As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked. You have been warned.
The whole concept, once you get over the absurdity of grown adults becoming obsessed with a doll called Tickle-Me Wiggly. People become infected by a Hate Plague that drives them to kill, all in the pursuit of a toy. A toy that, as it turns out, none of their kids even want.
"Feast or Famine," when the first riots break out and the mall descends into pure chaos. The cast do a great job with their total commitment to their expressions of sheer feral rage and glee at letting out all their violent and selfish impulses at once.
Ethan's death, the first major Gut Punch of the show. Yes, Anyone Can Die, and we learn this by seeing a sweet, lovable boy get savagely beaten to death, coughing up blood and deliriously calling out to his girlfriend in his dying moments. It's especially horrifying seeing Gary Goldstein and the baseball cap guy, who, while they may not have been the nicest people, didn't previously seem capable of murder stomp out a helpless teenager and gloat over it.
The moment when President Goodman sees Wiggly's true form. The spotlights become his eyes and the Christmas garlands decorating the stage become his tentacles. The whole show, Wiggly's been watching us!
Goodman is tricked into nuking Russia. This begins World War III. What really sells this is the sheer magnitude of Goodman's Heroic BSoD as he realizes how thoroughly he's been played, and what he's going to have to witness happening next.
After Ethan's death, he seemingly appears as a Spirit Advisor to Hannah... except Hannah quickly realizes something is amiss, and it's revealed to be a cruel trick by the Black and White to lure Hannah to her doom, or, failing that, break her spirit. Robert Manion does a great job turning Evil Ethan into a deeply traumatizing Expy of Pennywise doing the "They all float down here" speech.
Evil Ethan: Don't be a mushy banana. Dyin' ain't so bad! I'm in the Black and White now! It's just like California. It never rains.
"Do You Want to Play With Me" is utterly horrifying. The two most morally upright adult characters, Becky and Tom, see that Hannah has a Wiggly, and suddenly become intent on catching her, no matter what. After Tom's initial approach of just grabbing her doesn't work, Becky sings a sweet, soothing lullaby, so she can lure Hannah closer and knock her out with a syringe full of drugs. Brr...
For extra horror points, Becky is a nurse, and Tom is a parent who used to be a teacher—one that taught Hannah's older sister, to boot! Under normal circumstances, they're exactly who you'd encourage a kid to go to for help in a crisis. But instead, they're hunting her down, willing and able to hurt her if they catch her. Nowhere is safe.
How quickly Tom and Becky go from wanting to help Hannah to wanting to hurt her, the second they see the doll. It's like someone flipped a switch.
The ending, when what remains of the cast sing the haunting "What if Tomorrow Comes," simply waiting for the end. And the last sound we hear is what is heavily implied to be a nuclear bomb being dropped.
Jon Matteson's performance as the voice of Wiggly. He never once loses his childish voice, no matter how monstrous he acts, which is especially creepy when he's threatening Hannah:
''You could have served me willingly, but you're being a rotten little banana. I'm going to have to peel you. I'm going to split you in two. I'm going to eat you, Hannah. I'm going to eat you right the fuck up!"
Joey Richter's Breaking Speech against President Goodman as Uncle Wiley is extremely haunting, since it's more or less him being a Knight of Cerebus and dismissing the notion that what this show is about is just a silly impossible horror scenario. Yeah, the supernatural stuff isn't realistic, but what Wiggly represents, in his goofy absurd way, is realistic as fuck — not only do Retail Riots of this kind happen all the time, but the more general theme of what Wiley tells us Wiggly represents — desperate, hopeless people who've been taught all their lives they have no choice but to be selfish to survive turning on each other over the stupidest, most contrived reasons — happens all the time, all around us. It's really hard not to come away from it thinking about everything from Fan Dumb harassment campaigns to senseless mass shootings to the rise of fascist movements and think that everything he said about the monster "being in our blood" was right.
The instrumental version of the Tickle-Me Wiggly jingle that plays over the credits of the filmed version. Unlike every other Starkid production up until now, there's no joyful, upbeat reprise of a song from the show, no smiling cast members coming out to take a bow. Just the distant sound of an abandoned car radio, emphasizing that in all likelihood, Hatchetfield, all the residents we got to know and care about, and the rest of the world are gone.
Fan Dumb harassment campaigns to senseless mass shootings to the rise of fascist movements and think that everything he said about the monster "being in our blood" was right.