Sleepy Hollow Recap: The Midnight Ride

THE CHOVERLORD HATH RETURNED!

After last week’s exercise in the disappointingly dull, Sleepy Hollow was back on track with The Midnight Ride. And how!

It starts with, as the title indicates, the midnight ride of Paul Revere. I am very disappointed that none of my history teachers ever thought to mention Revere and his buds were chased by the literal personification of Death.

Back in the present day Abbie is equipping Corbin’s cabin with food from the fictional, non-trademarked version of Costco, causing Ichabod to be shocked by A) the idea of bulk food purchases and B) bottled water. You wouldn’t be complaining if she’d bought box upon box of doughnuts, Mr. Crane.

It’s only one hour until sunset, which is when the Headless Horseman’s supposed to show up and shish Ichabod’s kebab. Shush, that’s totally a phrase. Does this mean The Midnight Ride’s taking place the same day as The Sin Eater? Did Ichabod try to sacrifice himself for the greater good mere hours ago? No wonder he’s kinda crabby this episode.

Well, some of his friends also die. But that’s later.

Ichabod has a meeting with the Masons so they can tell him super-secret information on how to defeat the Headless Horseman. Masons, listen to me. Ichabod’s figured out how to use a phone, and he’s literally over 200 years old. This is vital, time-sensitive information. Text it, for Chrissakes.

Another example of the Masons being ever-so-slightly behind the times is that they won’t let girls into their meetings, because when you’re up against the Death himself what you want to be worried about is cooties.

Abbie, because of the Masons’ NO GIRLS ALLOWED stance, goes instead to the station. On the way she runs into Luke the Nosy Ex, who proceeds to be… pretty cool, actually. He was introduced as something of a foil to Ichabod, but he’s actually been really nice so far. Almost too nice. He points out that they used to be friends before they dated, and he’d like to be friends again. And anyway, they work together, so this constant avoidance thing she’s got going isn’t really going to work. She agrees to have coffee with him, but as she BAMFs off into the sunset she warns him to “temper expectations, please.”

AKA “Do not girlfriendzone me, Luke Morales, I swear to God.” Can I get “Temper expectations, please” on a t-shirt?

John Cho Andy Brooks was watching them from the shadows, and later on he goes to talk to Luke about their mutual acquaintance. Andy’s supposed to be dead, something that everyone who sees him this episode is sure to remind him. He tells Luke that “rumors of my demise have been… pretty much true” before launching into a speech about how there’s a war coming, and Luke needs to stay away from Abbie because Andy’s the only one who can protect her.

Laugh break.

Abbie gets a voicemail from Ichabod, who narrates like he’s writing a letter (Dear Miss Mills, etc.). He lets her know that the Masons’ no girls rule is straight up bogus, so he’ll get them to ditch it so she can come to the meeting in their fancy mansion.

Let me get this straight. Abbie told Ichabod that the Masons’ sexist rule “gets under her skin.” Once he’s made aware of the situation he says “Well, OK, I’ll get these guys”—his allies, sort of his friends, people who he needs to stay in good with because they know things he doesn’t, people who probably won’t listen to Abbie—”to stop being jerks.” And the writers just drop that bit of information in a voicemail like it’s no big deal, which it shouldn’t be, because it’s the just decent thing to do. They could easily have gone the “Everyone was sexist in history. For him not to be he must be an exceptionally great guy! Let’s have Abbie thank him for how very not-sexist he is.” route, and they didn’t. It’s like in the pilot when Ichabod said he supported abolition and Abbie was like “What, you want a medal?” I love this show.

Ichabod, in the Mason Mansion (one could even say Mison in the Mason Mansion), hears a commotion and grabs a sword that the Masons just have lying around in their front hall, because this show owns its crazy down to the set design. Abbie drives up outside and sees the Headless Horseman through the window, so she runs in to help her friend out. But Headless has completed his Mason Mansion Mission—decapitating the Masons—and proceeds to ride on out of there.

The police get to the mansion, and Captain Irving lets Abbie know right away that her official report had better not have the phrase “Headless Horseman” anywhere in it. He asks who the victims are and Ichabod goes into a long spiel about the Masons, only to be informed “I know who they are. Why are their heads chopped off?”

You smell that? It’s the sweet smell of competence in the morning. Everyone in this show is so good at what they do. Like Luke, who when he saw Andy earlier pulled a gun on him right away because “Hey, he’s supposed to be dead, something’s off here.” It’s such a nice change from Teen Wolf, where characters can’t even manage calling other characters up to say “Hey, I have this plan to defeat the Big Bad. Just wanted to make sure you don’t have a different plan that directly counteracts mine. Oh, you do? Wow, it’s a good thing I called! That could’ve been messy.”

Nooo, I’m not still bitter about season 3A, why do you ask?

Ichabod’s fellow soldiers have died, and he’s pissed. Next time Headless can come after me, not my friends, he swears, but I’m going to take the SOB with me.

He tears through their library looking for any clue as to what they might have told them—this is why you use cell phones, Masons—but instead only sees a slashed-up picture of George Washington.

From there Ichabod figures out that, since the Masons were keepers of artifacts, the Headless Horseman must’ve assumed they had his skull. We’ve been Headless-less for a few episodes, so Abbie reminds us that he needs his head for the other three Horsemen to rise. So they’ll get it, and this time they’ll destroy it.

(You didn’t think of doing that before…? OK.)

