Sleepy Hollow 2×18 Review: Tempus Fugit

Finally the brilliantly bonkers show I fell in love with is back – and although it might be too late, it’s nice to know that if this show goes, it will go out on a high note. After the seriously awesome cliffhanger they left us with at the end of the penultimate episode, it was going to be pretty hard for them to screw this up…but that doesn’t mean I didn’t breath a sigh of relief when “Tempus Fugit” played to Sleepy Hollow’s strengths and gave us a finale that was almost as good as last season’s.

This episode included time travel, witchcraft, major character death, racism, period costumes, paradoxes and beheading. That’s not even the best part, because while all that bizarre stuff was happening all around them, the crux of this episode was about Ichabod and Abbie. Even if one of them is thrown back in time and the whole timeline is thrown out of whack, they still make a fantastic team. Let’s be real – I would probably watch them do laundry together, and you know that it would probably be entertaining as hell.

Anyway, last week Abbie hitched a ride back to the 18th century with a grief-driven Katrina. Naturally she’s almost immediately detained on suspicion of being a runaway slave, because you know, racism. But she drops a couple of knowledge bombs and demands to see one Captain Ichabod Crane. While he’s not totally convinced, Ichabod decides to help Abbie anyway…at least until Benjamin Franklin gets decapitated by the not-so-headless horseman. This leaves Ichabod a little wary of her friend, but with the help of a cellphone and Katrina’s inability to be subtle about her murderous intentions, Ichabod is soon back on Abbie’s side.

Ichabod fights the horseman – who is genuinely scary again, thank goodness – while Abbie enlists the help of her ancestor Grace Dixon to press a giant reset button on everything that’s happened in the last 40 minutes. Then Katrina dies, which is sad but at the same time kind of okay because everyone else is probably going to live happily ever after unless they get a season 3.

Look, normally I hate it when an entire storyline is reversed so that everything returns to the status quo, but it kind of worked in Sleepy Hollow. This show already does enough crazy stuff that is quickly forgotten and/or ignored; at least they have an excuse to forget this one. Except they don’t, because Katrina is gone. Well, as gone as one can be in this show. That’s another thing I should be super upset about – I hate it when female characters are killed because there are so few awesome ones around. But I think we can all agree that Katrina was a drag on the show. It wasn’t her fault, it’s just that the writers didn’t seem to know what do to with her, and she got in the way of Ichabod and Abbie’s dynamic, which is unacceptable.

I’m glad Katrina go out with a bang, I’m glad they finally took her darkside, but I’m also glad that she’s gone. If this really is the end of Sleepy Hollow – and after that finale, I really hope it’s not – then they couldn’t leave Katrina in the 21st century. She didn’t fit. It wasn’t fair for her or any other character. If she hadn’t gone darkside this time, she would have eventually, and I think everyone – even Ichabod – knew that this was where she was heading.

Okay, so this season of Sleepy Hollow was generally a mess. They tried to do too much and lost sight of what made this show great. But they definitely shot one out of the park with the finale, which was worth it for Benjamin Franklin’s beheading alone. The best part about the finale was that it kind of set the show up with a clean slate. It’s lost Katrina and Henry who had become a total drag. It reaffirmed Ichabod and Abbie’s relationship. It brought an end the whole ‘Irving is possessed’ storyline, which started out really cool and ended up all over the place. If they get another chance they are in a position to do something great with Season 3. Let’s hope they get the opportunity!

Author: Undie Girl

Undie Girl (aka Von) has a BA (Hons) Major in Cultural Studies. The title of her honours thesis was “It’s just gay and porn”: Power, Identity and the Fangirl’s Gaze. She’s currently pursuing a Masters of Media Practice at University of Sydney. Von’s a former contributor The Backlot’s column The Shipping News and a current co-host of The Geekiary’s monthly webcast FEELINGS… with The Geekiary.

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