Well, we’ve arrived at our two-part season finale of the first season of Sleepy Hollow. Brace yourself for eight months without The Bod (I know!!!). To set the stage for tonight’s back-to-back episodes, last week’s episode unleashed a literal demon on Irving’s family and we learned it wasn’t his first rodeo.
Let’s take a look at “The Vessel.”
First out of the gate, we had Abbie try to work Crane into a pair of skinny jeans and he thankfully shot that down pretty quickly. His attempt to sit in them had him jumping up immediately and remarking that they wounded him–a scene I rewound a few times because Mison was hilarious to watch–before he returned to his waistcoat and period clothes.
Irving brings them up to speed pretty fast on what went down in the park and when they realize that they’re dealing with a jumper (again, straight out of Fallen), they go back through Corbin’s files and find out that Jenny had once been possessed by the same demon. That unleashes all sorts of awkward but Abbie makes a point of not watching the video all the way through until Jenny gives them permission.
Jenny’s never seen it, so it’s an eye-opener for her, and it’s poignant for both girls (and me!) to see Corbin again. They all piece together that they need a specific lantern to defeat the demon–one that Crane saw his regiment take custody of back in the day, i.e. he continues to get proof that the demon hunting has been going on a while. Jenny conveniently knows where it is now but they have to get it from a Doomsday tribe living out in the sticks. It’s interesting that Crane tells them the actual truth and they don’t care, but when Jenny pulls guns on them, that’s a language they understand.
The Irving family hightails it into hiding but the demon goes with them, jumping from Luke’s partner and then into Luke, who brutally kills his friend and then lays siege on the family, jumping into Maisey. Once in Maisey, he then kills the family priest, but thankfully not Washington’s ex-wife.The demon’s quest in all this is Washington’s Bible, which is apparently some sort of demon fighting handbook.
The team lures demon Maisey (with the Irvings in tow) down to the lair and then salt traps him, casting him out to free her, but not before a lot of mwa ha ha about how Abbie and Jenny are marked. That dovetails to an earlier scene where Jenny confides in Crane that she stayed away from Abbie all those years, getting herself arrested and locked up to protect her sister because she was never sure she was completely clear of the demon. Crane, in the show’s fabulous pattern of keeping no secrets, tells Abbie about it and she and Jenny come to a peace about their time apart.
We close with Crane doing the fun elementary school lemon juice trick to read secret ink, where he finds an inscription in the Washington Bible dated after Washington’s death.
And that sets us up for tonight. Here are sneak peeks of “The Indispensable Man” and “Bad Blood,” which I almost want to watch in half-hour increments over the next four weeks to drag them out. Here’s hoping we get a longer second season. News from the TCAs is that it’s possible.