Little House On The Prairie: The 20 Darkest Episodes, Ranked

Summary

• Little House on the Prairie
  didn’t shy away from dark themes, featuring episodes on murder, rape, disease outbreaks, and addiction issues.
• From epidemics like typhus to heartbreaking storylines involving blindness and child deaths, the show delved into heavy subject matter.
• The show’s willingness to explore dark and disturbing topics, such as violence and tragedy, offered a stark contrast to its typically wholesome nature.

This article contains mentions of sexual assault, violence, and death.

Little House on the Prairie had a lot of dark and sad episodes that sometimes seemed out of place in a show that was normally as wholesome as the tales of the Ingalls family. Little House on the Prairie premiered in 1974, an American historical drama series based on the children’s novels written by Laura Ingalls Wilder. The books were based on her childhood in the American Midwest in the late 1800s. However, for a TV show based on children’s novels, Little House never feared going dark.

The main story was about a good, pure family led by Charles Ingalls (Michael Landon), someone who raised his family to be God-fearing and well-meaning. However, through the nine seasons, the show veered into the realm of darkness more than once. There were murderers, rapists, children’s deaths, and addiction issues all on display, and no one was safe from these dark themes. Looking back on these sad episodes and the kind of subject matter that was featured is a shocking reminder of how grim Little House on the Prairie could be.

20 Plague

Season 1, Episode 18

Little House on the Prairie wasted no time in including incredibly dark episodes, with one of the most harrowing arriving in the shows first season. The 18th episode of Little House on the Prairie season 1 is titled “Plague”, which tells viewers all they need to know about the plot. In “Plague”, Walnut Grove experiences a fatally deadly epidemic of Typhus. This episode is dark not just because of the effects of the disease itself, but also because of the reactions of the other Walnut Grove residents, who succumb to paranoia and forcefully quarantine the sick in the town church.

Multiple minor characters die in “Plague”, and this dark Little House on the Prairie episode doesn’t hold back from showing just how brutal disease outbreaks in the late 19th century could be. It was one of the first times the show displayed how easily it could switch from wholesome to horrific, and to this day many fans remember it as one of the most difficult episodes to get through.

19 The Aftermath

Season 4, Episode 8

There are several episodes of Little House on the Prairie that focus on criminals, be they criminals, rapists, and everything in between. However, one of the darkest is season 4’s “The Aftermath”. The episode focuses on the arrival of Frank and Jesse James to Walnut Grove. The pair take on false names and manage to blend into the population, hiring Mary to work for them in the process.

The episode is especially tense since there’s no guarantee Mary will survive, especially when the pair take her hostage. While this episode is also regarded as one of the best by those who enjoy the Western elements of Little House on the Prairie, the constant dread as Mary gets unknowingly close to two confirmed vicious killers also makes it one of the most nailbiting. Thankfully, Mary survives, but the sense of dread throughout is palpable.

18 The Reincarnation Of Nellie

Season 8, Episodes 1-2

Not all of the darkest Little House on the Prairie episodes are violent or tragically sad. Some stick with viewers simply because they’re so weird that they border on disturbing, which is definitely the case with season 8’s “The Reincarnation Of Nellie”. This is also the episode where Nancy Oleson is introduced to the show. She is adopted by Harriet, who proceeds to try her best to turn her into a clone of Nellie as a child. This on its own is creepy enough, but it’s not the only dark element of the two parter.

Nancy soon proves herself to be beyond a handful. She gets up to a lot during her debut Little House on the Prairie debut, including locking Belinda in an ice shed so she could get the lead part in a school musical. Then, to make the episode darker still, the townsfolk of Walnut Grove decide that the best punishment for the little girl is public humiliation, so she’s made to be the queen of the dunk tank at the festival. To add another layer of tragedy too, it emerges that Nancy was given up for adoption by her grandmother because of her behavior.

17 The Enchanted Cottage

Season 5, Episode 21

“The Enchanted Cottage” arrives in The Little House on the Prairie season 5, and while the entire episode isn’t necessarily one of the darkest, it does contain a few of the most harrowing moments in the show. Specifically, it’s the scenes where Mary tries to come to terms with the fact that she may not ever regain her eyesight that make this such a difficult watch.

While Mary being blind eventually came to be the reason she was considered one of the strongest and most endearing characters on the show, “The Enchanted Cottage” was definitely the most tragic point in this particular arc. The scene where Charles has to inform Mary that she’ll never get her sight back is genuinely difficult to watch, and actress Melissa Sue Anderson makes Mary’s response to the news so convincing that it’s almost impossible to forget.

