Sleepy Hollow: This Is War

This is up a lot later than I would have liked, but hey – better late than never.

Quick comment on this promotional poster. The stance of each character says so much about who they are and how they relate to one another: Ichabod and Abbie in the foreground, Henry lurking ominously between them, and Jenny/Katrina standing behind their respective family members. Only Jenny looks like she means business with her crossed arms, but Katrina has a much more vulnerable stance, which pretty much sums up their activities in this episode.

And Irving...? Well, he’s just casually waiting for his turn.

So, Sleepy Hollow. It’s back!

What you have to understand is that I’ve spent this last week watching Penny Dreadful, an atmospheric horror series that takes its time when it comes to setting up the characters, drawing out suspense, and exploring its surroundings. It’s a show that will linger on a held gaze between two characters, giving the audience time to question what’s really going on inside their heads, and where the sight of a woman walking slowly along a beach manages to be just as enthralling as an action-packed gunfight with vampires.

By comparison, it felt as though Sleepy Hollow was screaming non-stop at the top of its lungs at me for forty-five minutes. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but right on the heels of Penny Dreadful? Yeah, it was quite jarring, and more than a little exhausting.

But I’m going to try and recap this episode on its own merits, even though half the time I was silently begging for it to slow down. We all know where last season left off: with Ichabod buried beneath the four white trees, Abbie trapped in Purgatory, Jenny injured in a car accident and Katrina carried off by the Headless Horseman.

And yet this episode opened a year later – or so the exposition tells us – in which Abbie throws a surprise party (of one) for Ichabod’s birthday. Both express sorrow that their wife/sister were killed (huh??) before they’re called to the Sheriff’s department and the headless bodies that await them.

Aw yeah.

But there are little hints here and there that something is wrong. The cabin door blows open of its own volition. The candle on the cupcake reignites itself. The roots of a miniature tree on the desk curl over the side of its pot. Ichabod keeps getting out of breath.

Yup, it’s an illusion. But it had you going there for a while, didn’t it. This sequence served a number of purposes, first to re-establish the rapport between our two Witnesses, second as a fake-out to play with the audience’s minds, and thirdly to introduce this episode’s plot. It turns out the illusion was the work of Henry... Jeremy...War (what exactly are we calling him now?) who set up the whole thing in order to find the location of this week’s McGuffin.

It’s the Ghenna Key, a device that provides a loophole to that pesky law that states a soul cannot leave Purgatory without another one taking their place. And get this – it was the key that Benjamin Franklin flew in the storm, not as part of his electricity experiments, but in an attempt to destroy it with lightening. As it happens, the key is good news for busting Abbie out of Purgatory, but in Moloch’s hands it will allow him to enter the world with his undead army.

Wow, you’d think it would have come up before this.

Abbie realizes that Jenny was once sent by Corbin to Philadelphia to fetch a notebook that had a sketch of the key inside it (or something – it’s not like it really matters), and by doing so gives Henry the information he requires.

On the basis of absolutely nothing (I can only speculate that the secret was out and so Henry saw no further need to maintain the illusion) Ichabod begins to question the events of the past year, and the Witnesses realize that they remember no significant details. Cat’s out of the bag, the illusion crumbles, and they find themselves back where the finale left them.

Henry and the Hessians retrieve Jenny’s unconscious body from the wreck of her car (or so we assume) and after the requisite attempt at undermining her importance and relationship to her sister, Henry delves into Jenny’s brain and retrieves the information he wants. Evil chuckle, ominous orders to the Hessian, snappy one-liner, end scene!

Whew, I’m already exhausted.

Ichabod wakes up in his coffin and retrieves Abbie’s cell-phone – you know, the one she gave him in last season’s finale, the one that we all knew would play a crucial role in his escape, the device that would lead to a perfect full-circle scene in which his mastery of the new-fangled modern technology he hated so much would end up saving his life and also plug into the show’s wonderful old-meets-new aesthetic that was established in the very first episode when the Horseman started toting that machine gun?

