Ricky is trapped between a surrounding elk herd and white men chasing him through the woods and is killed.

Lewis climbs a ladder to fix a light and sees a vision of the dead cow elk looking up through the ceiling fan blades.

Lewis's coworkers find his dog Harley strangled on the fence; Harley revives and viciously bites Silas on the face.

Lewis recreates the elk scene in his living room and sees Elk Head Woman staring up at him through the fan blades.

Lewis confesses every detail of the Thanksgiving Classic elk massacre to Shaney while Peta unexpectedly walks in on them.

Lewis discovers the cow elk was pregnant during the massacre, buries her fetus, and vows to use every part of her body.

Lewis finds Harley stomped to death in the garage and breaks down; Peta rips up the masking tape elk outline.

Lewis lures Shaney into the garage and catches her hair in the motorcycle's spinning rear wheel, killing and scalping her.

After Peta falls from the ladder and dies, Lewis cuts open her stomach and pulls out a living elk calf.

Vigilantes find Lewis sheltering with the elk calf and shoot him; his spilled blood brings the calf to life.

Elk Head Woman, reincarnated as a teenage girl, arrives on the Blackfeet reservation and spies on Denorah through a school window.

Gabe, Cass, and Nathan undress and enter the sweat lodge together while Victor Yellow Tail tends the hot coals outside.

Gabe crashes into the truck on cinder blocks, crushing Jolene beneath it; Cass loads the rifle and accidentally shoots Nathan instead of Gabe.

Elk Head Woman confronts Gabe after the destruction and demands he kill himself to spare Denorah; he obeys.

Denorah steps between Denny Pease and Elk Head Woman, making a tribal peace gesture; Elk Head Woman transforms and leads her calf away.

Four Blackfoot friends illegally slaughter a herd of elk — including a pregnant cow — on land reserved for tribal elders, setting a supernatural revenge in motion. A decade later, the spirit of the slain cow elk haunts Lewis Clarke in Great Falls, driving him into paranoia that ends in the deaths of his coworker Shaney and his wife Peta, with a living elk calf cut from Peta's body. Lewis flees toward the reservation with the calf but is shot by vigilantes, and his spilled blood completes the spirit's rebirth. Back on the reservation, the incarnated spirit engineers a catastrophic sweat lodge night where Gabe and Cass destroy each other and Gabe takes his own life to protect his daughter Denorah. In the final confrontation, Denorah ends the cycle by stepping between a hunter's gun and Elk Head Woman, allowing the spirit to transform into a cow elk and disappear into the wilderness with her calf.

The headline events driving Elk Head Woman's revenge from massacre to resolution.

Ricky drinks alone at a North Dakota bar, reminiscing about the Thanksgiving Classic elk hunt and his lost friends.

Lewis calls Cass from work to ask whether Cass ever thinks about the elk they killed together a decade ago.

Lewis calls Gabe, who reports the drop-off hunting site is now haunted and that Denorah has become a basketball prodigy.

Shaney visits Lewis's house, they play basketball with flirtatious tension, and she modifies his masking tape elk outline on the floor.

The four friends drive Cass's truck into elk hunting grounds reserved for tribal elders and shoot nine elk indiscriminately.

Game warden Denny Pease arrives at the massacre site and permanently bans all four men from hunting.

Lewis finds notes Shaney wrote in a returned book revealing that elk have ivory canine teeth, and grows deeply suspicious of her.

Lewis and Peta play basketball in the driveway together, clearing his suspicions of her, and they make love in the garage.

After killing Shaney, Lewis pries out her teeth and checks for elk ivory, finding they are completely normal.

Gabe sneaks the antique Mauser rifle out of his father's house intending to trade it to Cass for setting up the sweat.

Gabe visits Denorah while she practices free throws; she bets him $40 she can sink ten in a row and wins easily.

Victor goes to investigate movement in the dark outside the sweat lodge and Elk Head Woman bites him viciously on the throat.

Inside the sweat lodge, Cass reveals to Gabe that the elk cow they killed was pregnant, which Gabe never knew.

Gabe discovers Cass's three dogs murdered outside the sweat lodge and decides to keep the grim finding to himself.

Elk Head Woman, disguised as Shaney Holds, finds Denorah alone on the property and challenges her to a game of 21.

This pool traces the events surrounding the central tragedy, from Ricky's drunken night at a North Dakota bar to the quiet moments in Great Falls that reveal Lewis's ongoing guilt. The original elk massacre unfolds in flashback — four young men stumbling onto a herd on forbidden ground and killing recklessly — as Lewis's phone calls to old friends hint at the wound the incident has left on all of them. Lewis's growing paranoia is seeded by Shaney's loaded visit to his house and her modification of his elk outline, while Denny Pease's hunting ban remains a lasting consequence of the men's crime. On the reservation, Gabe's strained relationship with Denorah and Cass's newfound stability with Jolene show what the men stand to lose, even as Elk Head Woman begins picking off those around the sweat lodge. The pool ends with Denorah unknowingly stepping into a trap when the spirit, wearing her murdered coworker's face, challenges her to a basketball game.

The supporting moments and significant scenes that fill out the story's full arc.

A large elk buck charges Ricky outside the bar and smashes into parked trucks, causing white men to chase him.

Peta arrives home just in time to tackle Lewis into a wall and save him from toppling off the ladder.

Lewis uses masking tape to carefully outline the shape of the dead cow elk on his living room floor.

Lewis breaks down and tells Peta the full story of discovering the cow elk was pregnant and how he buried her fetus.

Police officers visit Lewis about Harley's death and draw their weapons when he raises his hands up into his hair.

Between the slats of a passing train, Lewis sees a human figure with an elk head wearing his wife's work uniform.

Lewis concludes that Peta cannot be Elk Head Woman and shifts all his paranoid suspicion entirely onto Shaney.

Lewis unrolls the cow elk's hide to inspect it and finds the old trading post knife he used during the massacre.

Elk Head Woman's narration reveals she took the place of the child that Lewis and Peta conceived on the night they made love.

Gabe slows his truck for a young woman walking alone in the cold; she makes eye contact with him until he drives away.

Cass casually tells his girlfriend Jo about the thermos of money he hides in the exhaust pipe of the old truck.

Gabe sees a vision of Ricky and Lewis bearing their death wounds inside the sweat lodge and flees outside in panic.

Cass smashes Gabe's windshield accusing him of theft; Gabe empties his pockets, accidentally revealing the engagement ring Cass hid for Jolene.

Denorah crawls under a row of abandoned boxcars and discovers that Elk Head Woman is frozen in fear of the trains.

Denorah collapses among elk bones at the massacre site; Elk Head Woman ignores her and digs up the buried elk calf.

This pool focuses on the pivotal moments that change the course of the narrative, beginning with the elk buck's charge in the parking lot that first brings supernatural danger close to Ricky. It then tracks Lewis's descent through Peta's timely rescue on the ladder, his obsessive recreation of the haunting, and the chilling figure he glimpses between moving train cars. Key revelations follow: the trading post knife hidden inside the elk hide, Lewis's paranoia narrowing entirely onto Shaney, and his devastating confession to Peta about the pregnant elk he buried. In Part 2, Cass casually revealing his hidden thermos to Jolene and Gabe's terrifying vision of his dead friends in the sweat lodge show Elk Head Woman's manipulation quietly bearing fruit. The pool closes at the massacre site itself, where Denorah collapses among elk bones and watches the spirit reclaim her buried calf — the moment that makes the full cost of the original sin undeniable.

The key discoveries and emotional shifts that redirect the story at every stage.