WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!!
Abbie and Ichabod hunt down Abbie’s sister Jennifer after she escaped from the asylum. Captain Irving wants to bring Jennifer in but Abbie begs him for more time to find her sister. Jennifer visits a man named Clark who has been holding some stuff for her. Later, a group of men enter the bar asking for Jennifer’s whereabouts. Clark refuses to tell them until one of the men produces a large drill like device. Abbie and Crane look into Jennifer’s past to discover that she has lived in several foster homes. They check out the most recent one where the woman talks down about Jennifer which strikes a nerve with Abbie. When threatened by Abbie to report her to Child Services for neglect, the foster mother tells her that Jennifer often headed to a cabin in the woods. Crane and Abbie arrive at the cabin. While there, they realize that the cabin belonged to Sheriff Corbin. Jennifer is there as well and the sisters get into an argument. Crane intervenes and gets them to begin looking for other secrets that the sheriff has hidden. Jennifer tells her sister that Sheriff Corbin had her travel the world in search of ancient artifacts. She finds one in particular that the sheriff asked for in the event of his death. Crane recognizes the device as a type of projector that displayed a map of Sleepy Hollow from his era. He then tells them about his involvement in the Boston Tea Party. Jennifer doesn’t believe Ichabod’s story until Abbie informs her of who he is. Crane tells them that the item the map indicates is the last known location of the Key of Solomon. Afterward, they go to look at the map again when suddenly they are attacked by the same group of men who killed Clark. One of them snatches the device during the gun fight and escapes. However, they manage to detain one of them. Crane looks the man over to find a marking that is a match for the Horseman. The man is Hessian which shocks Ichabod. Crane interrogates the Hessian about their business in Sleepy Hollow. The Hessian explains that they have been procuring ancient artifacts in order to release the 72 demons King Solomon trapped and the device is a door way. He goes to say that they are everywhere and can be anyone. He says something in German before swallowing a cyanide pill. Crane translates the man’s last words—Moloch will rise.
In the area indicated on the map, the two remaining Hessians use a spell book to open a portal to release a few demons. Abbie, Jennifer and Crane arrive to stop them. During the fight that ensues, Abbie grabs the book. The Hessians, holding Crane and Jennifer hostage, demand she give them the book. Abbie does so and tosses the book into the fire surrounding the demons which result in closing the portal along with the Hessians. Later, Abbie and Jennifer come to terms with their relationship with Abbie asking her sister for her help in battling the forces of darkness. After Abbie leaves her sister, Crane finds her and tells her about the demon named Moloch who controls the Horseman and is seeking to open the portal to the seventh circle of hell. He shows Abbie a depiction of Moloch in John Milton’s Paradise Lost which Abbie recognizes as the demon she and her sister saw in the woods.
The world of the supernatural is still hard for Abbie to grasp. There are forces at work that she cannot rationally explain and she must come to terms with it. And her sister Jennifer is the only other person besides Crane who understands what is happening in Sleepy Hollow. However, Abbie’s relationship with her sister is rocky at the first. When they meet up in a cabin that belonged to Sheriff Corbin, it evident that they have some issues that need to be ironed out when they draw their guns on each other. With Crane intervening, they slowly begin to come to terms with each other through the common connection they have with Sheriff Corbin. At first, it seemed that Jennifer didn’t want to have anything to do with her sister and vice versa. But unlike Jennifer, Abbie has been running from her past, refusing to believe the truth about what she saw. She selfishly thought that she was protecting herself when she should have been protecting her sister. Though she confessed to the Sandman last episode that she did in fact see something, Abbie still has her doubts. But those doubts slowly diminish as the episode progresses. Her first step was telling her sister about Ichabod Crane. This illustrates that she is possibly coming to terms that Ichabod is who he says he is. However, I sense that she has just enough reservation to not completely believe his story. Yet, she seems to be inclined enough to give him the benefit of a doubt. Hopefully after witnessing the summoning of demons in the episode’s climax, those reservations of her will diminish a little bit more.
