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Sleepy Hollow continues it re-education crusade with the tale of Paul Revere in an episode that finally delivers a showdown against the Horseman. Abbie and Ichabod are preparing for the onslaught of evil, but Abbie refuses to involve the Masons because she's not too happy about their "no girls allowed" rule. It's unfortunate, because as it turns out, the Masons are one the many keys to this week's big mystery.
The Horseman has also figured this out, and he beats Ichabod and Abbie to the house where they're congregating (Ichabod's old home). Ichabod and Abbie get there just as he's finishing up beheading the four Masons at the house, but don't worry, the Horseman's also managed to ransack the house's most important room: the Library. It's there that Ichabod realizes (thanks to a beheaded portrait of George Washington) that the Horseman is looking for his head. Oh yeah, remember that issue from the first episode of Sleepy Hollow where the Horseman "wouldn't stop" until he got his head, which is the action that will bring his three horseman buddies back to life? That super important piece of knowledge is still super important. Shocker.
But that's not the only problem our duo is facing this week. With yet another headless murder in Sleepy Hollow, Irving's mind-boggling reaction is that he needs proof before he can continue supporting Abbie's supernatural mission. Abbie then brazenly asks him for the Horseman's head, which is now cataloged in the evidence room, so she and Ichabod can destroy it. Proof, be damned. Irving is naturally flabbergasted until he pays the head a visit at the lab, where the Horseman arrives fully armed and ready to kill. The lab tech gets a bullet to the chest while Irving escapes by "blinding" a headless person with an exploding gas pipe. Logic of his escape aside, he's got his proof.
With that out of the way, Abbie is free to spend her time driving around Upstate New York to solve supernatural crime. She and Ichabod go to Tarrytown, where they visit a museum full of historical artifacts, including a manuscript for how to defeat the Horseman that Samuel Adams once gave to Paul Revere. While Abbie finds out that the manuscript is on loan to a London museum, but available online, Ichabod harasses one museum tour guide over his erroneous assertion that Paul Revere was a dentist and who yelled "The British are coming!" (In truth, he said "The regulars are coming!" and was definitely not a silversmith and a dentist.)
Using a computer gives Ichabod more than a few moments of aggravation, but eventually, he's left with a printed copy of the manuscript to decode while Abbie steps out to cancel a date with Luke, her ex-boyfriend. She gets his voicemail because Brooks has returned in all his undead glory and he's scared Luke away from her. Brooks also appears in the tunnels where Abbie is making another impossible underground cell phone call and warns her that the Horseman can't be killed, only trapped. Ichabod figures it out at the same time – apparently Paul Revere put the manuscript's code word on the backs of the Horseman's skull's teeth, which happens to be sitting in Ichabod's study room. (So, if he was a dentist, he's not one anyone would ever want, it seems.)
They need to trap the Horseman in the sun with the help of a witch and while they don't have witches, they do have tanning beds and UV lights. Abbie, Irving, and Ichabod lure the Horseman underground to a Mason prison cell built by Thomas Jefferson with a slew of decoy skulls. He chases Abbie, who has the real skull, into the cell where the UV lights are. The team turns them on, incapacitates the Horseman, and locks him up.
And because that was one hell of an ending, that's exactly where Sleepy Hollow leaves us. The show will worry about giving us answers about Brooks' undead form and how one interrogates a man with no head week. For now, we enjoy the victory.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Welcome to this week’s edition of So You Think You Know History, where Ichabod Crane takes us on a twisty ride through the truer side of history. This week’s Sleepy Hollow opens during the American Revolution, the night of Paul Revere’s famous midnight ride. Instead of telling people "The British are coming!" he and his fellow alarm-sounders are whispering "The regulars are coming," because as Ichabod later explains, "We were all British" so it wouldn’t make much sense to yell the more famous phrase. After that’s cleared up, the soon-to-be Headless Horseman chases down the rebels and beheads everyone except for Paul Revere, because we can’t lose one of our American heroes in the first five minutes of the show. That would just be cruel. Also, Paul Revere was never actually beheaded, so that helps too.
Back in our time, Abbie and Ichabod are preparing "kits" full of water and canned goods. No, they’re not helping out needy families during Thanksgiving, these are survival kits and it’s all part of Abbie’s plan to beat the Horseman. She fills us in on part two of her diabolical plan: a shotgun. Oh yes, that thing that didn’t stop the Horseman the first time he attacked the town. While Ichabod stews over Abbie’s willingness to pay for bottled water (a sentiment I don’t take total issue with), she tells us the real reason she’s determined to use this terrible plan: she refuses to ask the Masons for help because of their "no girls allowed" policy. I’m all for a stand for feminism, but Death incarnate is coming and he’s going to kill everyone if he’s not stopped, Abs.
