Episode Report Card 97 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT The Horseman of the Small Pox-alypse
By Kelsea Stahler | Season 1 | Episode 5 | Aired on 10.14.2013
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.The time has come for us to meet the second horseman of the apocalypse: the one whose super villain power is making everyone sick. It sounds mundane, but try telling that to the people whose veins turned black while their eyes burst and they saw visions of a hellish horseman stampeding their way. This evil doesn't exactly have a face unless you count the shade of black in its victims' veins, but it is just as vicious as the enemies that have plagued Sleepy Hollow for the past four episodes. And by that, I mean it's totally conquerable.
The plague is brought on by a little boy named Thomas, who Abbie remarks looks like "he just came from a Renaissance fair." And that's because – no matter how hard Ichabod has to work to convince Abbie of this – Thomas is from the past. The boy even speaks the incredibly dead language Middle English – something Ichabod studied as a hobby in the 1700s. When the boy starts showing signs of disease, Captain Irving has him quarantined and brings in the CDC to assess the issue. Using Ichabod as a translator, they find that the little boy was not supposed to leave his village and that he thinks he became sick because he left. Somehow, Abbie and Irving still think this kid is just a missing person and when he says he's from Roanoke, they assume he means Virginia and start putting out feelers down South.
Ichabod, who's apparently an omniscient being, knows that the boy means Roanoke Island, the first colony which became known as the Lost Colony after the entire population disappeared. He and Abbie track the boy's journey through the forest – which includes breaking dollar store Halloween spider webs – and figure out that he came from a tiny island surrounded by a creek. Ichabod finds a pathway across the creek and he and Abbie visit the Lost Colony. When they pass through murky air (because it's a magical time-traveling colony, duh), they meet Thomas' father, who tells them that the plague comes from the Horseman of Pestilence but that something on the island keeps them from dying from the infection. Bottom line: if they want to save the people Thomas is infecting – modern people whose immune systems can't handle the old timey disease – they need to bring Thomas back to the colony. Oh right. Because getting him past the CDC is going to be so simple.
When they return, Abbie is left to try all this on her own because Ichabod comes down with the plague after touching Thomas the first time he and Abbie met the boy. While Ichabod learns some marginally important information about Katrina being stuck in purgatory, which is run by Moloch – because of course it is – Abbie is forced to fly on her own and accept that all this supernatural stuff is actually happening. She comes to the conclusion that the spring in the middle of the colony must hold water that keeps the plague at bay. She takes this theory to Irving, who believes her and helps her sneak Ichabod and Thomas out of the hospital, and apparently gives her a healthy supply of adrenaline needles to keep Ichabod awake long enough for him to track the path back to the colony. Yes, sure. He'd totally be able to do that while dying.
He manages, but the Horseman of Pestilence is approaching quickly. Once in the village, Ichabod takes Thomas into the spring and submerges himself and the boy, causing the horseman to dissipate before Abbie's terrified face. But just then, the colony does a disappearing act too. Ichabod – knower of all things, somehow – says that the colony was never here and that the boy was lured to modern times by the horseman's magic so that he could infect everyone. Right. Yep. Totally with you. Luckily, now that Thomas is healed and gone, everyone in town is better too. Apparently, there's no problem these two can't defeat without an easy solution in this supposed onslaught of evil.
That is, unless you count the headless horseman, who we learn is back in the final seconds of the episode. It appears he was just taking a bath in that creek around the colony. He emerges from the water, hops on his demon horse, and starts setting fire to the forest. So perhaps something truly wicked – and a little more complicated – this way comes.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!The time has come for us to meet the second horseman of the apocalypse: the one whose super villain power is making everyone sick. Thrilling, I know, but it gets a little more complicated, I promise.
The vessel for the plague is a little boy named Thomas, who we meet in the first scene of the episode. A modernly dressed little girl is daring the boy to chase her in the forest, only to disappear and make way for an unidentified evil horseman (undoubtedly one of the Big Four of the Apocalypse). The horseman forces the boy onto the highway where the tormentor dissipates as trucks and busses go by.
Cut to Abbie helping Ichabod move into Corbin's cabin. It's the perfect home for a fake Oxford professor: it's old (in the modern definition of the word, which is overly applied according to Ichabod – it's the "artisanal” of decrepit buildings, apparently) and it belongs to a dead guy. Also, it's rustic and by a lake, so that's nice. Well, it would be nice if either of these people were ever home. Abbie gets a call to a crime scene, so they stop their little bonding moment to run down to the site. In the middle of town, the little boy from the forest is found unconscious. While everyone should be worried about why the little boy's veins are black, Abbie's ex-boyfriend Morales is determined to find something wrong with Ichabod. Great use of your time, dude.
Ichabod assesses that the boy's illness is decidedly not modern and that notion, coupled with the boy's old timey garb and that fact that he speaks a language deader than Latin (Middle English), drives Ichabod to the correct conclusion: The boy is from the past. But Abbie is determined to make this case a normal one. She unsuccessfully tries to match the lost boy to a missing child database, even though she should know better by now.
Irving calls in the CDC to assess the illness, but he needs Ichabod to help them communicate, so they video conference him into the boy's little quarantine bubble and we wonder if Ichabod is getting paid for all this free service and advice he's been providing. Give the man some of that modern cash, people. Morales has a similar question, but Irving basically tells him to pipe down, Chachi, and we all move on. (Except Morales, who calls Oxford only to find out that Ichabod's made-up backstory is true because Ichabod is a wizard and part-time ninja who clearly put a failsafe in place already.)
During the video conference, we learn the boy's name is Thomas and that he thinks he's sick because he left his village after being told to never leave. The culprit for his disobedience is the little girl, whom he keeps calling the "evil girl.” Apparently, this isn't enough for Abbie because she still thinks he's an abducted child and that his captors probably taught him Middle English to keep him from escaping and asking for help. Yes, because evil Oxford professors have set up shop in Sleepy Hollow with elaborate schemes to raise children and dispose of them Hansel and Gretel-style. Or not.