Jennifer Mills, Abbie’s sister, already believes that there are forces at work in Sleepy Hollow. She never denied what she saw in woods but she didn’t live the easy life that Abbie did and, without a doubt, she resents her sister for betraying her. Needless to say, this causes tremendous friction between them. The only thing real connection they have beside blood is Sheriff Corbin. Jennifer did jobs for the late sheriff that involved her traveling the world to collect artifacts. Perhaps this is the reason she has been in and out of foster homes over the years more so than her behavior. Or she had to keep her “missions” secret from her foster families whenever she was questioned about her absence by acting out just to throw off suspicion. Regardless, Jennifer has a direct link to what Sheriff Corbin has been investigating in secret, and Abbie and Crane need her help. Unlike Abbie’s first meeting with Crane, Jennifer appears to have an easier transition with him even she, too, didn’t believe he is from Colonial times at first. The first evidence of this is while they were on their way to the location of the Key of Solomon when Jennifer explains her training with firearms to Crane who seemed fascinated by her tale. In the countries she visited, Jennifer fought against injustice as well as procure artifacts for Corbin. Crane regards her as a “freedom fighter”, feeling a sense of familiarity. Jennifer adds that “if you believe in something then you must fight for it.” This is another term that coincides with Crane’s beliefs.
Ichabod’s adjustment to the 21st century seems to be coming along smoothly as he has learned to work the Onstar feature in Abbie’s car and has a very touching heart to heart with the female operator on the other end. The scene plays out like a radio broadcast as he apparently helps the woman with a personal problem. It’s just the British in him. Crane later helps with Abbie and Jennifer’s problem with each other. Whenever the two got into a heated argument, he played peacekeeper, keeping their emotions in check. It’s another history lesson with Crane as he explains his involvement in an important event in the Revolutionary War, the Boston Tea Party. However, the experience is less festive than the name it was given. Under orders from General Washington, Ichabod tracked down a crate that contained a device of unknown origin. It was guarded by a Hessian soldier who took his own life to protect the box. That fact remains true today as the ghosts of his past come back to haunt him in the modern world as a group of men attack the cabin and steal the artifact. However, one of them is captured and is discovered by Crane to be a Hessian due the marking on his chest. The Hessian Crane beheaded 200 years ago bore the same mark. It is a shock to him that the German mercenaries are still active after all this time. It seems that Ichabod Crane won’t have such a hard time with the 21st century after all.
With all that is happening and more that has yet to happen, the center piece seems to be Sheriff Corbin. He believed the Mills’ sisters story about the demon in the woods and has been looking into the occult extensively. Just about everything the sheriff knows Ichabod Crane knows as well. It makes me wonder who Sheriff Corbin really is. How does he know so much about the two witch covens and what more does he know that hasn’t been uncovered yet? Just as it was revealed that Hessian soldiers are still in existence, Sheriff Corbin may be a part of the White Witch coven the same as Crane’s wife Katrina. Or he could be descendant of those who kept the secrets and passed them down through the generations. Either of these outcomes is likely because Corbin seemed to know more about the past history of Sleepy Hollow than anyone else including Crane. Whatever is happening in the town, Corbin is the key factor in it. It’s only a matter of time before Abbie Mills and Ichabod Crane follow all the signposts Sheriff Corbin has laid out from them.
The demon in the woods has finally been revealed as an ancient Ammonite god called Moloch. According to history, Moloch was worshipped by the Phoenicians and Canaanites, and had associations with a particular kind of propitiatory child sacrifice by parents. Moloch figures in the Book of Deuteronomy and in the Book of Leviticus as a form of idolatry (Leviticus 18:21: “And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Moloch”). In the Old Testament, Gehenna was a valley by Jerusalem, where apostate Israelites and followers of various Baalim and Canaanite gods, including Moloch, sacrificed their children by fire (2 Chr. 28:3, 33:6; Jer. 7:31, 19:2–6). That could explain why the Hessian soldiers threw themselves into the fire when Abbie tossed the spell book the used to summon demons from Hell. If Moloch viewed his disciples as his children then they are willing to be sacrifices for the “father”. But what significance does Moloch have with Sleepy Hollow and the Mills sisters? If this is a god that sacrifices children then it definitely can’t be good.
Another familiar figure in Religion that is referred to is King Solomon. If you studied religion, Solomon is the son of David according to the Book of Kings, the Book of Chronicles, Hidden Words and the Qur’an and one the 48 prophets according to Talmud. Over the years, Solomon came to be known as a magician and an exorcist, with numerous amulets and medallion seals dating from the Hellenistic period invoking his name. The Key of Solomon seems to be the item of Moloch’s search. The Key of Solomon is divided into two books that could possibly release the seventy-two spirits that are contained in a bronze vessel by King Solomon. With this element, my previous worries about where the series was going are slowly being alleviated as it appears likely to tackle Religious folklore in the same manner as the CW series “Supernatural”. Unlike the aforementioned series, Sleepy Hollow is going to take a crack at Religions of early Christianity which should make for a very interesting series indeed.
