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This week, we pick right back up where we left off: Abbie's sister Jenny has escaped from the mental facility and the main concern is chasing down Abbie's misbehaving little sibling.
Ichabod and Abbie dig into Jenny's files, and while Abbie is too busy chewing on the gristle of her relationship with her little sister, Ichabod figures out that the seven foster homes she cycled through might be a good place to start. Abbie's practically handing the reins to Ichabod now. Pull yourself together, woman.
He's right of course, and the duo find one of Jenny's foster parents, who directs them to a secluded cabin. It turns out the cabin belonged to Corbin and that he and Jenny were working together. Jenny is already there and ready to throw down with Abbie – this quickly becomes an ongoing theme through the episode. So. Much. Bickering. Luckily, Ichabod keeps the ladies on track: Jenny has returned to Corbin's home because he asked her to retrieve a sextant that actually holds a map of Sleepy Hollow. Before we can figure out what's so special about some old timey tool, a gang of Germans shoot up the cabin and steal the sextant while Jenny detains their leader and Abbie shoots fruitlessly at the escape vehicle. Thanks for your immense help there, Ab.
They tie the German guy up and proceed to pump him for intel. While the sisters bicker some more, Ichabod manhandles the German until he finds a tattoo on his chest that aligns him with the Reinhessen or Shadow Warriors. This man is a Hessian, like the Headless Horseman, and apparently he's only willing to cooperate with people who recognize his tattoos and speak "excellent German," like Ichabod. He spills just about every possible detail like the worst classic villain: the box indicated on the sextant map is the fabled Lesser Key of Solomon and if opened, is set to release 72 very nasty demons.
But this confession is actually a two-fer. The Hessian also confesses that there are more Hessians in hiding in Sleepy Hollow than even he knows and that they just keep multiplying and getting stronger. It sounds like a totally empty playground threat, but he also says that their leader is the demon Abbie and Ichabod have seen in the forest (horns, pale skin, legs like a steroid-riddled gazelle – remember?). The Hessian takes a cyanide pill and we take a break from that huge revelation to remember Ichabod's handy dandy photographic memory.
Ichabod's able to draw the map he saw for all of 15 seconds from memory and use it to take Jenny and Abbie into Sleepy Hollow to retrieve the Lesser Key of Solomon. When they get to the site, another set of Hessians as already dripped blood all over they key (which is apparently unlocks it) and a fiery demon portal has opened up in the floor. Abbie manages to steal the book and dump it into the fire, curbing the flow of angry demons. Again, they solved another problems way too easy, but at least the big, overarching mystery is deepening.
With the danger temporarily quelled, Abbie and Jenny finally have a moment to reconcile their sisterly differences. Abbie has learned that Jenny was a freedom fighter and not just some thug, and Jenny sees that Abbie doesn't actually hate her with the fire of a thousand suns. They don't quite hug and make up, but Abbie offers to help get Jenny out of the mental facility for good and Jenny seems open to potentially, maybe, kind of someday forgiving Abbie. Hey, it's a start.
Finally, Ichabod and his infinite base of scholarly wisdom cracks the last piece of the Hessian's code. Before he died, he said that Moloch was coming. Ichabod remembered that Moloch was a god from Paradise Lost with a penchant for child sacrifice and a mission to lead an army of demons against Heaven (perhaps 72 demons). Sounds a lot like this horned demon the Hessian spoke of. And in case that wasn't proof enough, the drawing in this particular copy of Paradise Lost looks exactly like the horned demon that's been tormenting our fine heroes, so it's pretty much settled.
Finally, we're getting somewhere.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Finally, we're getting somewhere. But before delving right back into the hellfire, brimstone, and blood-curdling hands-on torture rampant in this episode, Sleepy Hollow gives us a brief moment of levity. We find Ichabod sitting in Abbie's car, calling talking to his weeping Northstar operator Yolanda, about the melodic and heartbreaking story of his love for his missing wife Katrina. Can you blame an unsuspecting woman for falling prey to his lyrical storytelling? Nope. Not a bit.
