'Sleepy Hollow' Review/Recap: "The Weeping Lady"

Maria Millage ’17 / Emertainment Monthly Staff Writer

This week Sleepy Hollow did it again.  And by it, this writer means concocting the perfect mix of creepy, funny, character development, filler, and plot-driving elements in the same episode.
The episode managed to combine elements that were more filler in nature as well as ones that drove the season’s overarching plot: Henry Parrish/the Horseman of War (John Noble) raising an evil army for Moloch with the help of Abraham van Brunt/Horseman of Death (Neil Jackson).
The episode centered around the Weeping Lady, the spirit of a dead woman, who had haunted the town of Sleepy Hollow for centuries yet recently became violent when she attempted to drown two of the women in Ichabod’s (Tom Mison) life: fellow Revolutionary War re-enactor/enthusiast Caroline (played by The Lizzie Bennet Diaries’ Laura Spencer) and Abbie (Nicole Beharie), succeeding with the former but not the latter.

Nick Hawley (Matt Barr) was dragged into the episode against his will to save Abbie from the spirit and he seemed to mainly be there for comic relief (which he does so well) and to give Ichabod an extremely intense looking crossbow that supposedly contained basilisk venom (in the end it didn’t appear to work so the jury’s still out on that one).
Abbie and Ichabod eventually discovered that the Weeping Lady was the tortured spirit of Ichabod’s former fiancée, Mary Wells (Heather Lind), who had been woken by Henry in his attempts to break apart the bond between Ichabod and Katrina (Katia Winter).  Ichabod had broken off his engagement with Mary before leaving England for the colonies and defecting to the American side in the war but she nevertheless came looking for him, became rousingly jealous over Ichabod’s then-platonic relationship with Katrina (who had been engaged to Abraham at the time), and wound up dying by accident at Katrina’s hand.
The final scene between Ichabod, Abbie, and Katrina showed off the amazing skills of Sleepy Hollow’s writing staff.  Though Abraham, Katrina, and Henry were quietly working on a B plot related to the season’s arc in the background, the episode’s main plot-line (about the Weeping Lady) did seem to be a filler one until the very end when the truth about Mary’s death came to light. The writers cleverly used the fact that Katrina never told Ichabod about Mary’s death as a tool to create strife between the couple. This season has been full of it so far and it doesn’t seem to be going away any time soon.

The writers have been building the relationship between Ichabod and Abbie since the very beginning of season one, pushing most of the show’s fans to the belief that their relationship will become romantic at some point during the show.  Not to mention there have been a lot of offhand comments about Abbie being Ichabod’s fiancée or wife in the last few episodes, and if there’s one thing that’s for certain about Sleepy Hollow, it’s that the writers don’t do anything without a reason.  As the character’s relationships currently stand, the only barrier to ‘Ichabbie’ is that Ichabod is still married to Katrina.  He’s far from wanting to break off their marriage but the seeds of doubt about Katrina and her willingness to tell the truth have been sewn in his mind after this episode.
The end of the episode found Katrina returning to captivity with Abraham, leaving Ichabod with Abbie (perhaps a bit of foreshadowing for a choice she will make later in the season?) and showed viewers an intense confrontation between Henry and Moloch, who was not happy with Henry bringing the Weeping Lady into things.  Another piece of the puzzle was added when Moloch revealed that the act of giving Katrina to Abraham was not done solely to please the Horseman of Death.  Instead, Katrina is necessary to Moloch’s cause for some reason or another, meaning Abraham has a job and he hasn’t been doing well at it.
The episode expertly walked the fine line between shoving an episode of pure filler at its viewers, and using up its entire full season arc at once. It was perfectly paced, full of just the right amount of funny and was dramatic to keep the viewers on the edges of their seats.  This season so far has been doing some fabulous thing with writing and character development and this episode only served to hammer that home.
Overall Episode Grade: A