kaydeefalls | sleepy hollow 2x07: deliverance

Previously, on Sleepy Hollow: buckets and buckets of Crane family drama, and seriously, I could have happily gone to my grave without having to watch the evil spider crawl into Katrina’s mouth AGAIN. So much ew. This awkwardly transitions into a flashback of Ichabod and Katrina naked in bed together, because presumably they did consummate their marriage a couple of times way back when. They chat lovingly about what sort of children they’ll have -- Ichabod votes for strapping sons and witchy daughters. Well, you got an evil warlock son, which sort of splits the difference? The flashback goes awry when nightmares about spiders intrude (again, I say to you: EW), and Katrina wakes up in the present choking on spider guts. Everything is gross forever, I’m done.

Appropriately enough, it’s Election Day in Sleepy Hollow! Ichabod is appalled at the low voter turnout, especially given how eager television viewers are to vote for “American Idolatry” (which is a fairly accurate assessment of the show in question). Abbie quickly shuts down his nostalgia trip, pointing out that as a black woman, she’d have been barred from voting twice over back in his day -- “three times,” Ichabod corrects, chagrined, since she also doesn’t own the requisite amount of property. Abbie wins this round. And then she boots him out of her voting booth and delivers a smackdown on his attempt at electioneering in the process.

Chez Headless, Katrina is getting understandably huffy with Abraham about the whole poisoned-by-spider incident, which he claims no responsibility for. That’s when Henry shows up with a handful of minions to make sure the poisoning worked. Abraham squabbles with him for a bit on Katrina’s behalf, but Henry’s doing Moloch’s bidding and won’t be deterred. And okay, I gotta pause here and ask how all these conversations are even happening. I get that Katrina sees Abraham’s “human spirit” because of the magic glowy pendant he gave her, but Henry doesn’t have any enchanted jewelry, so how the hell can he see the guy’s missing head? Seriously, does no one else remember how the Horseman used to have to possess his minions to communicate last season? Why is it so much easier for him these days? Anyway, while I’m pondering continuity errors, Henry’s goons drag Katrina off, and when Abraham tries to intervene, Henry stops him by opening the window blinds. At least the writers still remember Headless’s vampiric allergy to sunlight. In the ensuing scuffle, Katrina manages to escape, and encounters the 21st century properly for the first time by collapsing outside a gas station.

Back in the polling place, Abbie shuts up Ichabod’s latest democracy rant by giving him a sticker. Ichabod is not unlike a five-year-old child in this way. They make awkward small talk with Sheriff Reyes for a minute, and then another cop tells Abbie that one of her X-Files got reported in to the station -- a redhead in Colonial garb. Since the Jane Doe is obviously Katrina, the dynamic duo book it to the local hospital. Katrina’s happy to see Ichabod, but she’s running a scary high fever and she’s got black veiny shit on her abdomen, so this does not bode well. For once, Katrina actually tells them everything she knows about her current situation, and they realize that the hospital is the first place Henry will come looking for her. So they decide to take her to Apocalypse HQ instead. Because Henry -- who has BEEN THERE HIMSELF, MULTIPLE TIMES -- will never think of that! In the meantime, they have to steal Katrina some modern clothing, and I do have to say, the witch looks damn fine in a corset and skinny jeans. I am trying very hard to suspend my disbelief that a woman with a fever of 105 and extreme abdominal pain is able to walk herself out of the hospital, though. (She later explains that “the sickness ebbs and flows.” Sure, fine, whatever.) When they have to dodge around Henry’s thugs, Abbie decides to split off and follow them, despite Ichabod’s protests.

At Apocalypse HQ, Katrina sets up a security alarm hex to warn them of Henry’s approach. She then describes the notebook in Henry’s possession, which Ichabod immediately recognizes from description alone: the symbol of the Hellfire Club. This somehow leads us to good ol’ Ben Franklin, but my hopes of another Franklin flashback are cruelly dashed. (What the hell is Franklinstein’s Monster up to these days, anyway? Just lurking about town, waiting for the season finale?) Instead, we learn that Franklin has described Katrina’s symptoms before, but failed to record anything about what actually happened to the woman previously inflicted. Katrina brings up her talk with Abraham, to which Ichabod responds with exactly the appropriate amount of skepticism: “I don’t understand. How can a headless Horseman say anything?” THANK YOU, ICHABOD, THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I’VE BEEN ASKING. He’s also a wee bit jealous of Katrina’s chats with Abraham, but Katrina promises that she’s not keeping any secrets from him this time. Sure, honey.

Meanwhile, Abbie tracks Henry’s minions to some kind of warehouse-cum-evil-lab, where one thug is whining about translations while another analyzes a tablet covered with arcane writing. She also finds a veiny cadaver, and snaps pictures of everything she can before ducking out to avoid discovery. Her phone’s camera is obviously way better than mine, because we next find her presenting Ichabod with some glossy hi-res photos of the evil lab, though the image of the weird tablet came out all artsy-Instagram-filter-ish. She also stole the Hellfire notebook, which refers to Katrina as a “vessel” and describes a “successful inception.” Oh, boy, it’s Rosemary’s Baby time! Because every supernatural show has to feature a Mystical Pregnancy sooner or later. Ichabod betrays a shameful lack of genre savvy by immediately assuming Abraham is the baby daddy, when clearly this is a spawn of Satan sorta deal,. A closer reading of the notebook promptly confirms this. So the mystical poison spider, like, laid its evil egg in Katrina’s stomach or something. I would like to reiterate: EWWWWWW. At this point, Katrina’s warning hex explodes, and they all run for the tunnels before Henry’s henchmen can catch them.