Yeah, no. Turns out Abbie’s gift was a Chekhov’s Misfire, and instead he McGyvers his way out of the ground using – does it really matter?

"Don't thank me, thank the soil's silver deposits."

Meanwhile, powerful witch and Quaker spy Katrina Crane is being held at the Horseman’s bachelor pad, completely stymied by bonds that don’t even secure her to the chair.

Know what I'd do in this situation? Stand up.

I don’t know what’s going on here. I don’t understand how a show that created Abbie and Jenny Mills also came up with Katrina. I don’t know why she’s not using her witch powers, and I definitely don’t know why she’s not smart enough to pull a Decoy Damsel to put the Horseman off his guard. C’mon, that’s the oldest trick in the book!

Everything that happens in these scenes is the straightest example of damsel in distress I’ve seen in a long time, and though I suppose we should give her credit for stabbing the Horseman in the hand with his own knife, it got her exactly three steps before she was dragged back to her seat by the hair.  

And the thing is, I don’t hate Katrina. I don’t even think fandom hates Katrina. It’s quite astonishing really, that a character who ticks all the usual boxes for “reasons we hate this female character,” up to and including “threat to my OTP” is actually discussed with exasperation rather than salivating hatred.

And the really annoying thing? That this episode (almost accidentally) demonstrates that Katrina must be a badass, considering the only way to communicate with those outside of Purgatory is to use Moloch's mirror. EVERY time she appeared to Ichabod and Abbie was because she had crept into Moloch’s cave and used his own device against him. And not only does that happen entirely off screen, but there’s no opportunity in the narrative to give her any credit for it.

On the plus side? This is the best her hair has ever looked.

Speaking of Purgatory, that’s where Abbie is still trapped, though I’m not entirely sure how she got out of that giant dollhouse. This would have to be my second disappointment of the episode, since I was pretty certain that her escape would hinge on a) the fact that no one can leave Purgatory without being forgiven (established in the final episode of the last season) and b) the presence of younger Jenny. My theory was that these two factors would allow Abbie to find her own loophole out of Purgatory, by having her sister forgive her for the lies she told when they first saw Moloch as teenagers (because hey – it’s not like that dollhouse wasn’t the perfect setting for that), but nope – magical key it is.

This is the problem with long hiatuses – you become too attached to your own elaborate theories.

But hey, at least this way we get a coda for John Cho’s character that doesn’t involve him as a giant bug-man. He tells her about Moloch’s mirror and how it can be used to communicate with the outside world. Which on the one hand, nicely explains all the mirror-action that we saw in the first season, but on the other, kind of robs those scenes of their inherent spookiness. But Andy gets to reaffirm his humanity and his capacity for free will before disappearing, probably for good – see you on Selfie, I guess.

Meanwhile, Jenny is busting her way out of the storage warehouse in a way that only doubles my second-hand embarrassment for Katrina, when Ichabod busts through the wall in an ambulance. So I guess that cell-phone did get a purpose after all. Plus, there’s this reaction shot, which can go in the “stills that perfectly capture the nature of this show” pile:

The show sadly skips the chance to depict even a second of the surreal contrast between the normal routine of Sleepy Hollow and the frenetic panic of Ichabod and Jenny as they scrabble to find a way to free Abbie, but after Ichabod recalls a random comment from Benjamin Franklin and decodes a message that was written in his alphabet (oh show), they realize the key is buried – you know what, nobody even cares. By this point the writers know that however nonsensical their plots get, we’re going to keep tuning in for this:

I mean – they went for the hug straight away. There was no hesitation or posturing or... oh dear, something in my eye...

Back in the Horseman’s Love Shack nothing much is going on except for what might possibly be the most gut-bustingly, tear-inducing, funniest moment in this show’s history, all the more so because I honestly don’t know what the actor/writers/director were going for. We can only speculate as to the motivations behind this:

"Is she checking me out? Is she? I can't tell, I don't have a head."

