As I mentioned last week, it’s tough to keep audiences engaged this time of year. It’s why so few shows air new episodes. Sleepy Hollow’s shortened season, and I presume a midseason replacement for the time slot, means that they want to air as many episodes as they can. They also want to make up for the couple of weeks the World Series pre-empted the series. These are all factors as to why I think the last two episodes have been the weakest of the season, despite there being things I enjoyed and some expansions to the show’s story.
Continuing the reveal of Baby Crane from the last episode, Ichabod and Abbie wonder how to find out who he was. Ichabod calls in the Sin Eater (Walter Bishop alert!), who agrees to help Ichabod connect with Katrina to find out about his son. According to Katrina, Baby Crane was named Jeremy, but was sent away to keep him safe. He was given a totem from his mother to protect him from Katrina’s coven. A lot of foreshadowing of these elements appeared in Abbie’s vision/dream from a few episodes ago.
The totem becomes Jeremy’s Golem, protecting him in place of his father, but it doesn’t succeed. The witches from Katrina’s coven find Jeremy and bury him alive. When Ichabod returns from visiting Katrina in Purgatory, he brings the Golem with him, which starts terrorizing people. The Golem goes after the coven witches, but he is stopped by Ichabod, whose blood relation to Jeremy is the only thing capable of stopping the Golem.
While the ending of the episode leads us to the end of the season, bringing back Moloch and Abbie’s connection to him (we’ll get to the Irvings in a little bit), the Baby Crane storyline seems a bit too self contained. I know there must be more—you can’t just bury someone alive in a supernatural story and have him NOT return (my first thought was Imhotep from The Mummy)—but the writers haven’t acknowledged this just yet.
I don’t really know what I want from this mini-arc, but there seems to be something missing. Hopefully it will fully connect to the rest of the story later, but for now, I will posit some theories. Jeremy Crane:
- is Moloch
- is a Horseman (none make sense)
- is a ancestor to the Sin Eater (making Ichabod one as well)
- will return alive, in a similar way to Ichabod being “asleep” for all those years
Hopefully when the show returns in 2014, the pieces will connect better.
Also in this episode, we got to hang out with the Irvings. Little Irving doesn’t want her dad to weaken her despite her disability, and the captain is trying to figure out how to live with his choices and the supernatural stuff he’s seen since her accident. He goes to a church (“Catholic” seems off here— America is primarily Protestant, though as a TV Tropes article states, Catholicism works for conspiracies, exorcisms, and demons in ways other denominations don’t) and speaks to the priest, but Irving leaves unsettled.
Then, in the park, his conversation with a street vendor recalls his words with the priest. It’s hard to tell if the demon was there with the priest or if they are working together. The plot was contained to the middle of the episode then dropped in favor of the Golem, so we won’t know for a while who the demon was and what he meant by Little Irving having to “fight for her soul.” I for one can’t wait for her story to connect with Abbie and Jenny’s.
I think the last couple of episodes were a bit rough due to the time of year- once we get back, there is one episode airing January 13, then a two-part finale on the 20th. I think this was just a pre-finale slump that’s sometimes typical of holiday episodes. Once we return in January, I believe the real action and major forward moving plot will return for the better. Are you sticking with Sleepy Hollow for the finale?
Constance Gibbs (@ConStar24, ConStar Studies TV) loves television more than most things and aspires be a TV writer. You can find her in the Hufflepuff basement watching Disney movies and getting lost on the internet well into the night.
