SLEEPY HOLLOW Recap: ‘Mama’

If Abbie and Ichabod are the heart of SLEEPY HOLLOW, Abbie and Jenny are the backbone. The show is always better for exploring their history, and tonight, the Mills family tree could hold the key to understanding why Abbie was called to be a Witness in the first place. Let’s get to it.

The War

Abbie has dreamed of her mother every night this week. She doesn’t think anything of it until Sheriff Reyes hands her a new case: three patients at Tarrytown Psychiatric have committed suicide in three nights. Reyes trusts Abbie’s judgment after watching her dismantle that doomsday cult, so she hands her full control over the case. Given the Mills family’s connection to Tarrytown, she knows Abbie will be motivated to close this one.

Abbie enlists Jenny as her partner, partially because Ichabod is busy drinking soup, snuggling under flannel blankets, and railing against the common cold, but mostly because Jenny is the best choice. No one knows Tarrytown like she does. Jenny and Abbie meet with Irving, who says that he knew the first victim, and the suicide angle just doesn’t track. Abbie has to ask: did Irving do it? He can’t blame her for wondering; his soul does belong to Moloch now, but he’s still in control of his own actions, and he intends to keep it that way.

Abbie and Jenny track down the security footage from the first victim’s room. As he hangs himself, a woman appears in the corner. Abbie and Jenny’s mom is back from the dead. This might explain those dreams. Tarrytown is situated on a point of convergence with the spirit world, so Ichabod figures that baby Moloch pulled Lori Mills back to earth to weaken their resolve.

Hawley joins Abbie and Jenny on their trip back to Tarrytown. They watch security footage of a patient named Walter, who stared at them when they first arrived until a nurse named Lambert led him away. Now, he’s broken a glass, and he looks poised to kill himself with it. Hawley and Jenny rush to hold Walter down while Abbie scans the room. Her mother appears in the corner, only to disappear — and take Abbie with her.

Abbie finds herself in an abandoned wing of the facility. After a figure rushes past her, Lori appears briefly at the end of the hallway, and Abbie is startled to find Nurse Lambert behind her. Lambert insists that no one else was here. It’s just the old hall playing tricks on her. Nearby, a different hall plays tricks on Jenny, who’s split up with Hawley in search of her sister. A series of numbers and letters carve themselves into a door. When Abbie finds Jenny, she recognizes the code as one the hospital designates for patient video sessions, and this code matches a session with Lori.

The sisters take the tape back to the archives to view in private. Holding hands, they watch as Lori talks about demons and the daughters she has to protect. A nurse told Lori that she wasn’t a good mother and that she should just kill herself; when the doctor presses for specifics, Lori names the nurse. It’s Lambert. Abbie remembers that Lambert mentioned Irving as she led Walter away. Back at the hospital, Lambert hands Irving two red pills.

Irving fills a deep bathtub with water, ties himself to the bottom, and tries to drown. I have some questions about the security at this place. Abbie, Jenny, and Hawley get there just in time; as Irving cries that he needs to die, Lori appears in the doorway again. Abbie waits with Irving in his room until he wakes up, the effects of the drugs now worn off. She explains that Lambert is a demon who dosed him up to make him more willing to take his own life, and he thanks her for saving him.

Town records show that Lambert was executed by electric chair in 1959 after claiming lives of 21 patients across the country; she was caught while working at Tarrytown. Abbie, Jenny, and Hawley return to the abandoned wing of the hospital, where they find Lori’s old room. Beneath the plaster, the wall is covered in drawings of Abbie and Jenny. Lori appears to say that only an ancient hex can stop Lambert. She can’t remember the whole thing, but it’s written in a journal passed down from her ancestors. The lights flicker, and Lambert sucks Abbie out of the room. Lori promises to get Abbie while Hawley and Jenny recover the journal from the basement.

Lambert straps Abbie to a chair and calls herself an angel of mercy. There’s so much pain in the world, and most people just can’t handle it. She’s only here to help. Lori pulls her away before she can feed Abbie any pills, and Jenny recites a West African incantation from the journal. It’s meant for witch doctors, but it does the trick. Lambert is blown apart like a pile of leaves, and Lori vanishes along with her.

Abbie wants to thank her mother, so Ichabod brings candles and other supplies from the archives. They all hold hands — even the reluctant boys — and Lori appears. She says that everything she did was to protect her daughters. Abbie wants to know why this happened to them. Why is she a Witness? Lori can only say that there’s a secret in the journal and a weapon hidden in its pages.

Across town, Frederick’s Manor continues to be a home for poor decision making, as Katrina’s necklace makes her see baby Moloch as an actual baby. Henry talks her into holding the little demon, who either drains a bit of her life force or infects her with something. In any case, her shoulder turns blue. Did Henry think she wouldn’t notice that her own shoulder was blue? On the other hand, why doesn’t Katrina take off her necklace when she realizes what it’s doing? She must really like Abraham’s face.

Katrina makes a potion to banish Moloch, but she finds no baby in the crib. She follows a noise upstairs, where a boy climbs a chair and clutches a loaf of bread. He tells his “mother” that he’s hungry. They grow up so fast.

The Witnesses

Ichabod is mostly sidelined with a cold, but he does take a moment to get overly sensitive about Katrina’s radio silence. Killing a demon is no easy task, you guys. That moment passes when he gets distracted by his soup. Abbie loves nursing Ichabod back to health, and even at his sickest, he still wants to investigate with her.

The Key Players

All of the confusion at Tarrytown gives Irving a chance to escape, and he hitches a ride back to town in Abbie’s trunk. (“Don’t give me that aiding and abetting a fugitive look, Mills.”) It’s about time that he rejoin the team; Irving’s been stuck for too long, and now he can take action. Then again, if Moloch comes calling for his soul, he might wind up helping the wrong side, and he can do a lot more damage if he’s not locked up. For now, though, Frank Irving is still himself, and he’s free. Let’s celebrate that.

This episode also moved Hawley in the right direction, which is to say that there was almost no love triangle in sight. He helped Jenny and Abbie as a friend, without complaint, and he knew when to respect their privacy and when to lend a hand. The scene in which they all tore down the old plaster wall was one of the most affecting moments of the season so far. It was like brushing the dirt from an old family time capsule.

In every way, “Mama” belonged to the Mills sisters, who are so much better together than they are apart. Their relationship could be summed up in the way they leaned their heads together to strengthen each other before watching the tape. Abbie and Jenny have years of tension between them, and they don’t try to deny it, but they’ve managed to reach a point of absolute support for one another. Abbie wants to know why their family was chosen for this mission, and so do I, but really, just watching her fight side by side with Jenny says it all. They’re so good at what they do.

What did you think of this week’s episode?

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