Oh god, I can’t... I don’t even know... what is happening here? I can only suppose it’s Headless’s genuine attempt to get Katrina’s attention, because a moment later he comes out with his best suit on and gives Katrina that emerald from that flashback from last season. You know the one. Now she can see Abraham’s head, and round two of “why don’t you love me?” begins.

Okay, let me catch my breath.

Ichabod and Jenny arrive at the ley lines where they can reach Purgatory, Ichabod gets a hug before he goes (aww), Abbie scrambles around for Katrina’s amulet, Ichabod arrives and offers her water – but wait! Turns out that he’s a fake and the two Ichabods attack each other while Abbie looks on in blurry-cam because that’s a great way of saving money on the FX that would otherwise be required in having Tom Mison fight himself.

Director: "Nailed it."

One Ichabod grabs the key and rushes to Abbie, but all that repetition of “LEFT-tenant” that’s been strewn throughout this episode pays off when Fake!Ichabod calls Abbie “lieutenant” and she promptly cuts his head off with a sword. Wow. That’s both hardcore and thematically appropriate.  

The real Ichabod runs up and they fist-pump, which was much more rewarding the second time around since Abbie adds a little “pow” to the end and the first time I watched this I was momentarily terrified that Ichabod would think she was a fake and cut her head off.

He doesn’t, so it’s all good. The two of them repeat the incantation, and are thrown back into the normal world just before Moloch catches up to them. The indestructible key disintegrates, because what lightening can’t do, a non-existent breeze can I guess, but the sheer unlikelihood of this is quickly forgiven because here comes Jenny for more hugs! It’s why we all tuned in. 

Back at the cabin we get the wrap-up: the team is back together and they stopped End of Days, which is a job well done, Ichabod’s wife is a captive of the Horseman and Ichabod’s son is pure evil, which he's vaguely concerned about, and there’s still no update on Irving, Macey and Morales, which I guess is next week’s plot – but at least Ichabod and the Mills sisters are primed and ready for it.

But wait! There’s a final coda involving a surprisingly understanding Moloch giving Henry a spiffy new suit of armour with a flaming sword. The music tells me that this is a lot more horrific than it looks, so I'll reserve judgment for next week.

Miscellaneous Observations:

As much as people enjoyed the opening fake-out, my main gripe is that it was filled with too much exposition. Every word out of Ichabod and Abbie’s mouths seemed to be explanations or updates of some kind. I mean, honestly. “We’re still in Purgatory.” “It’s all a trick!” “The illusion has been shattered.” YES WE KNOW. Again, I think I’ve been recently spoiled by Penny Dreadful, which felt absolutely no compunction to explain anything to the audience, but at the same time there was some pretty clunky dialogue here.

In fact, this premiere felt very much a Sleepy Hollow checklist of things to cover. Banter between our two leads? Check. An American revolutionary who was aware of the forces of evil? Check. At least twenty scenes of Ichabod being irritated by modern technology? Check. Katrina being useless? Check. It’s not that any of those things are unwelcome (except the last) but in this case it felt a bit artificial, like the writers wanted to write a “quintessential Sleepy Hollow episode” and ended up with facsimile of one instead.

But the chemistry between Tom Mison and Nicole Beharie remains intact, and amidst all the hugs and smiles and declarations of devotion that were strewn throughout this episode, I think my favourite moment would have to be their desperation as they were being dragged away from each other, back into their separate Purgatories, but still yelling plans and promises to each other as the illusion shattered.

So Henry is a Sin Eater? I thought that whole story was just a ruse to get Ichabod to trust him, but apparently he does have some kind of ability to read the truth in people’s minds. Which has nothing whatsoever to do with sin, but – whatever. He’s psychic.

Will Katrina’s amulet have some further significance? There seemed to be an odd amount of emphasis on Abbie searching for it.  

So, Sleepy Hollow is back. Honestly, this episode felt a little slipshod to me, and I wouldn't have minded more of a gradual reunion between our leads (the Ghenna Key was a total cheat), but at the same time the writers know that their audience is predominantly here for hugs and banter between our main cast.  So who am I to complain? I'm settling in for season two.