we've missed any crucial ones, shout 'em out in the comments!

At the very start of the Showtime drama, a terrified young woman is chased through the woods in the show and winds up impaling herself after falling into a pit full of spikes. Then a figure dressed in ritualistic attire looks down on the girl's twitching, bleeding body. And later, a group of similarly dressed cult members (?) appear to cook and eat the girl's body. OK, Yellowjackets, you have our morbid attention.

We know we should be glad that, when Coach Scott's lower leg is crushed during the plane crash, Misty has the wherewithal and resolve to address the situation and save his life. But couldn't she maybe, we don't know, consult one of the others before she performs a partial amputation with an ax? Or look a little less triumphant while spattered in the coach's blood?

What is supposed to be a lighthearted evening of silly bonding while evicting the cabin's alleged ghost quickly turns bone-chilling when all of the candles blow out simultaneously and a seemingly possessed Lottie starts mumbling grave warnings in French (which she doesn't speak).

The combination of extreme worry and extreme hunger is never a good thing... especially when it results in Shauna's having a dream in which she gives birth to a roasted chicken... which she immediately eats. (Note: On the whole, this is one of Yellowjackets' more tame gross scenes. But raise your hand if you, too, were tricked by the lighting and atmosphere to think that she'd maybe started to snack on a mutant spawn of some sort.)

When Tai realized that Shauna meant to go through with an abortion, she raced to find her friend in the woods. Tai vowed to help Shauna with whatever she needed, and nearly performed the procedure herself, but Shauna had a very last-minute change of heart and stopped Tai from terminating the pregnancy. The whole affair, though, left both girls shaking and crying as they clung to each other.

On the plus side? Van didn't die when a pack of wolves attacked the group of girls who'd left the cabin in search of help. On the minus side? One wolf mauled the teen so badly that she was missing a chunk o' cheek — and her friends thought she was dead — by the end of the episode.

Even though we now know that Tai was in her backyard because of sleepwalking brought on by stress, we still don't know a) why she tends to eat dirt when that happens, b) why she was bloody or c) where Biscuit, the family dog, is now. Gulp.

While we are happy that Van didn't die in the wolf attack, we're betting she was less than thrilled to have to endure amateur facial surgery without anesthesia after the longest, worst hike of her life.

Sure, Laura Lee's desperate plan to fly the tiny plane to safety was ill-advised from the start. But her fate falls into the "brutal" category for two reasons: the fact that it seemed for a moment like she might actually make it, only to have the plane explode over the lake while her friends watched; and the fact that her teddy bear, who (kinda mysteriously, no?) caught flame in the co-pilot's seat, was the accident's first casualty.