Sleepy Hollow season 1 episode 2, “Blood Moon” just aired. Did the second episode live up to high viewer expectations?
The show opened with a dream sequence of Ichabod running from the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse: Conquest, War, Death, and Famine. He is saved by his dead wife, Katrina, who tells him that he beheaded one (Death) and that Death has now returned to reclaim the others. Together they will unleash the Apocalypse. Before they can ride, she further explains that “an army of evil will make way for their arrival. The first dark spirit rises with the blood moon. She is one of us. You must stop her before she kills again” Before she can can completely explain, Ichabod wakes up and finds himself in a hotel room where Lt. Mills is keeping him. When Mills returns to the hotel room, Ichabod relates his dream to Mills.
Mills is at the precinct where she discovers that the officers involved in the shootout with the headless horseman recanted their testimony. The captain shows Mills a doctored video of Brooks dying in his cell. Mills refuses to accept the explanation of Brooks’ death. Despite Ichabod backing up her version, no one will believe her because a psychiatric expert has diagnosed him with a mental disorder. While the captain is away in Albany, he tells Mills that he’ll give her some latitude, but that she shouldn’t embarrass him.
Ichabod and Mills have a discussion/debate of how Katrina hid her witchcraft and the current state of the American tax system before attending the former chief sheriff Corbin’s funeral. While visiting Katrina’s supposed grave, Ichabod puts together that Katrina’s words “one of us” specifically meant a witch. They eventually have a heart-to-heart about what Mills sister, Jenny, and Mills’ experiences as a young kid, and what the dead chief meant to her.
Back in the morgue, Brooks ends up resurrected by the evil spirit. His resurrected and repaired self is ordered to release someone (a dead witch) using a necklace that he throws up. He steals a cruiser and resurrects the witch with the medallion he threw up. Brooks then pulls over an un suspecting motorist, Jeremy Steven Firth, who ends up being taken over by the resurrected witch who attacks him in his car. She uses his flesh to return her image partly to “normal”. When Brooks and Ichabod arrive on the scene the next day, Ichabod notices claw marks on the burnt body, the clawed chest, and that it was as if someone had purposefully dug into the victim’s chest to collect something, and that the ash didn’t just crumple away. He indicates that he knows who did this, as he has seen something like this before.
In his previous life, Ichabod experienced similar events during a blood moon. He sensed a dark presence back then that chilled his blood. When these ritual killings happened more frequently, General Washington came to believe that a dark coven had been formed by a high priestess named Serilda of Abadon. The redcoats were in allegiance with her. Mills states that the deceased sheriff believed in a good and bad coven being in Sleepy Hollow, so they head for the office to check his files.
When they arrive, they discover that Corbin’s files have been taken to storage, and Mills doesn’t have the key to the store room. They leave after the upstairs after Ichabod is questioned by a detective who was once in a relationship with Mills. They head for the basement where Ichabod knows of a secret entrance dating back to Revolutionary days to what is now the store room. They find themselves in old tunnels that were used for munitions and supplies. They follow the tunnels to a site where convicted witches were buried. It’s also disclosed that Katrina’s true burial site where all her remains are located, remain a mystery. They eventually end up in the room dating back to Revolutionary times where old and forgotten items and files are stored.
As they go through Corbin’s files, Ichabod explains that Serilda of Abadon was of Romany Greek (AKA gypsy) origin. He speaks several languages among them Greek and has a near perfect photographic memory. They discover that Serilda’s fate was sealed by a good coven of witches named the Sisters of the Benevolent Heart. They used white magic to capture her. Speaking in Romany Greek before she was burned at the stake, Serilda threatened to return taking the flesh of the living. As it turns out, Jeremy Steven Firth was related to the magistrate who sentenced her.
Officer Brooks, meanwhile stalks two boys playing soccer. The boy, Kyle, says his dad is dead. Kyle is the apparent next victim of Serilda as she needs more relatives of her capturers to complete her transformation by the end of the blood moon. That night, Ichabod and Mills arrive as Kyle’s mother hunts for him. They discover that Serilda actually just wanted the urn of the father’s ashes since Kyle was adopted and not a blood relative.
They have to stop Serilda’s resurrection ceremony at the height of the blood moon, or she will be all powerful. They have to burn her and hide her bones where she will never find them. They know she’ll go to the tunnel to get her bones.
Brooks is in the tunnel digging for Serilda. He gets her bones and disappears just before Mills and Ichabod arrive. Mills and Ichabod search the tunnels, Mills and Ichabod come across Serilda performing the ceremony. They run after Ichabod fires only one shot, since he doesn’t understand modern fire arms.
Serilda corners them, and in Romany Greek, she tells Ichabod that Katrina was the one who bound her powers. Katrina’s spirit is “held captive in the world between worlds” where “her fate is sealed”. Fortunately, Crane rigged old gun powder to set Serilda alight before she could do more damage.
Ichabod is now haunted with the knowledge that Katrina might be able to be set free. He again states that he and Mills are linked by the prophesy, and he leaves to get coffee. Mills then sees a vision of the dead Corbin. They have a heart-to-heart, where she wants to know what is going on. He tells her that she has to stop living in fear and embrace her destiny and fate. Corbin also tells Mills not to be afraid of number 49, that’s where you’ll find you’re not alone.
The final scene is of Jenny (Abby Mills’ sister) doing push-ups in a medical facility. She tells the nurse she hasn’t been seeing “monsters” since taking pills that she is given; however, she is faking taking the pills. The nurse leaves and the very physically fit Jenny starts to do chin-ups. The demon who we previously saw resurrecting Brooks is momentarily in her room and disappears when she turns around.