Nashville season 5 episode 18 spoilers: Scarlett, Gunnar mugged

On Nashville season 5 episode 18 airing on CMT Thursday night, Scarlett and Gunnar will find themselves in a desperate place. Not only is their relationship on the line, but the same could be said for their lives. What starts as an argument outside of a grocery store eventually turns into a whole lot more.

In the sneak peek below (which comes to us via Us Weekly), things start off with Gunnar accusing Scarlett of running away from what he feels to be the truth: That she really doesn’t want to be with him, and is just going along with whatever is going on in the relationship for the sake of doing so. He wants a higher level of passion that apparently is not there as much as he would like for it to be.

For the sake of this preview, the reality is that it doesn’t matter all that much given what they’re facing (they’ll have a chance to figure out the parameters of their relationship soon enough). A group of young guys (they look like teenagers) approach Gunnar asking to buy them some beer, and when he refuses several times over, their “leader” decides that this is a great time to pull out a gun and force them into doing the deed. At this point, they’re also out to take their money, and also rough up Scarlett when she spills the milk all over his shoes. The fact that she is pregnant only makes this whole issue all the more heartbreaking.

What in the world would compel a guy this age to be this violent towards a woman? It’s hard to imagine why he’d want to do this or what would compel him to take it to this level. Regardless, this is an experience that could have serious consequences in a wide array of ways.

Is there hope on the other side of it?

Maybe you can argue that a shared trauma like this could bring Gunnar and Scarlett closer together, and on some terrible level distract from the recent negative stories that have been circulating in the press about them. Obviously, though, you don’t want to get sympathy just on the basis of someone mugging you; it’s an experience that haunts you for a long time. It’s even worse if there’s something that happens to the baby as a result of either this or the stress that comes afterwards.

All we really know is that after what happened with Rayna, we’re not altogether sure that we can stand losing another character from the show this soon. Hopefully, we’ll see Scarlett and Gunnar survive so that they can figure out a better way to be. More than anything, they just need some consistency, but they haven’t been able to find that in their lives for a rather long time.

Want some further insight on this episode?

There is another preview for the installment that you can see over at the link here, and we highly recommend that you check that out. (Photo: CMT.)