Top 8 awful and awesome moments from AMC’s The Terror

The final Tuunbaq fight

This is, when you get down to it, just a fantastically well-engineered fight scene. There’s so much going on: Hickey’s men either fleeing or fighting, the people all chained to the sledge trying to get free, and Hickey, sawing his tongue out while the Tuunbaq works its way through his men one by one.

The chain is especially inspired. No matter how desperately the men try to get away, they only end up dragged back towards the Tuunbaq as their fellows are devoured. It’s the perfect action sequence to cap off the series, and getting to see Crozier get to personally finish off the Tuunbaq was satisfying while it lasts — though of course, we learn not long after that the act of killing it is perhaps not the triumph we wanted it to be.

The first scene, both ways

The opening sequence, with a weary Sir James Ross desperately trying to determine what has become of Crozier and his men, is the perfect way to kick off the series. The men sitting around the guttering seal oil like telling horror stories around a campfire — which is, in a sense, exactly what happens. The “thing that eats on two legs and four — the thing made of muscles and spells” is a phrase to put chills down your spine all on its own.

But what makes this scene really spectacular is the way it’s repeated at the very end — this time from Crozier’s perspective. We get to watch him walk away; from Ross, from England, from everything. We end where we began.

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And lastly, maybe it doesn’t quite make the cut of the drama and horror in the rest of this list, but “Tell us about birdsh*t island, James” is a moment which deserves to live on in glory. Oh, Crozier. You passive-aggressive disaster.