Sleepy Hollow Recap “Deliverance”: The Birth of the Horrid King

On the latest Sleepy Hollow recap, Ichabod and Abbie have to race against time to save Katrina who is about to give birth to the living embodiment of Moloch….

By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer

When we last visited “Sleepy Hollow”, Henry’s poison laced spider concoction was finding it’s way into the throat of his mother, Katrina, who immediately erupted with pain and anguish and probably a little bit of freak out realizing she just swallowed a freaking spider. As Katrina begins to fall ill, Abraham aka The Headless Horseman shows concern for the lady he loves while trying to convince her that he had nothing to do with this onset of sickness.

When Henry shows up with a crew in tow to take Katrina from the house, Abraham is even more confused. This is all part of Moloch’s plans Henry tells his comrade of the apocalypse, but with Katrina being dragged out kicking and screaming he does his best to stop them. Unfortunately sunlight does a better job of stopping him. Thankfully the distraction works, Katrina escapes long enough to make it to a nearby gas station where she passes out before being taken to a local hospital and reported as a Jane Doe.

And this week’s episode of “Sleepy Hollow” is off and running….

The Devil Inside

Ichabod’s disgust with the modern governmental system knows no bounds on this show. He was outraged to hear about the sales tax currently levied on goods and services early on and in this episode he’s disgusted that only 40-percent of the population comes out to vote on mid-term election day. With the actual elections on Tuesday it was a well placed jab at U.S. citizens, who tends to ignore any ballot without a presidential vote being tallied. Of course Abbie has to set him straight on those ‘good ol’ days’ Ichabod likes to rally behind so much. In his day, Abbie as a woman, a black woman and as a non-land owner wouldn’t have been allowed to vote three times over. So bitch all you want Ichabod about how good the voting turnout was in your day, things were still pretty messed up when you think about it.

The polling place discussion has to take a backseat when some fellow cops tell Abbie about a Jane Doe with red hair dressed in Colonial garb showing up at the local hospital. Abbie and Ichabod assume it has to be Katrina so they race off to see if it’s her.

When they arrive, Katrina is sporting a fever of 105 with an infection growing inside her tummy. The outside of her belly looks like the varicose veins from hell have invaded and Ichabod and Abbie know staying there will only get Katrina captured or killed. So they snatch her away to go to the archives, dress her in a drunk goth girl’s clothing and while Ichabod is disturbed at these modern clothes he can’t help but notice what a corset does to his wife’s ample chest. Don’t feel bad, Ichabod that’s what everybody would do in that same situation. The staring contest is cut short when they spot Henry’s men at the hospital, Abbie decides to tail them while Ichabod returns his wife to a safe hiding spot.

Ichabod and Katrina share a little alone time, which gets awkward in a hurry when she starts talking very sweetly about Abraham — you know the Headless Horseman — and how a talisman he gave her makes him appear with a head again, allowing them to toil the hours away with conversation. Needless to say, Ichabod is none too happy with this revelation while Katrina says that talking to him is like torture. Not sure I believe that.

While the two lovers try to reconcile, Abbie tracks Henry’s men back to an abandoned building where she sneaks inside and finds a full medical lab set up with stirrups and everything. It’s the delivery room nightmares are made of! Sneaking around to get pictures, Abbie spots a stone tablet the men seem awfully interested in as they begin to discuss “the vessel”. It doesn’t take Abbie long to deduce this is all about Katrina and whatever the hell it is crawling around her insides.

The Hellfire Club

When Abbie gets back to the archives with her pics and a description of what she saw inside, Ichabod gets a flashback to some work Benjamin Franklin did during his days while infiltrating a particularly wicked group from England called The Hellfire Club. They were trying to use mystical forces to help bring down those damn revolting colonists across the pond and that’s the place where Franklin was able to get the key that eventually unlocked purgatory to let Abbie loose in the season premiere.

In other words, Hellfire Club = bad.

