As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked. You have been warned.
Ethan's death. In many ways it one-ups Bill's death from The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals simply by having so little buildup, subjecting us to a Mood Whiplash where Ethan tries to give Hannah a Hope Spot and reassures her everything in her life will be better from now on only for the main plot to suddenly intrude and kill off our new favorite character.
What's worst is how this show makes the choice to play physical violence with a lot more seriousness than the past ones, and make it clear that he dies in terrible, agonizing pain. And rubbing in that his death is completely pointless — the rioters even curse themselves out for "wasting time" beating him to death when they open his jacket and realize he wasn't shoplifting a Wiggly at all.
And because we got so attached to him in such a short period of time, Evil Ethan's appearance as a deranged, cackling, taunting version of himself is almost as emotionally distressing for us as it was for Hannah.
Hannah foresaw Ethan's death and tried to warn him, but he corrected her grammar about "badder". Then when the cultists grab him and punch him, he spends his last moments screaming at her to run. That's all Hannah can do, hiding in the children's area and ending up in a Troubled Fetal Position while crying and saying she wants Lex. With the Wiggly doll in her backpack that started the whole mess. Which starts to talk and tell her to succumb to its influence. It soon segues into a moment of awesome for Hannah when she says Ethan isn't here, because the one telling her to despair is a liar, and she'll be optimistic and defiant for the both of them.
As crappy a person and a boss as Frank Pricely was, Lex's anguished shriek of "FRANK!" when she sees his throat slit right in front of her is a tearjerker too — nobody deserves to die like that, for such a meaningless reason.
Lex's reaction when the security footage shows her giving the doll to Hannah. Her Defiant to the End attitude breaks when Linda orders the cultists to find the "child" with the pigtails, and she begs them not to hurt her little sister.
The song "Black Friday" as Lex herself's Despair Event Horizon is this, with her going on at length about how her life turns out in hindsight to have really been the pointless waste everyone around her always made her feel like it was, and she not only wasn't able to save her little sister but feels like she's dying without ever letting her know how much she loved her.
It's an obvious thing to remark on, but both Dylan Saunders as Tom and Kim Whalen as Becky really sell the pathos of their characters' Dark and Troubled Past through their solos and monologues.
Though her own monologue about it is very powerful, arguably the biggest Tear Jerker for Becky is when Linda Monroe taunts her about her abuse in front of the whole town, letting her know that everyone knew and talked about it behind her back but didn't care enough to intervene, and no one cares enough to defend her now.
Dylan really sells Tom as an emotional wreck who's not only deeply unhappy but compounds it by being too ashamed over his trauma to let anyone get close enough to help him with it. Even in his songs "What Tim Wants" and "If I Fail You", when he's talking only to himself, he freezes up repeatedly and cuts himself off as though if he kept going he'd burst into tears. The device of cutting off his sentences with "Flash—bang—" and trailing off into a sentence fragment is an incredibly powerful portrayal of how a PTSD Trigger works that avoids the cartoonish version of "flashbacks" seen elsewhere.
This line from "What Tim Wants", revealing that he's a miserable bastard who refuses to get help for his PTSD because — like many Real Life people in this situation — he believes he deserves to be unhappy:
Even now, it's a dream The kind that makes you question reality The fact you don't wake up is no accident It seems to me Someone's gotta pay for it
The chorus of "If I Fail You", which neatly encapsulates why he's cut himself off from his son right when his son needed him most, and is absolutely devastating for anyone who's been on either side of a parent/child relationship like his and Tim's.
If I fail you one more time The punishment won't match the crime 'Cause there's no pain that could ever explain How I let you down
And if I fail you one more time The mountain I would have to climb Is so high up that I would have to die Oh, I... I failed you once and I will fail again
President Goodman's Heroic BSoD when he realizes he's fallen right into Wiggly's trap and accidentally started World War III, and the impending end of the human race is all down to his weakness and inadequacy. Even if you agree with all of Uncle Wiley's criticisms of him and the kind of politician he represents, he's been humanized enough up to this point that watching him collapse into tears and hysterics isn't pretty.
The ending. The song "What If Tomorrow Comes?" is so haunting, and the performances the actors give so strong, that it really feels like watching the end of the world. (Special note goes to Mr. Davidson's frantic praying, Papa Ed taking out Peanuts one last time to look at him before returning him to the comfort of his pocket, Ted and Charlotte and the guy we later learn to be Ted's little brother Peter all clutching hands together, and Paul's face at the end of the song as he watches...something streaking across the sky.)
