Sunday, April 10, 2016

Sleepy Hollow, Season 3, Episode 18: Ragnorak



Well this was some bullshit

I’m not even going to try and go for a detailed recap of this episode because it doesn’t deserve my time or keystrokes and I’m sure Renee and I will sit down together and write a Friday Discussion about Sleepy Hollow’s latest trainwreck

After Betsy Ross is quickly shuffled out of the picture (her presence last episode was as pointless as… well as its always been) they rebuild Pandora’s box with which they intend to trap the Hidden One. Fine print – it needs a Witness Soul to rebuild it. Specifically Abbie’s (yes, of course Abbie’s).

They take their newly rebuilt box to have the most utterly anti-climactic fight ever with his Hiddenness who spends more time making dramatic speeches about how evil he is rather than actually do anything with all that epic power he apparently has. His power is drained but to finish him off, we need a sacrifice

Yes, as anyone with any social media presence knows, that sacrifice is Abbie Mills. She’s dead, she dies to kill the Hidden One.

This happens pretty close to the beginning of the episode and much of the rest of the episode deals with Abbie Mills saying goodbye and assuring Ichabod it’s totally ok to not resurrect her and the whole point of her existence was establishing his specialness anyway

No, really. We actually have that line. Ichabod was her purpose. That’s not rubbing salt into the wounds, that’s rubbing rotting faecal matter into them.

Seriously, I’m not going into detail of the emotion or goodbyes of this episode. I’m not going to even pretend this death was ok or well presented – I’m not going to act like any amount of emotional goodbyes would make her sacrifice anything other than a clumsy story twist forced in at the last minute for no reason


Pandora hangs on a little as a new villain before Ichabod defeats her using the Horseman of Death which only makes me think they should have tried that on the Hidden One before throwing Abbie to the wolves.

The episode closes trying to set up a storyline for season 4, because the writers are apparently still hoping for that. I don’t think the “fans” of this show are though.

Y’know, after last episode, I was actually hopeful. I was hopeful that after the utter ruin that was the second season Cranewreck, with the utter disaster of Katrina and the appalling treatment of Abbie and Irving and Jenny, the utter mistake of Hawley and the subsequent fandom backlash, the writers had learned.

Usually I’m accused of being too cynical – clearly I’m not cynical enough. The writers have not learned a damn thing and I can’t even imagine what they were thinking to sabotage the key component of this show: Abbie and Ichabod, working together. That was the show. And they’ve just killed it and revealed how little they thought about Abbie

On Fangs I have spoken repeatedly about plot armour and how so many characters have it. How it’s such a constant that it destroys many plot lines as the protagonist repeatedly throws themselves into ridiculous danger and survives. It is beyond typical, and beyond enraging, that one of the few times the protagonist does NOT have plot armour – it’s a Black woman.

No, that’s not even fair. Plot Amour would suggest I wanted her to survive an implausible situation brought on by her own foolishness. I don’t. Here all it would have taken is the writers not throwing a last minute sacrifice plot line. I don’t want plot armour, I want the character not to be sabotaged.

I guess you could try to resurrect her – but I doubt that’s on the cards – especially since, after the damn Cranewreck, fandom is officially done with this bullshit. Don’t even try that “heart belongs to Abigail Mills” attempt to mollify. This last, awful, attempt to finally establish Ichabbie before killing her doesn’t even remotely add enough sugar to make this poison go down.

And, y’know what, if someone had to die why not one of the two people who should have been dead CENTURIES ago? Betsy! Ichabod! PANDORA DAMN IT! Anyone but Abbie.