They emerge in the abandoned church from last season, St. Henry’s Parish, from which Henry stole his modern-day name. Yes, of course, let’s hide in a place with a great deal of personal significance to the guy hunting you -- it’s the last thing he’ll ever suspect! Speaking of Henry, Katrina somehow believes that she can convince him to sin-eat away the demon fetus that he deliberately implanted within her, and she manages to win Ichabod over to her side. Abbie looks like she thinks both Cranes are too stupid to live. Ichabod awkwardly mediates between his wife and his bestie, and basically overrules Abbie’s very logical objections by a two-against-one vote. Yay, democracy in action.

Meanwhile, Frank Irving gets a whole five seconds of screentime with Henry before Ichabod shows up, because why on earth would our heroes ever help their institutionalized ally when they could use him for his connection to Henry instead? I am very bitter on Irving’s behalf. Also Jenny’s, because she continues to be criminally underused this season, but anyway. Ichabod tries to out-smug Henry and fails miserably, because no one is smugger than John Noble. Henry reveals that the demon spawn is no other than Moloch himself; back in the church, Katrina and Abbie figure that out for themselves by continuing to read the Hellfire notebook. Also Katrina convulses and her distended tummy looks like Moloch is actively trying to claw his way out from the inside. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any grosser! Ichabod desperately tries to appeal to his son’s sentimentality, and fails at that, too -- Henry goes all wibbly-eyed for like two seconds, just to make his victory all the sweeter when he then promptly shuts Ichabod down. No one but Ichabod is shocked by this. Ichabod grabs him in an attempt to force empathy via sin-eating, but he’s the one who gets smacked by one of Henry’s flashbacks instead: a scared kid running through the woods.

Ichabod returns to the church a broken man, and has a cliched deathbed chat with his wife. Katrina insists that he must have faith in Henry. For some damn reason, her reiteration of the word “faith” about a hundred times gives Ichabod a flash of insight, and he yanks out the blurry photo of the tablet again. Look! The artsy blur looks kind of like the Aurora Borealis! And Ben Franklin was conveniently obsessed with the northern lights! Because the Aurora has the power to banish demons! Quick, to the interwebs! They rush to the nearest computer, which is still on dial-up. Oh, god, I remember the dial-up modem noise. It sounds the screams of condemned souls. Anyway, they unearth the treatise Franklin once wrote on just this subject, which is coded to describe the prism he constructed to recreate the effects of the Aurora, which he concealed within that arcane tablet. I am calmly reminding myself that logic has no place in Sleepy Hollow.

...no, but seriously, I am willing to accept that the Aurora Borealis has weirdo mystical anti-demon powers, but why the hell would some cheap knockoff prism version have the same effect? Zombie George Washington, I whisper to myself. Franklinstein’s Monster. Let it go.

Ichabod tosses Katrina a walkie-talkie, and he and Abbie race off to rouse an army. By which I mean, they go directly to Reyes and tell her everything about what’s really going on in Sleepy Hollow -- or a carefully-edited-for-rationality version of “everything,” anyway. (Since full disclosure has always been the primary tactic of Team Witness, I’m actually surprised that they’re bothering to edit the scope of things at all.) They convince Reyes that the Hellfire Club is a “doomsday cult” that performs twisted human experiments and has a large stash of illegal firearms, and she grudgingly gives Abbie a SWAT team to raid the warehouse. While the rest of the cops are dealing with Henry’s minions, Abbie and Ichabod sneak off to steal the tablet from its safety deposit trunk. They’ve got to guess the keycode first, and I totally called 666. Ichabod is disgruntled by the lack of imagination. While he gets the tablet, one of the thugs tries to jump him, and for some damn reason Abbie attacks him with a metal tray instead of the gun that is holstered to her waist. Come on, Abbie, I have watched you shoot at demons and Wendigos and the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, why the hell aren’t you shooting the one bad guy who is actually vulnerable to bullets?! Whatever. Reyes actually pays them both compliments for a change -- maybe there’s hope of converting her to the cause -- but then Katrina radios in with the screaming agony of impending baby, and they skedaddle back to the church.

For the record, Katrina’s demon labor is also super gross. Thankfully, we’re spared the gorefest of her actually giving birth by Ichabod smashing the tablet, retrieving the Aurora prism, and racing in dramatic slo-mo to rip the boards off the windows and allow sunlight to pass through the prism. The Aurora Borealis CGI is about as hilarious as you might expect. Yay for mystical late-term abortions, I guess? And Katrina is left with nary a stretchmark to be seen. Unfortunately, she’s also not breathing. But that’s okay, because Ichabod apparently learned CPR after Abbie’s near-drowning a couple of episodes back, and he saves her. Abbie wanders off awkwardly while Ichabod and Katrina make kissy-face.

Eventually, Katrina needs some rest, so Ichabod follows after Abbie for a proper denouement. He continues defending Henry, explaining that the lost little boy from the flashback is still in there somewhere, and Abbie is still extremely skeptical but not willing to argue with him about it anymore for now. They share a fistbump of victory. But, of course, what episode of Sleepy Hollow would be complete without one last shot of Henry doing something cryptic and ominous? This time, he’s caught some lightning in a jar. Huzzah.