Abbie is momentarily distracted from her insufficient plan when she runs into her ex, Luke, on her way to the station. He says he still cares about her and flashes a cute, dimply smile, so she agrees to a coffee date… set for the day after the arrival of the Horseman. This date is doomed and Abbie needs a day planner.
But if Abbie’s schedule wasn’t enough of an issue, that night, Brooks (the officer whose neck was snapped backwards in the pilot) is back and fully ready to admit to anyone who’ll listen that he’s undead. He corners Luke in an alley and warns him to stay away from Abbie because Brooks will protect her and only the chosen ones will survive the coming evil. His statements aren’t exactly logical, but when he holds a pistol against Luke’s neck and creates an association between Abbie and certain death, the deal is sealed. Luke is now completely terrified of his ex.
Ichabod, while sensitive to Abbie’s misgivings about the Masons, decides they need the Masons’ help, so he leaves Abbie the most adorable and proper voicemail, vowing to change the group’s minds about women. He signs off on the voicemail like it’s an old time-y letter and walks into his old home, where the Horseman has just murdered four Masons and flees the scene (with all four heads in tow) late enough for Abbie and Ichabod to spot him on his way out.
A quadruple homicide means Irving shows up on site with his ever present skeptical face. This time, that face is full of very real skepticism. He says that until Abbie and Ichie can get him some concrete proof (of elusive, supernatural creatures whose figures defy security cameras regularly), then he’s going to have to stop supporting their secret mission. Irving declares the crime a regular ol’ homicide and moves on with his smug self.
But our favorite duo is about to make themselves a major pain in his side yet again. While sifting through the ransacked library in his old home, Ichabod realizes there is a beheaded painting of George Washington against the wall, Ichabod realizes that the Horseman must be after his severed head. None of us forgot, but Ichabod apparently needs a presidential memory jog, so here goes: the Horseman’s on a mission to find his head because finding it will bring back his four horseman brethren. This cannot happen, because it would mean the end of everything.
So Abbie does the logical thing: she enrages Irving by asking for possession of a supernatural artifact which is tagged as official evidence so she can destroy it. No, that is not the same as bringing Irving proof that she’s not crazy, but she’s got Ichabod, who sweet talks Irving into considering the request. He considers it all the way to the lab where he’s having the skull tested. When he finds out that the skull contains no human traces, he’s intrigued and asks to take it home with him -- presumably to give it to Abbie -- but the Horseman has arrived and he’s packing. Irving, now face to face with the proof he thought wasn’t out there, is forced to fight for his life and do Matrix-style back bends to avoid being beheaded. Irving eventually escapes with his head by shooting a gas pipe and “blinding” the guy with no head or eyes.
With the head hanging out in his car, Irving heads back to Abbie to admit he was wrong. He says that he didn’t want to believe because now he’s stuck in a bubble where he can’t tell anyone about what he saw, but as a cop, he feels the need to send the news up the chain of command. His insane ravings ensure one thing: this supernatural crime fighting plot is going to remain an Abbie and Ichabod special because no one else would ever believe him.
Now that they have the head, team Supernatural Ass-kicking do everything possible to destroy it. Sledge hammers and bombs do nothing, and even when they go all Walter White with a bucket of acid it doesn’t work. On their way to the junk yard to use the car-crushing-contraption from a horrible children’s cartoon I’ve since blocked from my memory, Ichabod notices four lanterns hanging from the roof of a parking garage and wonders if that’s normal. Of course it’s not, so Ichabod assumes it’s some sort of message a la Paul Revere’s "One if by land, two if by sea" policy. (They’re sticking to a theme, people!). He and Abbie investigate, only to find that the four lanterns are actually hollowed out heads – the ones the Horseman stole from the Mason murder scene – and that each of them have silver linings, in that they have actual silver on this inside of their skulls to make them shinier.
It’s good that the Horseman is a fan of 18th century techniques, because upon seeing his handiwork, Ichabod’s memory is jogged, yet again. Ichabod remembers seeing Samuel Adams give Paul Revere a manuscript with the Devil’s mark. That’s all they need to figure out that the manuscript was actually a tool against evil, not the Crown. And just like that, Ichabod gets another flashing memory: Paul told him that a mercenary killed all of his men and almost took him down as well. Ichabod reasons that the attacker was the Horseman and that he was after the manuscript Sam Adams had given Paul. We know they’re right because we’re eager to get onto the part where they solve the mystery (and also, there’s only so much time left in the episode in which to do it).
