Abbie and Ichabod team up with Jenny to stop a historic group of German soldiers from unleashing hell on Earth. Here is a recap and review of the Sleepy Hollow episode “The Lesser Key of Solomon.”
Recap:
Boston Harbor, 1773. Ichabod and the Virginia militia sneak through the Boston Tea Party. Explosion. Flashes of Katrina. Abbie’s car, 2013. Ichabod poetically unfolds the story of him and Katrina to the woman from Northstar Roadside Assistance. Picking up immediately after Jenny’s escape, Abbie demands a head start in searching for her sister. She gets 12 hours.
Jenny, incognito, walks into a bar and asks for her things. The bartender pours her a shot and delivers a duffle bag. A voice over the phone orders a Hessian soldier to find Jenny and retrieve Agent 37. So this man walks into the same bar for information and makes it a crime scene. The headless bartender hangs from the ceiling, while his head fills the billiard rack. Homage to the Headless Horseman.
In the midst of researching Jenny’s whereabouts, Ichabod questions Abbie about her parents. Reluctantly, Abbie tells him that her dad bailed when they were kids and her mom was hospitalized for a nervous breakdown. She and Jenny were placed in foster care, but separated for a year. Ah ha. Ichabod wants to follow that lead.
Abbie threatens legal ramifications if Jenny’s former foster mom doesn’t cooperate. That’s the spirit. The woman mentions a cabin close by that Jenny frequented. Ichabod and Abbie, utilizing her B&E skills, find that this cabin belonged to Sheriff Corbin. Enter Jenny. Jenny reveals that Corbin, a believer, sent her around the world to retrieve rare objects and asked her to keep a sextant, used to map sea travel, safe. Ichabod recognizes the symbol on the cloth covering the device. Cue flashback. Ichabod, mastermind behind the Boston Tea Party, recovers from the explosion to find a chest with this symbol. He sends it to General Washington without so much as a peak inside.
Mastering the use of a flashlight, Ichabod projects an old map of Sleepy Hollow from the sextant. He pinpoints the location of the chest, but the sudden red laser on the map indicates they have company. Hessian soldiers storm the cabin and steal the sextant, but one man is left behind. Ichabod, who speaks exceptional German, realizes these soldiers are cohorts of the Headless Horseman. The Hessian cracks a cyanide pill, but not before disclosing that the chest contains the highway to Hell. Moloch shall rise. Have bad guys not learned to keep their mouths shut? Jenny recalls that the Lesser Key of Solomon – a grimoire – a sort of metaphorical key – can bring forth Hell demons.
Ichabod’s photographic memory comes in handy to redraw the map. In an abandoned church, Hessians recite a spell that causes black gunk to spew from the holy water basin. The border turns to flames. Four figures rise from the ground, trapped from the air by the black membrane. Abbie, Jenny, and Ichabod interrupt the party. As Abbie grabs the book, one soldier grabs Jenny. He demands that Abbie drop the book or Jenny dies. Abbie throws the book into the fire and saves the day.
Abbie gives Jenny the details on her and Ichabod being witnesses and believes she has a shot to get Jenny released so they can work together. Ichabod uncovers that Moloch is a demon of child sacrifice mentioned in Milton’s Paradise Lost. Abbie positively identifies his image as the demon she and Jenny saw in the forest.
Review:
Once again, Sleepy Hollow delivered an enjoyable episode with just the right blend of vengeful demons, reimagined history, and emotional development. The stakes were raised for our heroes as they fought against villains with a greater immoral agenda than the previous ones, Serilda and the Sandman, who caused isolated destruction. This episode set the scene for upcoming drama on the personal and professional level. It uncovered necessary backstory about Jenny, Ichabod’s knowledge, and the town threat without it feeling like a bog of explanations.
“The Lesser Key of Solomon” revealed the identity of the mysterious demon and established him as this season’s “big bad” – an odd move considering the series’ pilot was predicated on the Headless Horseman. Nevertheless, the decision to have the leader ruling from behind the scenes amps up the enigma and strengthens his power. It gives him an extra layer of authority and protection. He’s trying to bring around the apocalypse, after all; he can’t make himself an easy, visible target. Not knowing much about Moloch in this version of the story, aside from him being a demon of child sacrifice, makes him an intriguing and unpredictable opponent.
The conclusions for the cases of the week have been ever so slightly building to more climactic ones, paralleling the increasing threat of the emerging villains. It was especially notable in this week’s episode. In contrast to last week’s villain being defeated by a chair, and the one the week before being obliterated from a single, spur-of-the-moment blast, the Hessians physically fought with Abbie, Ichabod, and Jenny with the looming deadline to defeat them before the frightening figures escaped. In the end, it was not strength of combat skills that won, but Abbie’s strength of character and trust in her own decisions. Abbie has been established as a smart, feisty, worthy opponent. Who wants to go up against a woman who can pull off saying, “I will rain legal brimstone down on you so hard it will make God jealous.”
Not only were the characters fighting the outside forces of evil, but they were also struggling amongst themselves to form a cohesive unit – a relatable task for most people, whether in the family, friends, or work sphere. Despite Abbie and Jenny’s feelings of betrayal from the other, the fact that they both expressed pride at the other’s accomplishments and true self showed humility and change of pace. The final scene between Abbie and Jenny, which may be the best scene to date, is a prime example of why this show works. In the middle of all the crazy supernatural elements is the story of a woman overcoming the odds and learning to accept what she cannot explain and control.
The budding friendship between Ichabod and Jenny has increased the depth of Ichabod’s character. After hearing how Jenny learned to fight while helping various foreign peoples, Ichabod expresses approval of her life as a freedom fighter. Inferring from this, he was not just blindly following orders under General Washington, but believed in the value of their side of the war, both the separation from the British and the side of good in the battle for the world’s fate. The inclusion of Jenny into the Abbie-Ichabod relationship provides a new perspective. It forces Abbie to look at her internal struggles through the lens of the other one affected, while it allows Ichabod license to respectfully question his partner’s infallibility. It’s a subtle way to shake up what the characters think they know in order to bring them around to realizing the whole of the situation.
While it may never cease to strike many audience members as absurd that the meaning behind historical events is being rewritten, the writers are giving Ichabod credibility by doing this – not credibility in the sense of proving to his peers that he actually time-traveled, but rather credibility in the eyes of the audience that this character has a plausible, necessary existence in the created world. His knowledge exceeds that of the average American police officer, making Ichabod an invaluable commodity. If he had just time traveled as a run-of-the-mill eighteenth century settler, what would be the point? In addition, it provides the opportunity for amusing lines, such as, “At the time it was referred to as the destruction of the tea. You’ve coined a far more festive name.”
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