But that moment quickly disappears when Abbie comes out of the asylum to inform Ichabod that Jenny escaped. We're hitting the ground running and with this show, that means some of us are about to be out of breath. Irving immediately blames Jenny's escape on Ichabod – oh yeah, blame the handsome time traveler for everything, he only told her about the Sleepy Hollow murders and suggested she might be connected enough to help solve them. Oh, right. Understandable enough. Still, Abbie has a hunch that Jenny's escape is related to the murders; Irving doesn't buy it, but he gives her 12 hours because even he knows he doesn't really understand what's going on.
It's not long before we learn what Jenny's escape is really about: she heads to a Sleepy Hollow dive bar where she retrieves a duffle bag full of weapons and newspaper clippings about Abbie that he's been storing for her. Unfortunately for Jenny's friend the bartender, the local German piano teacher is getting creepy calls from electronically-altered voices telling him to go after Jenny's known associates to find her before she gets her hands on something he refers to as "Item 37." Though the name suggests it's merely one in a string of items, it's apparently important enough to send Mr. Piano to the Sleepy Hollow dive bar where he tortures and beheads the bartender with a James Bond-level torture kit in order to figure out where Jenny is heading.
Abbie and Ichabod take a less violent approach to finding Jenny, tracking down one of her seven foster parents and pumping her for info. It's made a little easier by the fact that this particular foster parent fulfills the stereotypical deadbeat role. The woman's most recent ward is sleeping on the floor and suffering from malnutrition, and Abbie uses that knowledge to force the woman to divulge information. Luckily, Abbie's a good cop, so even after the woman tells Abbie and Ichabod to go to a cabin in the woods, Abbie says she's going to call child services on her. And thank God for that. If she's going to be the woman who abandoned her sister, she can't also be the woman who abandoned another helpless child in the care of some dastardly care-provider.
While they make their way to Jenny, her bartender friend is discovered by Irving and Co., who determine that the beheading is separate from the cauterized beheadings of the weeks. If only they knew how incredibly wrong they were – of course, since they're on the realistic side of the law enforcement world, they'd be nuts to draw any other inclusion. They decide that it's clearly a team doing the torturing, so it's best to keep the discovery under wraps until they know more – but why just this one? Irving, you know something bigger is going on. Get off your stubborn horse and admit it.
Ichabod and Abbie arrive the decrepit cabin Jenny's foster mom tipped them off to, where Abbie immediately begins breaking in, because I guess she's related to her criminal record-heavy little sister after all. It turns out it's Sheriff Corbin's house and Jenny is already there because she was working with Corbin as a freedom fighter, helping people across the world and retrieving artifacts like lady Indiana Jones. Immediately, the bickering begins – something we're forced to get used to rather quickly this week – and Ichabod has use his prominent voice to tell them what giant babies they're being.
That works long enough to get Jenny to tell her sister and Ichabod why she escaped to visit Corbin's cabin: When they worked together, he knew he was headed for a gruesome death and as such, he told Jenny to return to his house to retrieve a sextant. When Jenny finds it immediately – I suppose it would make sense that the Sheriff would have run a tidy house, but thar be villains about, dude.
They examine the item and Ichabod recognizes the markings: they match those on a chest he and the Rebels found on a Redcoat ship during the Revolution. The contents of the chest were said to be able to turn the tides of war, and Ichabod was sent to steal it, only he was the only survivor of the attack and immediately ended up sending the box off to Washington without ever opening it. He also says that while he stole the chest, his friend Samuel Adams (yeah, that Sam Adams) led the Boston Tea Party as a mere distraction. Who cares about taxation without representation, find me a chest with a cool drawing on it! We do get one last swift clue though: the box was stolen by his regiment, the 37th regiment to be exact. The box is Item 37 and wouldn't you know it, the sextant actually holds a treasure map of Sleepy Hollow dictating the final resting place of that very spooky and powerful chest. This revelation also means the Piano teacher and his thugs can only be moments away from attacking our heroes.
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And that's exactly where they are. In moments, the cabin is riddled with bullet holes as the German music teacher and his friends show up to steal the sextant. Ichabod and Jenny manage to capture the head German while Abbie uselessly wastes her bullets by shooting them aimlessly at the escape vehicle (that only works if you shoot the freaking tires or aim at some people's heads, woman. Anger alone will not stop that car).