16 A Child With No Name

Season 9, Episode 18

It’s not difficult to explain why season 9’s “A Child With No Name” is one of the darkest episodes in the entirety of Little House on the Prairie. Even from the premise it’s clear it’s a difficult installment to stomach, since it’s focused on the death of a baby. At the start of the episode, Laura’s newborn son dies in mysterious and unexplained circumstances. The grief she feels is palpable, but this incredibly dark episode doesn’t stop with the loss of such a young life.

Laura blames Doc Baker for the death of her child, citing his incompetence as the reason the infant didn’t make it. The people of Walnut Grove completely buy into this explanation and Doc Baker is almost hounded out of town. If it weren’t for the fact that Rose comes down with smallpox — which can be fatal — and needed Doc Baker’s help, it’s highly likely he would have never been allowed to return.

15 The Monster Of Walnut Grove

Season 3, Episode 5

It is true that “The Monster of Walnut Grove” is a sillier Little House on the Prairie episode than many of the other truly darker ones. However, it is still one that deals with darker ideas and could be particularly frightening to younger audiences of the usually mild show. It is also a special episode as Little House on the Prairie might not seem like the kind of series to do a Halloween-themed episode.

The episode embraces the vibes of the season as Laura seems to witness a neighbor decapitating his own wife. While the whole thing proves to be a funny misunderstanding, that isn’t revealed until the end of the episode, and the idea of Laura thinking she’s witnessed a horrible crime is a pretty dark idea. This also leads to a memorable final moment when some of the frightened children imagine seeing the Headless Horseman righting to get them.

14 Raccoon

Season 1, Episode 10

Even the first season of Little House on the Prairie dealt with some heavy topics. “Raccoon” was one early episode that ended that also served as an example of how the show sometimes led the story down a dark path only to resolve things in a peaceful way before the end. The episode deals with Laura getting a pet raccoon which ends up scratching both her and the family dog, Jack.

Things get much more serious when the raccoon returns and attacks, forcing Charles to kill it only to discover that it is rabid. Not only does the episode look to be mimicking the classic heartbreaking dog movie Old Yeller with Jack looking as though he’ll have to be put down, but Laura’s life is in danger as well. Thankfully, it is revealed that the rabid raccoon was not the same one who scratched Laura and Jack.

13 I’ll Be Waving As You Drive Away

Season 4, Episode 21

The wholesome Ingalls family witnessed a lot of the darkest moments in the series, but they were often spared the most brutal moments for the sake of the audience who loved these characters. However, that does not mean everything was fine for them as this episode proved. It deals with the heartbreaking realization that Mary is going blind. Mary was an ambitious and determined young woman with her life ahead of her, but this news struck a devastating blow to her.

The darkest moment in the episode comes when Mary wakes up in bed to find that she is completely blind and screams in anguish for her father to help her.

While the diagnosis is scary enough, the darkest moment in the episode comes when Mary wakes up in bed to find that she is completely blind and screams in anguish for her father to help her. While the storyline would prove to be a powerful one for her character, finding new strength and resolve while starting a new life for herself, this episode dealt with the fear she faced with the unknown life ahead of her.

12 The Lord Is My Shepherd

Season 1, Episodes 13-14

While the stoic and noble Charles Ingalls is often seen as the lead character for the series, much of the show is seen through the eyes of young Laura. This includes moments when she makes mistakes, acts selfishly, and is filled with guilt. All of these things and the lessons she learns because of them play into the emotional first season episode of “The Lord is My Shepherd.”

The episode finds the Ingalls family welcoming a new child with the birth of a baby boy. Young Laura quickly grows jealous of the baby and the attention it is getting from her parents. She asks God to take the baby away only for her new baby brother to get sick and die. Torn by guilt over thinking she was responsible, she runs away to a nearby hilltop to ask God to take her instead of the baby. While it ends with Laura returning home, it is a heavy lesson for a young girl to deal with.

11 The Lost Ones

Season 7, Episode 21

Many people might not have been aware that Jason Bateman’s acting debut was on Little House on the Prairie. Before becoming a big name as part of the cast of Arrested Development or leading Ozark to great acclaim, Bateman was introduced in Season 7 of the show as James Cooper. However, it was a deeply tragic introduction for the young character as he witnesses both of his parents killed in an accident right before his eyes.

