Recap: SLEEPY HOLLOW Saves the World but Takes the Show Down in Flames

Season 3, Episode 18 “Ragnarok”
Written by M.Raven Metzner
Directed by Russell Fine

Well, that really sucked.

I assume that the show must not be being renewed even though they left an opening for the kind of complete revamping that they did in the third season.  If there is a fourth season, it will be very different. And not, I predict, in a good way.

We start out with Betsy (Nikki Reed), Crane (Tom Mison) and Abbie (Nicole Beharie) in the catacombs. They plan to restore the box and return Betsy to her own timeline via the well, telling her nothing about the future so as not to disturb the timeline. The cute part of this is Ichabod correcting Abbie — Star Wars vs Star Trek — and talking about the “City on the Edge of Forever”.

Crane recites the spell given him by Pandora(Shannyn Sossamon). The box is whole again, but dull, lacking the silver it had before. Some hieroglyphs on the wall start glowing. They contain further instructions. As Crane is puzzling out that the box may need one of their souls for full potency, a gray mist grabs Abbie. Crane and Betsy close the box but Abbie is weakened. Crane tells Betsy that they are not coming back with her. He makes a clear choice to be with Abbie. This would explain the Dear John letter and the lack of contact after Betsy returns from the catacombs.

Cr: Tina Rowden/FOX

When they return, they find out about Joe’s (Zach Appelman) death. Jenny does not seem unduly grief stricken. Abbie and Crane say some nice things about Joe. Ezra Mills (James McDaniel) offers to make the arrangements for him. Since the Hidden One (Peter Mensah) took Pandora, and they need her to use the box, they decide to find him following the storm he created and taking some Greek fire flamethrowers with them. Abbie has a brief talk with Sophie (Jessica Camacho) and Reynolds (Lance Gross). I don’t think they appear again. Their contracts must be over already.

Abbie, Jenny, and Crane find the Hidden One and return the box to Pandora. She uses its power to attack the Hidden One but can’t finish the job. It needs the rest of Abbie’s soul. Abbie makes the ultimate sacrifice and lets the box take her. Pandora is gloating over a powerless Hidden One when Jenny takes out a gun and shoots him. For Joe. Crane wants Abbie back. Pandora refuses and talks about how much better a god she will be since she now has the Hidden One’s power, and disappears.

We cut to Abbie in a diner with August Corbin (Clancy Brown). He tells her she’s not going into the light. She’s like a phoenix. Then he sees Joe and is reunited with him.

Pandora goes into a church, telling them she wants to be loved and adored and scares them away with green light coming out of the box. Their fears, I suppose. She plucks the petals of a rose. I loved him, he loved me not. That’s her mourning for her husband, I guess. She wanders into the church cemetery.

A potion to raise the Horseman of Death (Tina Rowden/FOX)

Crane raises the Headless Horseman to combat Pandora. She throws tombstones and spikes from the cemetery gate. Luckily it doesn’t work on him as effectively as it did the banshee. Crane retrieves the Horseman’s ax and the Horseman uses it to slice Pandora. Crane stops him after Pandora is down. She has blood on her hand, and she says that Crane loves Abbie, that she is his everything, and she, Pandora, took her from him. And does he say those three little words? Would it hurt him to say, yes, I love her? He doesn’t. He says he wants her back. Pandora says Abbie is dead, and then dies of a fatal hand wound. Okay, I know the Horseman sliced her through the middle somewhere, but it looks like a fatal bloody hand.

The box starts glowing and Crane runs it into the Masonic cell where it explodes. Crane sees Abbie in a variety of different places. She tells him that her job preparing him is over, her life was complete, and to carry on. He wakes up knowing she is dead.

Jenny and Crane come to the cemetery to pay their respects. Ezra Mills comes to Crane and tells him that there always have to be two Witnesses.  Abbie’s soul will be in a distant relative (I don’t know why, she has two relatives right there) and that he has to find her before the organization does, the one that Washington formed to fight the supernatural. Crane is supposed to head it. Washington knew he would be around hundreds of years later. Ezra gives him the letter to prove it.

Black vans show up. The FBI guy that executed Nivens tells Crane that some people in Washington need to talk to him. As Crane gets in the car, he vows that wherever she is, whoever she is, he will find her. “Sympathy for the Devil” is playing in the background.

Thoughts: Bloody Hell. I don’t know what they are thinking. And I don’t know how a show based on such a flimsy premise could jump the shark, but they did.

There are shows that can kill off the main character and bring them back, and do it in such a way that you forgive them and it enhances the storyline. Sleepy Hollow is not that show. Do I want to start over with Abbie and Jenny’s cousin? Like the replacement Duke cousins on The Dukes of Hazzard? No. Even an identical cousin? No way. I like the show for two reasons. Ichabod Crane, wonderfully played by Tom Mison. And Abbie Mills, wonderfully played by Nicole Beharie. I like it best when they are together.

And if they were going to kill off Abbie, because they knew the actress was leaving, why kill off Joe? Poor Jenny lost her sister and her boyfriend. And for that matter, she is still here; one of the weaker links.

They even say it in the show. There’s a scene where they are trying to look up something to kill a god, like what happened in Ragnarok, only then they had to destroy and remake the world. Abbie says they should avoid that part.

And I’d better stop there before I get into a rant about major character death, which seems to hit everything I watch this season. It is not enough to kill off one character; they have to kill off two at the least.

What they did right? Well, the scenes between Abbie and Crane after she dies are very sweet. It was great that they brought back Clancy Brown for both Abbie and Joe. Pandora’s rise and fall after the Hidden One’s demise was well done. The battle between her and the embodiment of death was spooky and goth.

Ending the season, or the entire series, does not have to mean leaving scorched earth behind you. Perhaps, if Nicole Beharie was leaving, they should have acknowledged that the show was over and ended on a happier note.

Sleepy Hollow aired on Fox at 8pm/7c on Fridays. In the future…who knows?