Major trigger warning for suicide in this week’s Sleepy Hollow. The Tarrytown psych patients are committing suicide, and Captain Reyes sends our girl Abbie to investigate. It only gets worse from there. Ichabod is out of commission with a cold, and my only issue with this episode is that he literally slept through almost all of it. So when it’s time to investigate, Abbie brings Jenny, since she’s personally experienced the horrors of Tarrytown.
It’s no coincidence that this investigation brings up so many painful memories of Mama Mills: she’s still haunting the place. At first it seems she’s the one causing the patients to off themselves, but it turns out the “angel of death” is actually another spirit, that of a nurse from the ‘50’s, who originally caused Mama Mills to kill herself. Yikes.
There’s a ghost fight between Mama Mills and the nurse, and Jenny uses an old spell passed down from the Mills ancestors to get rid of the ghost nurse. Surfer Dude is there, but doesn’t actually do much, and Ichabod wakes up just in time for a final chat with Mama Mills.
If you are triggered by suicide or institutionalization, just skip this episode. All you need to know for next week is that the Moloch baby is now a young child. Katrina makes some sort of poison for the baby, but she does so too late: it (he?) can now walk and talk and glare up a storm. What a perfect demon child. Oh, and Frank has escaped Tarrytown. We don’t know how much of a hold Henry currently has on Frank, so whether the escape is his own doing is a mystery.
This episode was heavy. It revealed a lot about Abbie and Jenny’s childhood; we knew the basics, but now we’ve seen pieces of it for ourselves. And it’s damn sad. With the suicides on top of the childhood trauma, this is far heavier than a ‘creature of the week’ episode. There are heart-stopping moments, an emotional family reunion via séance, and plenty of action. It’s an intense episode all around.
Sickly Ichabod was entertaining, but while I did miss his snark, the banter would have felt out of place with such heavy material. Next week is the fall finale, and it’s going down. I expect full banter.
Score: 4/5
Watch Sleepy Hollow on Fox, Mondays 9/8c.