Captain Daly’s “Bug Out” Scene in ‘Manifest’ Is Pure Nightmare Fuel

Every once in a while a television scene so cursed, so absurd, so utterly laughable crosses your path and winds up living rent-free in your brain for the rest of your days.

One Tree Hill gave us a golden retriever eating a transplant heart. 9-1-1 Lone Star showed CPR gone wrong with Rob Lowe’s hands shooting straight through a man’s frozen chest mid-compression. And Manifest recently joined the ranks when one of its characters casually projectile vomited a swarm of locusts. Ahhh, TV!

Jeff Rake’s supernatural drama, which just dropped its fourth and final season on Netflix, follows a group of passengers who boarded a regular flight to New York and mysteriously landed five and a half years later. Needless to say, Manifest has always been an unconventional series, but its final 10 episodes pushed limits, wholeheartedly embraced chaos and dared to go just a little too far on numerous occasions. One of those occasions took place during Season 4, Episode 12, when Flight 828’s Captain Bill Daly (Frank Deal) opens his mouth to release a swarm of Rocky Mountain Locusts, which, mind you, have been extinct since 1902.

Behold, the horror:

During the episode, aptly titled “Bug Out,” (Get it? Because the bugs come out?) Ben (Josh Dallas) and Saanvi (Parveen Kaur) set out to wake up Daly after finding him sedated and strapped to a hospital bed in the 828 detention center. After Saanvi channels her inner Pulp Fiction and plunges a needle into Daly’s chest, the pilot springs awake, unable to speak, and later starts shaking. Towards the end of the episode when Ross (Jacqueline Antaramian) asks him a question and he doesn’t answer, she orders him to “spit it out,” and he parts his lips, extends his jaw, and holds the pose as the terrifying parade of insects funnel out and start flying around the room.

Naturally, the sight of bugs exiting a human being’s mouth is unsettling in and of itself. But the sound of the locusts — the eerie, steadily-amplified buzzing — coupled with the camera switching to a wider angle to show the sheer number of insects emerging from Daly’s body, takes the scene’s cringe factor to the next level. Oh, and did we mention this abomination leads straight into the end credits, establishing unexpected suspense, intrigue, and an unshakable desire to see what’s next? What a way to end an episode!

Unfortunately, I’ll never be able to unsee Captain Daly barfing bugs. But on the bright side, other cursed images from Manifest Season 4, Part 2 — including an entire plane emerging from a volcanic fissure in the ground and several humans imploding and bursting into dust — are there to keep the unsettling scene company in my brain. To quote the wise band Fall Out Boy, thanks for the memories, even though they weren’t so great, Manifest.

Manifest is currently streaming on Netflix.