Note: Discussing "Sleepy Hollow" here, so if you haven't seen the end of the second season, you may wish to back away.
Given my thoughts at the
mid-season break, I thought I'd chat a bit now that we've made it to the end. So, in theory at least, (because come on, in paranormal shows death is never the end) no more Jeremy/Henry, and no more Katrina. But now Frank is back. Again. Good this time. They say. It is tempting to say that this was a lot of stuff to get through to end up not too differently from where we had been, but I certainly think we can argue that the steps it took to get there were important.
I like where they were ultimately going with both Henry and Katrina, even if one could argue that Henry's sudden feelings of maternal love when before he'd been only too happy to impregnate his mom with a demon (which is not my idea of a loving relationship, but I suppose we could argue that Henry had a rocky upbringing) was not well motivated by anything other than she's my mom, but the idea that maybe inside he had just been seeking parental approval, sure.
And I understood why both Katrina and Ichabod had trouble understanding that there are only so many times your kid can rain death and demons on the world before you have to accept that reform is probably not in the cards. (Or not in time to, you know, save the world.)
So Henry was killed and Ichabod was sad but understanding and Katrina was not. And leading up to that they finally admitted that Katrina's magic had been wimpy, and then it was suggested to her by an evil warlock (always a reliable source) that her magic sucked because she was suppressing the desire to go dark. And voila, Katrina was pretty good at dark magic. Good enough to try to hit undo on everything, traveling back to the day of Ichabod's death. And here's where it gets a little problematic for me. Certainly, Katrina's decision to save Ichabod by putting him on magical ice for a few centuries has not worked out like she planned. She doesn't seem to like the future which involves her son teaming up with demons and ultimately dying, her husband teaming up with modern folk who killed their son, and well, headless seems like he maybe was the better pick. But, there is a really convenient few things that Katrina is glossing over. And I don't want to be all rah-rah the future is better, but Abbie (who got an accidental hitch on the time travel spell) visited Franklin and telling him about post offices, libraries, the success of the American Revolution and he was thrilled that the future was what they were fighting for. And Katrina, who yes, was grief stricken over her son's death and her husband's apparent acceptance, well, decided to undo the saving of Ichabod. But she got back there, and then when she realized Abbie was there too, immediately teamed up with Headless to put a wrench in everything, because why? Yes, Abbie was going to try to reset, but at that point Katrina's motivations boiled down to wrench in the works, which was a shame. Because Katrina came into her own, but she didn't get more nuance, she got less. (I also feel like maybe someone should have made her watch some time travel stuff. It never works out when you try to muck with the past.)
So, Katrina got some power and motivation, and while I really love where they are now, I hope next season we don't have to take one character and mire them in indecision or inaction for a bunch of episodes to justify the payoff at the end. I really enjoy this show, so these criticisms are leveled with love, but sometimes it's easy to get too focused on the endgame and ignore that within each episode if the character just seems stuck, it doesn't help for them to get two episodes at the end of action.
But, past Ichabod and present Abbie hugged it out, and Abbie also broke herself out of jail. So, there was that.