The problem is that the skull is official evidence, and Irving’s reluctant to let them have it because he’s still not 100% convinced that this Headless Horseman thing is legit. But Ichabod and Abbie have a heart-to-heart with him about how the Horseman will kill again, and you’ll have to keep making calls telling people their family members are dead, so you need to just trust us and give us the skull, k?

In a little bit of setup, this scene sees an officer tell Irving that he has a message from his daughter about how it’s his estranged wife’s birthday tomorrow. Amandla Stenberg, will we be seeing you soon?

Irving goes to the lab where the skull’s being kept and meets Redshirt Lab Tech Paul, who lasts all of 10 seconds when the Headless Horseman busts in with his automatic weapon and his axe.

Speaking of his axe: The Headless Horseman With An Automatic Weapon Award for Ridiculousness for this week goes to Captain Irving’s axe dodge. I’m going to look at it whenever I feel sad.

Irving grabs the head and shoots a pipe filled with some kind of explosive chemical, which gives him a chance to escape. Notably, he did seem shocked to see the Headless Horseman, and there was no one around to act for. So it’s looking like he’s not part of the Apocalypse Conspiracy. Good. I prefer him just being a badass, non-supernatural human.

Irving delivers the head to Abbie and Ichabod in the Batcave, but they have a hard time destroying it, because there are 23 minutes left in the episode. Acid doesn’t work, nor does hitting it with a sledgehammer or blowing it up with dynamite. Side note: Apparently Abbie can very easily acquire acid and dynamite. On their way to an industrial-strength car compactor they get waylaid by the sight of the heads of the four decapitated Masons (one of whom probably isn’t James Frain. They’d show us if he got killed, right?) hanging from a wall. Headless has coated the insides of the skulls with silver and turned them into lanterns, because in addition to being a good shot despite not having a head, he also has some mean craft skills.

Ichabod remembers that Sam Adams also used to coat the insides of his lanterns with silver, which gets him thinking about Paul Revere’s Midnight Ride. See, Ichabod was guarding Adams when he gave Revere a Masonic manuscript with a Devil’s Trap symbol on it. (Is this Supernatural?) The manuscript must’ve had information on how to defeat the Not-Headless-at-the-Time Horseman, which is what he chased Revere to get. It must’ve been updated after Headless became headless, which is why he wants it.

The manuscript is supposed to be at the Tarrytown Museum of Colonial History, only it’s not, because it’s been loaned to some London museum. But they put it online, so everything’s good. Ichabod and Abbie had to go to the museum to find all that out, so we get a wonderful scene of Ichabod being shocked yet again at bottled water (the new sales tax) and lecturing a tour guide on how everything he knows about Paul Revere’s midnight ride is wrong.

Again: This is a show that owns its crazy.

Back at the Batcave Ichabod has a little trouble with the computer and Abbie calls Luke to cancel her coffee meeting. Only Luke doesn’t even pick up the phone, because he’s really freaked out by what Andy said about picking a side and staying away from Abbie. Andy’s voice went all demonic when he said it, so it looks like Luke’s mind may have been infected somehow. Anyway. Ichabod realizes that the part of the manuscript they need is written in a Vignere cypher, which is impossible to decode without a password. While Abbie’s out in the tunnel trying to call Luke he finds that password—cicero—on the back of the skull’s teeth and proceeds to figure out the code.

Oh, and the 200-year-old Revolutionary War soldier also accidentally discovers Internet porn. That happened.

Andy meets Abbie in the tunnel and spins her a sad tale about how he’s stuck in the service of the Horseman, and he wants to quit but he can’t. “I know you don’t believe me,” he says, “but I’m trying to protect you.”

He explains that there’s no way to destroy the Horseman—he is death, after all—but he can be trapped. Ichabod’s figured out the same thing by decoding the manuscript, and when he goes to tell Abbie about it Andy is conveniently there and agrees to deliver a message to the Horseman: If he wants his head back he can meet Ichabod at the cemetery when night falls.

According to the manuscript the way to trap the Horseman is by getting a witch to turn the moon into the sun, since sunlight is Headless’ only weakness. But Abbie comes up with a more feasible option than summoning a witch: Use UV light, aka artificial sunlight. It’s reminiscent of that scene in Buffy where the ancient demon impervious to “all weapons forged by man” never took into account modern inventions like rocket launchers.

Ichabod and Abbie bring in Irving to help them figure out how to lure Headless to a special cell prepared by the Masons. The conversation works its way around to Thomas Jefferson, whom Ichabod knew back in the day. A pair of African American cops dropping a truth bomb on a Revolutionary War-era Thomas Jefferson fanboy that “By the way, he was a scumbag when it came to slavery. Sally Hemings. Six kids. Just FYI.” Only on Sleepy Hollow.

In a moment of quiet before sundown Ichabod and Abbie talk about Luke; it’s better that they not be friends, Abbie says, because it’s not like I can share the most important parts of my life with him. It’s always going to be secrets and lying. Ichabod proceeds to get a bit angsty about Katrina and how all his friends are dead, culminating in a proclamation that the only people Witnesses can rely on are other Witnesses.

Ahem.

It’s showtime at the cemetery, where Irving lures Headless into an underground tunnel filled with decoy Halloween skull lanterns. Abbie’s there as well, holding the actual skull. She starts screaming about how she’s broken her ankle and Ichabod needs to come help her.

Abbie lures Headless into the Mason supernatural cell, and Irving flips a switch and floods the place with UV light. As they hoped, the Headless Horseman does indeed appear to be trapped.