James is then adopted by the Ingalls family, becoming a strong part of their family. However, his first episode deals with his heartbreak over his loss and having to start over with a new family. Young Batemen gives a powerful performance in the role that is devastating as he deals with his new reality, despite how friendly the Ingalls are.

10 Chicago

Season 8, Episode 8

Charles rushes off to Chicago to visit his old friend Mr. Edwards following the mysterious death of his eldest son, John. At first, the death was attributed to a terrible accident caused when John was hit by a wagon on a rainy night. But further investigation reveals that may not be the case. The entire episode looked nothing like Little House on the Prairie. Instead, it plays out like a noir crime drama.

Charles and Edwards play the role of detectives, exploring the dark and rainy city and interviewing various shady characters. Over time, the duo soon learns John Jr. may have been murdered with the accident being staged to cover up the crime. Like the best noir stories. John Jr. was a newspaper reporter investigating business corruption and was about to go public with his findings when he died. Thankfully, a young street urchin identified the man who killed John and helped bring him to justice.

9 Gold Country

Season 3, Episodes 21-22

Tough times have fallen upon the residents of Walnut Grove when heavy rain destroys all the crops. Money is tight and people are leaving town to find work. The Ingalls and the Edwards family travel to California in an attempt to strike gold. The families set up shop in a type of tent city next to a river where the men spend the day panning for gold.

Violence surrounds the camp at every turn. The father of a neighboring family is shot dead while a desperate man digs up the grave of an elderly woman after learning she was buried with gold. The most tragic thing about the episode is seeing Charles and Mr. Edwards motivated by greed and the urge to strike it rich. This makes it a very dark episode, as Laura visits a man who explains how this happens to everyone who searches for gold, and it isn’t until Charles and Mr. Edwards realize their families make them rich inside that they leave their gold dreams behind and return home.

8 A Matter Of Faith

Season 2, Episode 15

Caroline stays home alone to bake pies for a church function while Charles and the girls go away for the weekend. While baking, Caroline begins to feel unwell. She suffers from dizzy spells and begins to hallucinate. Eventually, Caroline discovers the cause of her illness is a cut on her leg that has become infected. She reads the Bible for comfort and finally realizes she will have to open the wound herself or risk death.

When Charles finds her she is near death, but it appears her amateur surgery skills saved her life.

She heats a knife on the stove and (thankfully) the scene cuts away as Caroline is about to drain the infection. When Charles finds her she is near death, but it appears her amateur surgery skills saved her life. It isn’t as dark since Caroline at least lives in this episode, whereas the saddest episodes of Little House on the Prairie often see a tragedy befall someone.

7 A Faraway Cry

Season 8, Episode 20

This sad episode of Little House on the Prairie takes the action out of Walnut Grove and to a mining camp. Caroline receives a letter from an old friend who finds herself sick and pregnant, so she travels to an influenza-ridden mining camp with Dr. Baker. This remains one of the saddest episodes of Little House on the Prairie, as the woman dies and her own husband barely sheds a tear. The woman asks Caroline to make sure her baby finds a good home.

Since the woman’s husband wanted nothing to do with the child, Caroline decided to uphold her friend’s wishes and gives the child to a loving couple. This is one of several episodes of Little House on the Prairie that dealt with preeclampsia and other pregnancy-related illnesses that existed in the 1800s. With the abuse the pregnant woman suffered at the hands of her husband, it was extremely dark and Caroline was smart to get that baby out of there. It had a very dark end, as another couple lost their baby at the same time and Caroline convinced Dr. Baker to give them this baby and let them think it was their own.

6 The Return Of Mr. Edwards

Season 6, Episode 8

This is the first time viewers see Mr. Edwards since Victor French left to star in his own sitcom three years earlier. The episode begins in the big woods where Mr. Edwards is now the foreman of a logging company. Not five minutes go by before a falling tree falls atop the returning character and nearly kills him. Charles and Laura travel to the Edwards’ home to visit their wounded friend. The accident has left him unable to walk, and he spends all his time alone in his room.

It’s a sad sight for the audience to see the once lovable Mr. Edwards reduced to an angry man who has given up on life and is contemplating suicide. Charles and Laura do everything they can to help their friend snap out of his depression, and it is only when Charles realizes that Mr. Edwards plans to take his own life that he fakes an injury to snap Edwards out of the moment. When he helps save Charles, Mr. Edwards seemed to move back to the man most viewers grew to love.