Luckily for both Abbie and Ichabod, Americans are very proud of everything relating to the American Revolution, and so the manuscript was preserved by the Tarrytown Historical Society. Abbie and her time-traveling partner visit the town’s museum, where Ichabod gets into a testy argument with a tour guide who insists that Paul Revere was a part-time dentist who shouted "The British are coming!" (After all, he said the "regulars," not the "British," and he was a silversmith which means you’d probably want him to stay away from your teeth). Once he clears that up, Abbie drags him out of the museum so she can tell him the good news; while the manuscript is on loan in England, there is an online copy. Ichabod understands none of this, but senses that Abbie’s tone is positive and goes along with it.
For some reason, Abbie sees fit to teach Ichabod computer skills via trial by fire. After opening and closing the window containing the manuscript about a thousand times, and printing it five times to preserve the disappearing image (so he gets wireless communication with the printer, but not the concept of a touch-pad mouse?), he realizes they need the code word to decipher the text. Unfortunately, he’s got no Masons to help him find it. While he tries to guess the word, Abbie steps outside to cancel on Luke, who’s already been turned off thanks to zombie Brooks.
Right on cue, Brooks appears as Abbie’s making yet another impossible underground cell phone call to tell her that he’s trying to protect her and that he just wants "it" to end. His peace offering is the knowledge that the Horseman cannot be killed, but he can be trapped. Brooks just has no idea how to do the actual trapping. Just then, Ichabod steps out into the tunnel to reveal that after his unfortunate encounter with a "Hot Chix" video chat, he’s decoded the manuscript and he knows how to trap the Horseman. They ask Brooks to use his connection with the Horseman to set up a meeting time for he and Ichabod and then send him on his merry undead way, leaving us confused as to how we’re supposed to feel about the guy who can’t keep his neck or jaw on straight.
Back when he was left alone, Ichabod noticed a glint escaping from the Horseman’s skull. It appears that Paul Revere, who was not a dentist at all, did cover the backs of the Horseman’s teeth with silver and the manuscript’s code word: Cicero. (See? A terrible dentist, but a good silversmith and secret-keeper). With that knowledge, Ichabod uncovered the plan to kill the Horseman: he must be trapped in sunlight. There’s just one small problem: they need a witch and Katrina is still trapped between worlds. Abbie suggests that they use modern witchcraft, also known as the U.V. lights used in tanning beds. That way, they can create the sun without having to knock down doors looking for Wiccans in Sleepy Hollow. Ichabod is confused, but down as long as it doesn’t include the "nin-nin-net." (To his credit, I think I might start calling it that).
Abbie and Ichabod enlist their new buddy Irving’s help to set a trap to lure the Horseman into the tunnels where Ichabod says a supernatural jail cell built by Thomas Jefferson should contain the bastard. As they chip away at their hours of busy work, Abbie and Irving blow Ichabod’s mind by telling him about Jefferson’s affair with Sally Hemmings, and it’s only when they show Ichabod that Jefferson stole "his" quote about reading newspapers that he believes them.
By then, it’s time to wait for sundown while Ichabod questions Abbie about Luke. She rightly notes that it will always be impossible for them to date because it’s now her job to fight the secret good fight. Ichabod makes a fair point – his relationship with Katrina threatened their missions too, but they did it anyway. Still, it seems that Abbie and Luke were more companions of convenience than star-crossed lovers -- he did drop her like a hot stone once he heard about what she was getting herself into.
Finally, the sun goes down and Ichabod entices the Horseman into his own midnight ride through the cemetery to one of the entrances to the tunnels. Once inside, they disorient the -- again, headless and eyeless -- Horseman by waving decoy skulls at him from numerous directions until he realizes that Abbie’s has the glint of sliver behind the teeth. (How he saw this is news to me because I can’t say it enough: the man has no eyes). Still, he chases Abbie into a circular chamber, where she’s falls and stupidly screams for Ichabod to come save her and her broken ankle. Just as the Horseman is about to behead her, it turns out she’s faking; she says the magic word (in this context, "now" is magic) and Irving turns on the U.V. lights, incapacitating the Horseman so Ichabod can shackle him thoroughly.
And now that our hearts are racing like two horses through a haunted cemetery, Sleepy Hollow leaves us breathless and with so many questions. Will the town notice the spike in its electric bill? What will our heroes do now that Death is captured? Can you interrogate a man with no head? Can they please tell us where is eyes are? Unfortunately, the answers to some (or none) of those questions will have to wait until week, because that’s all they wrote, folks.