SLEEPY HOLLOW Recap: ‘Go Where I Send Thee…’

Buckle your seat belts, SLEEPY HOLLOW fans: Ichabod Crane can drive. He doesn’t have his license yet — and he probably won’t be able to get it until he’s complained at length about parallel parking — but thanks to Jenny’s training, he is technically proficient behind the wheel. Who needs the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse when you’ve got the power of 300 horses in one throttle?

The War

A young girl named Sarah Lancaster-Weiss has gone missing. She wandered out of her house late at night on her tenth birthday, but her parents insist that she’s not that type of kid. Abbie actually has a history with the family; Sarah’s mother, Beth Lancaster, was Abbie and Jenny’s case worker after they became wards of the state. Abbie respects Beth and believes that her encouragement helped her hold on when she was at her lowest, and she promises to bring Sarah home.

Crane can’t officially join the investigation with Sheriff Reyes watching, but he creeps around in the bushes anyway. He and Abbie find blood spatter in the woods behind the house and follow it to a flute carved out of bone. When Crane plays a few notes, Abbie falls into a kind of trance, walking into shallow water without even realizing it. Crane notices and snaps her out of it before anything can happen, but Abbie’s brief reverie is enough to convince him that they’re dealing with the Pied Piper. This isn’t your kindergarten-variety Piper, either. That guy was clad in tights and followed by smiling children. This one sold his soul to Moloch in exchange for a haunting siren call that no one can ignore.

Abbie remembers that the music made her feel compelled to go somewhere, so she offers to go back into a trance to find the Piper’s lair. Crane records 30 seconds of music, loops the track so she can listen on headphones, and follows just behind as Abbie starts into the woods. At the sight of someone in the trees, he pulls out Abbie’s earbuds, and they approach together, only to find Nick Hawley bleeding behind a rock. Hawley was looking for the flute for a client when the Piper attacked him. He says that Sarah is still alive.

Hawley’s done his research on the flute and its owner. According to legend, an entire British garrison was stationed at the Lancaster home in 1778. Daniel Lancaster didn’t appreciate the soldiers’ familiarity with his daughters, so he hired a mercenary to lure the men outside and kill them all. The soldiers were no match for a man who’d made a deal with a demon. Then again, Daniel wasn’t either; he tried to kill the mercenary to protect his secret, but the mercenary rose again as the Piper. Now, he claims one Lancaster girl per generation, always on her tenth birthday.

Hawley doesn’t believe the story and assumes that his attacker was a man in costume. He wants the flute in payment for his services, which Abbie agrees to give, provided that he tell them everything and back them up in the field. She puts in the earbuds and leads them to the site of an old home. The structure itself is gone, but the foundations and the cellar remain. They find Sarah in what looks to be an old well, dehydrated but alive. As Abbie works to unchain her, the Piper attacks Hawley.

Crane joins the fight, and together he and Hawley rig the cellar to explode. The blast goes off as they escape into the woods with Sarah, but it won’t be enough to kill the Piper. Abbie and Crane want to come back with more weapons and finish this later. Hawley refuses, so Abbie gives him the flute as promised, but not before breaking it over her knee. (“Oh, all the excitement. Looks like it was damaged.”) She and Crane take Sarah home.

As they gather more ammo from the archives, Crane and Abbie discuss Beth’s muted reaction to her daughter’s safe return. A quick search of the database (“If you would perform the log-in ceremony”) confirms that one Lancaster girl has disappeared per generation, including Beth’s older sister. Only one was ever found alive, in 1936, but every other child in the family died suddenly of a mysterious illness. Abbie realizes that this is why Beth adopted three boys — she was trying to avoid the curse. When they had Sarah in what Mr. Lancaster calls a “happy accident,” Beth was faced with a dilemma. She could either give up her daughter or lose all of her sons.

At the Lancaster home, Abbie and Crane find that the boys have already come down with something. Crane borrows Daniel Lancaster’s old sword, and they head to the woods, where they talk Beth out of abandoning Sarah just as the Piper attacks them. Crane follows the Piper down the well with the sword and a set of noise-canceling earbuds, which come out when he’s knocked to the ground. The Piper almost blows Crane’s eardrums, but he fights back, and Abbie stabs the Piper clean through with his own pipe.

Over cappuccino, Abbie and Ichabod celebrate lifting the curse, but they may not be out of the woods yet. Hawley’s buyer doesn’t seem to mind that the flute is snapped in half. He delivers the package to Henry, who grinds the bone to dust and tastes it. He likes what he tastes.

The Key Players

In addition to eating bones and never wrinkling his suit, Henry continues to manipulate Irving. The captain confronts Henry with the truth (“You are the Biblical Horseman of War. You didn’t think that was relevant?”) after he has a vision in which he kills people with jet black eyes. The Bible burns in his hands, which is enough to convince him that something is very wrong. Henry reminds Irving that he’s providing necessary money to his family, and all Abbie and Crane have ever done is endanger him, anyway. Irving isn’t buying it. He wants to know what’s been done to him. Henry directs Irving to Ezekiel 18:4: “Behold, all souls are Mine.”

Now that Irving knows his soul is claimed for the other side, is there anything he can do? He might be able to pass information along like Katrina, but he’ll suffer for it, and so will his wife and daughter. I like that even with his family in the balance, he won’t just give in to a literal monster. Here’s hoping that even when Irving’s actions are out of his control, his thoughts are his own, because I think there’s a lot of tension to be mined from his desire to do what’s right.

The Witnesses

Possibly because Katrina is elsewhere, Abbie and Ichabod are completely on the same page this week. Hawley brings out something nice in their professional dynamic, as he reminds them that not everyone has their integrity. Ichabod trusts Abbie to handle the music’s spell, but he still watches out for her, and I love the way he leans down to look her in the eyes every time he calls her back to him. They have each other’s backs this week in a way that balances out nicely by the episode’s end. She’s also very familiar and comfortable as she wipes off his cappuccino mustache, and he gets to raise an eyebrow and tease her for her gloating.

But of course, the most telling moment between Abbie and Ichabod is the one that they share after that madcap drive through the parking lot. Their fun exchange turns serious when Ichabod admits that he knows exactly what Abbie is really doing here. She wants him to learn how to live in the modern world because she’s worried that something will happen to her. This is a high risk life they lead, and it lends gravity to the most everyday interactions, even driving. It’s so like Abbie to try to do something concrete about that, and it’s so like Ichabod to reassure her — and reassure himself — that they’ll finish this together. He even calls her by her full name: Grace Abigail Mills. It’s downright intimate, and I’m into it.

What did you think of the episode?