Sleepy Hollow - 'The Awakening', 'Tempus Fugit', 'I, Witness' and 'Whispers in the Dark'

This is a copy of the Liberty Bell, which means I get to say...

Sleepy Hollow ramps up to the season two finale with 'The Awakening', in which Katrina goes full evil and joins Henry in his rather sudden crusade to bring about the Renaissance of the witchbreed, a concept that has barely been mentioned before 'Spellcaster', but which now apparently dominates their thinking. You see, you have to be born a witch to use magic (like, proper magic, rather than the other kind of magic that any bugger can apparently knock out with the right spell book, as in 'The Kindred',) and then you have to awaken to your power. Young Jeremy/Henry did that all on his own, but you can also force an Awakening on those with witch blood by ringing the right bell; the Liberty Bell, naturally, which was cracked because Washington sent Crane to blow it up to prevent an army of dark witches overthrowing humanity.

So anyway, Henry has a replica bell, but can't do the awakening spell, thanks to his mortal father. Katrina, on the other hand, is pure witch (because witches, who have been nothing but goodies previously, are now magic Nazis with a hard on for race purity) and after the tribulations, reversals and confusion of the last, oh, week and a half, is right on board the eugenics train. She even switches out her awkward goth get up for some proper evil swishery, forcing Abbie and Crane to come at the mother and son duo, guns blazing. They get captured, but come up with a plan to shoot at Henry and a chunk of C4 Abbie attached to the bell simultaneously, noting that he can be wounded now that his armour is gone, and bargaining on him only being able to Sith lord one bullet at a time.

...and now for something completely different!

Unexpectedly, however, he stops the bullet bound for the bell and takes a 'greek fire bullet' to the torso. Henry has a rather sweet moment with his dad as he passes, but Katrina goes into meltdown. She blames Crane for all her woes and decides to use the Traveler spell to go back and not save his life after his fight with the Horseman of Death. Abbie tackles her at the threshold of the portal, however, and finds herself in Ye Olde Sleepy Hollow to the strains of an olde timey instrumental of 'Sympathy for the Devil' just to round out the parallels to Episode 1.

"Fuck yeah we got buttons."

Thus we come to 'Tempus Fugit', as Abbie struggles to drag Crane out of the path of Hurricane Katrina (too soon?) Getting him pulled off the field saves his life, but mucks up the future. Fortunately, Benjamin Franklin is able to send Abbie to her ancestress, Grace Dixon, who knows how to reverse the Traveler spell and banish the Darkest Timeline to an ontological cul de sac in the back of Abbie's memory. First, however, she needs to convince Crane, which is made harder after the Horseman decapitates Franklin, the only man who believes her (another parallel, to the fate of Abbie and Jenny's mentor, Sheriff Corbin.)

Katrina is working with Abraham, the Head-Having Horseman, and the rest of the Continental Army thinks that Abbie is a spy and Crane a traitor of some kind, but at last a video on her phone convinces Crane and he runs to save her, only to find her well and truly saving herself. They find Grace Dixon and Abbie reverses the spell even as Crane is about to take an axe to the neck. Thwarted, Katrina aims to fry Abbie, but Ichabod stabs her to death, leaving the Witnesses, Jenny and Irving (now free of War's hold) to carry on the good fight, renewal and contract negotiations allowing.

Betsy Ross - relegating Ichabod Crane to second most ubiquitous badass of
the Revolutionary War.

'I, Witness' picks up the story nine months later, with Crane gone walkabout, Abbie having finished her training at Quantico and working in the near-as-damnit Sleepy Hollow field office of the FBI, and Irving vanished into the night like an old oak table
. Ichabod returns with a mystery tablet and word that something has happened to the Horseman. The tablet looks set to illuminate the 'second tribulation' (since they blew up all the good material last season) and falls in with Abbie's investigation of a series of beast-like murders.

