Netflix’s American Primeval has the most shocking scene of the year, and it’s only January 

Yellowstone has left a gap in the Western market, and Netflix has raced to fill the void like a horse races to the horizon – and in doing so, it’s given audiences one of the most brutal scenes of the year. (Warning: spoilers ahead!)

It may be premature to go around throwing terms like “best of the year” right now, but life moves fast, and Netflix moves even faster. The streaming service has just dropped American Primeval, a cutting tale of death and survival in the Old West.

If you’re going in expecting an exact substitute for Taylor Sheridan’s ranch opera, you’ll be disappointed. Instead of cowboys shooting back whiskey and viper-tongued women spitting out insults, American Primeval has people getting scalped, mass killings, and characters who look like they haven’t bathed in years.

Needless to say, it won’t be for everyone. But if you’re looking for a darker side of the West and a period drama that doesn’t pull its punches, then American Primeval is the top contender right now. And you only need to watch one scene to understand just how dire things get.

American Primeval Episode 1 features a shocking attack on a campsite

American Primeval follows several stories taking place in Utah Territory, 1857, but the main one is that of Sara Rowell (Betty Gilpin) and her son Devin, who are attempting to cross the frontier alone to find his father. In their first attempt at doing so, they join a wagon trail alongside Mormon Jacob Pratt and his wife Abish.

Things start out smoothly, with Sara and Devin slipping into the pack with no trouble (except for a young Native American girl hiding out in the back of their wagon, unknown to Sara). In the first episode, the group stops for dinner and rest, relaxed and hopeful in their journey.

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But, as is usually the way, this is where their problems start.

While talking to Sara, a Mormon woman is killed when an arrow pierces her skull without warning. It’s a ripping sound, striking panic into everyone at the camp as seemingly hundreds of arrows start screeching through the air. They are under attack, and there is nowhere to run.

A two-minute sequence of Hell

What follows is a flurry of chaos and death. As Sara grabs Devin, they run through the camp to find a safe spot that doesn’t exist. Men with guns run around in a futile effort to protect themselves, trying to avoid being trampled by the speeding horses running through the anarchy. 

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Jacob is scalped, and much like every other brutal kill in the two-minute sequence, we see every inch of skin being cut. Even when Sara and Devin find a moment to breathe by hiding under a wagon, a panicked bull charges right into them. 

By the time they get the chance to escape into a wooded area, almost everybody in the camp is dead.

Putting a gory spin on the genre

With this horrifying scene (which is based on the real-life Mountain Meadows Massacre), American Primeval manages to surpass the violence found in other popular Western TV shows, such as Yellowstone, 1883, or even Netflix’s own Godless. 

All these shows (and others) have made efforts to recreate the sheer violence and wildness Westerns have always highlighted, but this one tops them all simply by focusing on the chaos of violence. 

The show even competes against itself, with the entire six-episode run overflowing with grim moments. As Sara and Devin continue their journey, they face-off against further attacks (including an encounter in which Sara is raped), and Abish watches as every women in her group has their throat cut in succession, leaving only her.

But given how unexpected and frantic this Episode 1 sequence is, it still stands out as one of the most barbaric. Presented as a one-shot, the camera hurries through the disarray, capturing moments of pure terror through the dust. In one particularly gruesome encounter, one of the attackers shoots a young boy running towards his father, and vomits while leaning over the body. 

Violence isn’t something Netflix has shied away from in the past. Just two weeks prior to the release of American Primeval, Squid Game Season 2 arrived on the platform. Notorious for its bloody fictional games, the South Korean thriller series has seen its fair share of memorable kills. 

But where Squid Game relishes somewhat in the fun and overt silliness in the brutal nature of the show, American Primeval is just the opposite.

It’s over almost as quickly as it began, leaving only a handful of survivors. Its grounded nature reminds us that this isn’t a fantasy or some drama-steeped Taylor Sheridan show – this is real. Not only is it a shockingly effective scene, but also perfectly captures the show’s thesis: In American Primeval, the West takes far more than it can ever give.

American Primeval is available to stream on Netflix now. For more, find out how to watch every Kevin Costner Western, check out all the Yellowstone cameos in Horizon: An American Saga, and find out what’s next in the Yellowstone saga with our guide to 1944.