Sleepy Hollow: Delaware

[Warning: Spoilers ahead]

One of the things required of watching genre TV is that you suspend your disbelief, to a point. There’s also the unintended side effect that you don’t take anything at face value. Case in point — by all accounts it certainly looks like they bumped off Joe — as stupidly as possible, in what may be the penultimate episode of Sleepy Hollow EVER, but as I watched that at home last Friday night, I called bullshit.

Even though his cast and crew on Twitter made it seem like it was a done deal, I have to wonder whether they really would have hiked Zack Appelman out to Wonder Con if he had one episode left. I say no. But we could say they all only have two episodes left if they aren’t renewed, so what do I know?

Pandora ties out with the team that they need to torpedo her VOB’s plan for world domination, and that involves counteracting ley lines (hey there, Teen Wolf). They have a new player on the board as Danny throws in and then seems to lead the mission while Crane and Abbie head off to cross the Delaware.

The group taking the hill almost gets the upper hand until The Hidden One senses them coming (of course) and unleashes a sonic boom that knocks them all on their ass. Because she’s dumb like that, Jenny works recon and gets thisclose to him but she can’t take the shot, which would be a waste of bullets anyway. And then he grabs her and essentially turns her love to hate.

How that manifests is awful and terrible and dumb, as Joe, who’s run home to read map coordinates to them over the phone, is re-Wendigo’d just as Papa Mills drives up, unannounced. There’s an unintentionally hilarious exchange as he tries to get away from him, telling him he can see that he’s having a really bad day.

Jenny races up and fires a tracking shot into WendiJoe and then braces herself to tell her dad the truth, but as with all thing Sleepy Hollow, he already knows, and he knew Corbin. What now? That makes the abandonment all the more confuddled but explains why Corbin took such an interest in protecting his daughters.

So, Papa has a lair of his own, and a demon-killing gun, to be used as a last resort, and it is, as Jenny shoots WendiJoe when she can’t talk him back to humanity. He rehumans and tells her it’s OK as she weeps and he dies (or doesn’t).

Crane and Abbie have a lovely chat on the boat ride about their bond to each other that feels very series finale-esque, and then they cross into the other realm, where they find the bodies of Washington’s crew, including another protective zombie. They also find Betsy, which means the one who came back to 1776 was a replica/clone/whatever. And that means the whole year Abbie was on her own, she had no idea that a stasis’d Betsy was just on the other side of the wall. That seems particularly cruel.

Betsy and Crane have an eensy sweet moment before she asks who Abbie is, and they get a little ways down that conversation before turning their attention to the task at hand — rebuilding the box. But the short of it is that Betsy got herself trapped when she tripped something in the chamber and Washington made it out but she was locked inside.

Up on the mountain, the Hidden One’s hourglass runs through and his world domination powers activate and he drops Pandora to her knees as his first order of business.

Only one episode left.

So, my problem with the whole Joe shenanigans is that even if we’re done, and even if we’re not, why not kill him two weeks ago? This is why we can’t have nice things, and why fans have a valid point in doubting “true love” or immediately assuming the worst when a moment of happiness is achieved. That is all kinds of messed up.

I did enjoy the domestic cold open at Casa Mills-Crane, of a barista’d Crane making Abbie a super-caffeinated coffee despite her being on the wagon because they were about to face death (again), and she, having the same thought, brought him some sort of donut abomination, and they quietly enjoyed their treats together — a moment of calm ahead of the coming storm.

One note about the photo at the top of this piece — it’s amazing to me that we started down this road with the two characters at bottom left and then this season populated with everyone else around the table (minus Jenny, who we got early in the first season). It feels like we got very cast-heavy all of a sudden, which isn’t necessarily a negative, because we always had extra players on the board — last season we had Katrina, Henry, Irving, and Abraham, and but I am glad we finally got back to Abbie and Crane as we wind down.

Here’s a sneak peek of “Ragnarok,” which airs Friday at 8e/7c on FOX and 8e/p on CTV two. FOX is very specifically calling it a season finale, so maybe there’s hope yet for a fourth go.

 

Photo and Video Courtesy of FOX

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