5 Rage

Season 9, Episode 4

A struggling farmer named Thomas Stark (Robert Loggia) slowly loses his grip on reality after being denied a loan. He goes bankrupt and completely snaps. Thomas kills his wife and daughter – and all of this takes place within the first act of the episode with more violence on the way. After Thomas goes on the run, he ends up in the Wilder home, where he thinks Laura and Jenny are his wife and daughter. He holds them at gunpoint and threatens to kill them again.

It is a terrible predicament and one that Little House on the Prairie has used more than once. A broken parent ends up coming into the Ingalls family’s lives and ends up dragging them into his pit of despair. This also isn’t the first time that Laura was mistaken for a person’s lost loved one (her friend Ellen’s mother abducted Laura as a child, thinking she was her dead daughter). This was more dangerous, and Laura and Jenny had to figure out how to escape.

4 Home Again

Season 9, Episodes 16-17

Little House on the Prairie takes a look at the hardships of rural life which makes for some of the darkest moments in the series. However, this episode is a reminder that things can get darker in other ways when exploring the bigger city life. While living in the city, Albert falls in with the wrong crowd and has multiple run-ins with the police. At his wit’s end, Charles brings his once straight-laced son back to Walnut Grove in hopes a return to the country will do the boy some good.

Eventually, Charles discovers Albert is addicted to morphine and the potent drug is the cause of all the trouble. With the help of his patient father, Albert is able to kick his habit but not before going through a violent detox, complete with hallucinations, seizures, and vomit. This brought the dangerous world of drug addiction to Little House on the Prairie, delivering its harshest life lesson.

3 My Ellen

Season 4, Episode 3

Laura and Mary Ingalls go skinny-dipping in the lake with a friend named Ellen. However, when some boys show up to look, they hide underwater until they are gone. Sadly, while Laura and Mary come up, Ellen never does, drowning under the water. Ellen’s mother blames Laura for her daughter’s death since she was the one who invited her to go swimming. Feeling guilty about it and missing her friend, Laura decides to visit the woman and bring her flowers. That is where the episode gets really dark.

Depressed and unstable, the woman mistakes Laura for her dead daughter, Ellen. She lures the trusting girl into her basement and locks her inside. Charles frantically searches for his child while the grief-stricken woman prepares a birthday cake she intends to give to Laura who she now thinks of as her dead daughter Ellen. With Laura trapped in the cellar and no one knowing what happened to her, the episode switches between the panic of Laura’s family and the breakdown of a mother who lost her daughter.

2 Sylvia

Season 7, Episodes 17-18

A man wearing a mime mask brutally attacks and rapes a 16-year-old girl named Sylvia. After discovering the teen is pregnant, her ashamed father plans for them to leave Walnut Grove to avoid the looks and whispers from the townsfolk. To complicate matters, Albert and Sylvia have fallen in love, much to the dismay of their parents. The teens decide to elope, but little do they know Sylvia’s attacker is hot on their trail and won’t let them go so easily.

Having an actual rape and pregnancy was a lot for
Little House on the Prairie
and these two episodes never pulled punches.

When it comes to what was the saddest episode of Little House on the Prairie, this two-part episode remains one of the darkest stories on the show. Having an actual rape and pregnancy was a lot for Little House on the Prairie and these two episodes never pulled punches. From Mrs. Oleson spreading rumors about the young girl, claiming Albert is the father to her own father blaming her for the rape, this really hit hard. It got even darker when they found out who the rapist was and Sylvia didn’t survive the final encounter, dying while pregnant in front of Albert and her own father.

1 May We Make Them Proud

Season 6, Episodes 18-19

Perhaps the most shocking episode of the series, “May We Make Them Proud” featured the deaths of long-time cast member Alice Garvey and Mary’s baby boy, who both perished in a fire at the school for the blind. The image of the two strapped inside is a horrific one. Shortly after the fire, the Ingalls’ adopted son Albert runs away after it is revealed the cause of the blaze was a pipe that he and a friend were smoking in the basement.

Charles, along with Alice’s widowed husband Jonathan, goes searching for the guilt-ridden boy with hopes of convincing him to return home. The death of Mary’s baby and the moment Albert’s life took a dark turn makes these two of the saddest episodes of Little House on the Prairie, guaranteed to make a person cry.