While Round 2 of Jenny vs. Abbie begins, Ichabod takes a moment to manhandle the German, who's tied to a chair and prepped for interrogation. Upon spying one the German's fancy tattoos, Ichabod realizes he's actually a Hessian bearing the mark of the Reinhessen or Shadow Warriors, just like the 5th Battalion Hessian Ichabod beheaded during the war. Apparently, the fact that Ichabod knows who the Hessian is and speaks excellent German is enough of a reason for the him to give up some intel: the box is actually the Lesser Key of Solomon, the fabled doorway that's primed to release 72 dark souls, a.k.a. demons, on Earth. And since the Hessian's buddies have already skedaddled, they've as good as got the key in their hands. Sorry, time-traveling colonial dude.
But there's more (because of course there's more). The Hessian says that he and his fellow Hessians have been living in their community for years as Sleepy Hollow's friends and neighbors. This guy, however, says he's not even sure how many of them there are, but they're everywhere and they're getting stronger. Even though that's the exact thing a guy with no plan would say, we're inclined to believe him. Abbie demands to know the leader of this supposed sleeper cell, and surprise: it's the demon who appeared to them in the forest and again in the prison. But before the Hessian can explain more, completely willingly and without any disgusting torture, he bites down on a cyanide pill and dies.
A third episode of ear-piercing bickering erupts when Jenny stops Abbie from calling the police about the Hessian's dead body. As a clear member of some secret, supernatural crime fighting duo, Jenny would know firsthand just how easily the other side can track their phone calls. We'll give her this one, but the bickering as got to stop. It hurts. Specifically, it hurts my ears. Ichabod steps in once more to curb the screaming and distracts us all with that handy dandy photographic memory of his. He wasn't kidding about that – at all. He reproduces the map he saw for all of 15 seconds with perfect accuracy, and off they go to retrieve the chest from its resting place below the Sleepy Hollow church. I'd say we should send this guy to the FBI, but we probably need him figuring out this supernatural trouble first.
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Of course, because it took them so long to figure this out, the Hessians have beat the good guys to the burial spot – where apparently, the password for entry is licking the dust off of an old fireplace – and they knock down the wall as Abbie, Jenny, and Ichabod are still riding along with "impending doom" music a soundtrack and getting-to-know-you as their road trip game – did you know that Jenny is a good person and that Abbie should maybe give it a rest on the judgment?
The Hessians unearth the key, which is a book, and drip their blood all over it. That hoodoo causes a fiery pit of oily plasma to spring up from the floor, the purpose of which is to hold a pit a grabby, desperate demons hoping to escape. So this is what complete and total horror looks like. Abbie, Jenny, and Ichabod go after the Hessians who started this chain reaction, and after a little fighting, Abbie stops the entire process by grabbing the book. When the Hessians threaten to kill Jenny unless she puts down the book, she obliges, only she puts it in the demon-oil-fire which apparently shuts that whole situation down. Again, this stuff is cool, but does the solution always need to be over that easily?
Finally, with all the dust settled, Jenny asks the question we're wondering: "What's with you and Prince William?" Abbie shuts down any notions of romantic happenings and simply states what we all know: that they were selected as the duo to save the earth from this apparently relentless onslaught of evil – or God's two witnesses mentioned in the Book of Revelations. And while that satisfies Jenny, it's good that Abbie has a hobby now, because her sister says she's basically going to keep punishing her for her abandonment. But Abbie is ready to win her sister back; she's proud of her now and she knows the important of family. I would say, "emphasis on now" but it seems likely that there are only going to be a few semi-happy family moments moving forward, so I'll curb that urge. Abbie's worked out a deal to get Jenny out of the asylum in under six months and she thinks they can work together to figure out this mess. While these sisters aren't quite okay, they may be able to stop bickering enough to stop obscuring the contents of future episodes with their context-obscuring verbal battles.
And before we go, we get one very juicy, very important piece of information: the sleeper cell leader that the Hessian referred to – the one Abbie, Ichabod, and Jenny all saw in the forest – has a name and an identity. Ichabod remembers a passage from Paradise Lost, which mentions Moloch – the muffled named the Hessian dropped. Moloch was a god and a proponent of child sacrifice who aimed to release an army of demons on Heaven (perhaps 72 demons)? And, as it just so happens, the drawing of Moloch in Ichabod's copy of the literary classic looks exactly like the pale, horned, gazelle on steroids that's been haunting their dreams and digging up John Cho as he sees fit. Moloch is controlling the headless horseman, the Hessians, and basically everything. And now he has a name and (sort of) a face.
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