Despite the threatened demolition of the archive and the pressures of FBI fieldwork, the Witnesses slowly get the old mojo working and determine that the killer is a yaoguai, a fear-eating demon of a type that troubled the patriots at Bunker Hill until Washington sent word that it was vulnerable when feeding. At that time, its eyes turn white, hence 'don't shoot until you see the whites of their eyes.' Oh, Sleepy Hollow; this is the kind of secret history bullshit I love you for. This warning was conveyed by Washington's top agent. Not Ichabod Crane, but his way more badass partner Betsy 'Flag Lady' Ross, joining as a regular despite being firmly in the past.

Theme restaurants are the Devil, but I can't help loving this menu. Croissant
the Delware indeed.

The beast is stopped, but at the cost of Abbie's mentor's life, and she accepts that this is probably part of a new tribulation, especially as the Sumerian tablet that Ichabod found in his English family crypt is headed 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow' and apparently refers to them as 'the Destroyers'. We also meet our new arc villain, a woman named Pandora, who has a box (into which she sucked the Horseman to give it the power of Death) and is apparently harvesting fear to water a tree with. Probably an evil tree.

Next up, in 'Whispers in the Dark', Pandora summons a shadow beast to reap more fear for the tree. This gribbly preys on guilty secrets, which means that when it gets a swing at Crane and Abbie we learn their dark secrets: That Crane once thought for about five seconds of selling back out to the British, and that Abbie is stalking her absentee father and trying to summon the courage to speak to him. It's nothing all that sensational.

Tentacles!

Meanwhile, Jenny is looking for a new sidekick, the last two having left town suddenly. What she finds is Joe Corbin, or rather he finds her (remember? Sheriff Corbin's boy who was a Wendigo for a bit?) and then promptly gets kidnapped by another relic hunter in order to make her hand over an artefact she picked up last week called the Anubis Shard.

Once more, the answers to the A plot come from Grace Dixon's journal and the adventures of Betsy Ross: This gribbly killed the other members of Betsy's spy ring before Crane could exfiltrate them, but Betsy named the would be killer - a fellow spy who sold out, as Crane did not, and was turned into a shadow-assassin by a British general for his trouble - and by naming him rendered him vulnerable. Thus Crane is able to un-spook Marcus Collins enough for the Witnesses to kill him.

Also, Abbie's new boss is an old boyfriend from Quantico, the Witnesses have identified their nemesis from security footage of a coffee shop that shouldn't have existed, and Ichabod has secured funds to save the Archive; if only he were a US citizen. Pandora's tree is looking pretty healthy; evil, but hale.

As we transition into Season 3, we have ups and downs. Shannyn Sossamon's Pandora is no Henry Parrish, but on the other hand she's no Katrina Crane, and she clearly has an arc plot of a masterplan, facilitated by the monster-of-the-week nature of her box, so everyone is happy. Well, unless they were hoping for some sort of resolution between Crane and the Horseman, because that ship would seem to have sailed in the name of establishing Pandora's badass chops. Similarly to the Horseman, Irving's departure is a bit of a let down, and similarly to Pandora, while Joe Corbin is no Irving, he's definitely no Nick Hawley, and it's good that Jenny has someone to work against, and someone who ties back to the long shadow of Clancy Brown's all-too-brief time on the show instead of being some cool-haired, moody loner with nothing to do with anything.

Don't you just want to punch that smirk?

I've yet to make up my mind about SAC Daniels, but he seems a bit... smug.

And then there's Betsy Ross, who honestly could get very tiresome very quickly. I get that they need someone to stand in for Katrina in flashback land, but so far she's way too awesome. She makes Crane look like he was sauntering through the War of Independence and not doing much. I hesitate to cry Mary Sue on a competent female character's first outings, but there is a touch of it about her. Hopefully they'll calm down a little and establish a stronger relationship between her and Crane, because if she's going to be a regular it needs to measure up to the chemistry Nicole Beharie and Tom Mison have going on.

Also, just three episodes to go until the Sleepy Hollow/Bones crossover. Whee!