The penultimate episode of Sleepy Hollow season 3 answered a question or two, but then it left us with about a hundred more.
With no word on if Sleepy Hollow is going to get renewed, I have to take everything I see happening on the show right now at face value. I’ve no idea if the relationships and new characters we met today will go beyond the next week, and that’s really what I think makes this episode stand out against all the rest this season.
Generally when I watch a TV show it’s easy to not get invested in something I know will have an ending. For example, every single time Ichabod and Abbie had to defeat an enemy in the past I knew they would both make it out alive because they’re the main characters — they can’t die, they have 12 more episodes to go through!
But with this episode, I’m realizing that this very well might be the last we see of the characters we love. We already saw Joe Corbin die at the end of this episode, and despite me 100% predicting that (just read the last two recaps I wrote) it’s still surprising because it raises the stakes. Granted he is one of the least important characters on the show, aside from Sophie and Daniel, but it still means that death is imminent for anyone – especially since we don’t know if there’s another season and The Hidden one is now, apparently, omnipotent.
Yep, that’s right. The crew failed to prevent The Hidden One from gathering the power he needed to become all powerful, so I have absolutely no clue how the season is going to end next week. In this episode he turned Joe back into a Wendigo, despite all of us believing that he was totally done with that Wendigo life, and if he has the power to do that… then what else can he do? I’m at a loss for words to understand how the crew can possibly destroy The Hidden One before he destroys the world, given that Abbie and Ichabod were still in the catacombs when he rose to power. I wouldn’t put it past the writers and executive producer to end this show like how Charmed ended its seventh season: Pretending that everything is over and knots are tied, only to bring them back for another season after that.
But hey, Sleepy Hollow is the type of show where something epic will happen but then next week for some reason everyone decides to take a break and the episode starts several hours/days later during a “normal” activity. Example: Last week Ichabod and Abbie found the map at the end of the episode, but this week apparently they decided to not explore the map immediately despite the time crunch but rather have breakfast and coffee first. So you never know, maybe next week there will be another small time gap of a few hours.
I doubt there will be a time gap though, because we also got re-introduced to Betsy Ross at the end of this episode — and the cliffhanger revealed she still thought she was in 1777. But let me just take this moment to gloat and say I also predicted the return of Betsy Ross in modern day, so huzzah!
Ichabod and Abbie found her in the Catacombs in a hidden room that Abbie didn’t find the last time she was there, but thankfully she had Ichabod this time around to decode the hieroglyphs. Since the catacombs keep people alive without food or water it would make sense that Betsy didn’t age a day or die – and I’m very curious to see how she gets along with modern civilization. It’s clear that Betsy is going to attempt to help them with restoring Pandora’s box so they could remove The Hidden One Powers, but what is unclear is Betsy’s future.
Besty’s future revolves around the future of the show. Should the series get picked up for another season then we can look forward to yet another Colonial historical figure being brought into and adapting to modern life – which is always fun and interesting. And it’s almost enough to keep me watching next season! Generally I’d be sick of this whole “apocalypse” plot without much of the apocalypse that was described in season 1, but if a fourth season means that we get Betsy Ross coping to modern American life then I am so down..
I suppose we’ll just have to wait until next week to figure out where the cliffhangers will leave us. Until then, it’s a guessing game.