The situation gets even more dire when Ichabod’s research turns up one more experiment the Hellfire Club did in their day. Apparently it involved an artificial insemination and a demon pregnancy. Yep, Katrina is about to have a demon baby, but not just any demon baby.

Last Ditch Effort

With time running out until Katrina goes pop, Ichabod decides to make one last play at his son to see if he’ll help save his mother. He has Irving trick Henry into showing up at the mental ward where he comes face to face with his father. In a Star Wars-ian moment of the grandest magnitude (except reversed), Ichabod begs his son to save his mother. He stops just short of saying “there’s still good inside of you, I can feel it” but unlike Anakin Skywalker who showed a brief glimpse of hope, Henry has none of it left in him. He shoots down his father and then proclaims his loyalty to Moloch once again.

“I choose his leadership. I choose his might. I choose his fire that will burn the world”
~ Henry

He really does get the best lines and with John Noble’s voice why not?!? So failed attempt to get his son back. Oh and one more treat before you go, dad? How about the demon currently smoldering in his wife’s belly is actually ‘The Horrid King’ himself — Moloch. He found a work around to escaping purgatory and it involves a baby, a mother, and a painting of a 16th century tyrant named Vigo — oops sorry that’s the plot to Ghostbusters 2, but you get the point.

The Northern Lights

So turning Henry is a no go and Katrina is only getting worse. Just then Abbie remembers that the picture she took of the stone tablet being used as a ‘demon pregnancy by numbers’ by the Hellfire Club was glowing. The light from the picture strikes Ichabod’s memory and he soon he recollects that the Aurora Borealis aka The Northern Lights were a powerful supernatural force that could destroy a demon. A not so quick internet search of Benjamin Franklin’s writings show that he actually scribbled about the Aurora Borealis phenomenon, but in his script he actually contained a code that revealed he hid a prism that could create the same effect as an Aurora Borealis inside the Hellfire stone tablet.

To get the tablet, Ichabod and Abbie are going to have to go through a mess of Henry’s Hellfire soldiers, so they enlist the help of the local police. Abbie tells Sheriff Reyes just enough about The Hellfire Club — they are a doomsday cult, who believe they are doing experiments in the cause of the supernatural — but more importantly they are packing some seriously heavy duty artillery. Reyes buys into it enough to take a tactical team to the warehouse and when shots start going off, she knows Mills was right.

While the police battle the bad guys, Ichabod and Abbie shuffle off to the lab to find the tablet. Only problem is it’s locked in a safe with a digital keypad acting as a lock. Ichabod knows the Hellfire Club so well that he’s convinced with his highly evolved mind that he can deduce the code they would use. After two failed attempts and a mountain of frustration, Abbie tells him to try ‘666’ because you know the Hellfire Club is evil and all. Sure enough the code words although Ichabod is disappointed in the laziness of such an easy password.

They get the tablet, the cops take out the bad guys and they are off to save Katrina.

When they arrive, she’s about to spew out the demon baby Moloch, but Ichabod gets the prism from inside the tablet, catches the light with it and soon enough the creepy toddler is zapped into non-existence by the demon-ator. Katrina is saved, Moloch is no more.

Never one to be deterred, Henry is then seen back at his house literally catching lighting in a bottle because his schemes never really slow down. They just take a wrong turn from time to time.

It will be interesting to see what happens to Ichabod and Katrina now that they are reunited. Will she be returned to the Horseman or is her freedom now good enough that she gets to officially join the team to save the world? While the entire viewing audience seems on board with Ichabod hooking up with Abbie, maybe if his wife was around more often instead of being referred to in the third person, we’d see if there’s really a connection there or just smoke and mirror. One more question — can Katrina stay in that corset for the rest of the season? Just asking.

Next week a new demon is released on the world and it appears Hawley is coming back again and lands in the crosshairs of Henry’s latest plot to take over the world. Sleepy Hollow is back next Monday at 9pm ET/PT.