Sleepy Hollow Review: Episode 2×08 - “Heartless”

Demonic Succubus Shakes Up Team Witness And Abbie Mills Continues To Handle Everything Herself

On this week’s Sleepy Hollow, Team Witness must face off with a succubus, their foe of the week who has summoned by Henry. She’s beautiful, she’s dangerous, and has quite the knack for taking on the attire and demeanour of the person her victim is harbouring desire for. Abbie and Ichabod must run to save Hawley when he becomes one of her targets, while Katrina struggles with visions she’s having of one creepy crib with a baby in it. How will Team Witness take out the Succubus? What is the significance of this baby? Let’s discuss.

Time To Feed The Big Bad Succubus

The Succubus approaches an unsuspecting man in a nightclub and takes on an appearance similar to the woman he was pining after. She says all the right things to win him over, demonstrating the ability to understand the inner psychology of his desires. She kills him in his car, feeding off his life force, and later does the same thing to a woman who is interested in one of her female friends. Though there is something problematic about the whole demonic-female-sexuality element, we were impressed by guest actress Caroline Ford, who not only had to take on the characteristics of these unknowns, but those of Abbie and Katrina too. She mixed those elements of charm and danger well in her performance and then went full-throttle when morphed into her true succubus form. Also worthy of commendations in regards to that form are the wardrobe and make-up team, who had quite the task in painting Caroline Ford all up in red, giving her claws, and horns to boot. It very well could have gone wrong, but visually everything worked. The special effects team did good work with the smoky life force stealing too.

“I can sense your desire, it burns strong even though you try so hard to hide it. And yet, the emotion in your heart has soured, hasn’t it? I know that taste. It’s the taste of doubt.” ~ The Succubus

The Succubus reveals to Ichabod that he has doubts as far as Katrina is concerned, but then by the end, he was telling Abbie that he just needs to trust Katrina. We were left confused by the continuity of this, and whether this is Ichabod being in denial regarding Katrina’s endless parade of lies or if there is something even bigger brewing. Perhaps Katrina has cast a spell on Ichabod? With more questions than answers, we’ll have to hope that more of this will be cleared up in future episodes. The big revelation regarding the Succubus’ life force stealing is that Henry has tasked her with doing so in order to collect “food” for the baby Moloch. That’s right, baby Moloch wasn’t as banished as Team Witness thought. Moloch needs these life forces to get big and strong and wreak apocalyptic havoc. We reckon there will be some sort of magical time jump in his growth spurt at some point but now that Moloch is on the same plane as Team Witness, we’re hoping this will pick up the pace of the story. It was starting to feel like a weekly whack-a-mole session against whatever foe Henry had summoned but this should shake things up a bit and be more interesting to watch play out.

Katrina Crane, So Close Yet So Far

One of the many problems we’ve had with Katrina as a character is the writers giving us clashing information of her abilities as a witch. The writers give characters dialogue claiming she is a powerful witch but repeatedly, we’re left with all of nothing when it comes time for her to actually deliver a spell. Tonight, we finally got some glimpses of Katrina’s ability to contribute something useful to Team Witness when she was able to offer up information about the victims’ injuries being points where the life force flowed, that set Abbie and Ichabod on their way towards figuring out that the killer they were after was a succubus. But then Katrina asked Ichabod for some tea that Abraham had brought her and we were left flabbergasted as to why she felt this would be a good idea.

“Would you perchance have some Quince tea? It’s just, well Abraham brought me some when I was ailing. It soothed my nerves.” ~ Katrina

Katrina performs a spell to track down the location of the succubus and finally, it felt like she was going to get on her way of being this “powerful” witch that we’ve heard so much about. After all, what is the point in having a witch character if she’s not going to do witch things? But then, when it came time to perform the ritual on the succubus heart so she could be killed, Katrina couldn’t even pull the heart out of the jar. And why? Because she thought she saw some rats even though she knew they weren’t real? Upon beginning the ritual, she is unable to complete it, being sent flying and knocked out instead, leaving Abbie to complete it all on her own. It is incredibly frustrated to watch a character like Katrina get teases of moments where she’ll finally be this badass powerful witch that we’ve been hearing so much about but never seeing, only to have her development be undermined at every turn. Now that she has been shown to be under a spell from the necklace she is wearing, causing her to see the baby Moloch as a human baby instead, we’re holding out hope that she’ll be sent full throttle into evil-witch territory so she can finally have some gusto.

Abbie Mills, Business As Usual

We have a theory that the stage is being set for Abbie and Ichabod to have a falling out to the point that Abbie will have to go at fighting the forces of evil alone (or at least without Ichabod). At the beginning of the episode, Ichabod and Katrina are watching terrible reality television while Abbie is out working. They could have been researching things in the library, Katrina could have been practicing some magic (clearly she needs to), but they weren’t. She returns with information from the trace she put on Henry’s computer and then things are set in motion. She’s later nice enough to offer to get them some food, more things for Abbie to pay for without a hint of thanks, but they decline the offer. When more clues have come in, Abbie is the one to say that their killer must be a succubus. She tells them that she’s been doing some reading of her own. When it comes time to perform the spell to destroy the heart, Abbie is the one that retrieves the heart from the enchanted jar and Abbie is the one to complete the spell while Katrina’s lying on the floor in her usual damsel-in-distress state. More and more, we’re being shown that Abbie is developing the skills to get things done without anyone else. She has the law enforcement connection, the weapons training, the fighting skills, and now she’s getting the obscure knowledge (of which Crane and the internet were formerly the sources), and now the magic (which Katrina was apparently supposed to be the source of). We’re perfectly ready for Abbie Mills to become the focal point of the show, and to have Nicole Beharie in the main spotlight. From her masterful handling of the dramatic content, her strong physicality, and even her hilarious deadpan delivery of the line, “This is nasty” (when reaching into the jar of maggots), Nicole Beharie once again earned her spot as the standout performer in the episode.

“Still think there’s some good left in him? Maybe somewhere deep down there is, but at what point do you say that that no longer matters?” ~ Abbie

Just to follow up on this theory of a falling out between Abbie and Ichabod/the Cranes, we see Abbie make the most excellent point that it doesn’t particularly matter if there’s some good left in Henry. With all the people he has killed, harmed, and all the destruction he has brought, Henry will have to pay for his crimes, something Ichabod/Katrina are failing to understand. This conflict between Abbie and the Cranes has not shown any sign of slowing down and it’s becoming rather grating to watch the same argument be recycled each episode. So to have this wedge driven further between them is good, so that we can get a change in pace and dynamics and have fresh material to watch.

FINAL VERDICT

This episode was an improvement over last week’s. Writer Albert Kim gave some excellent dialogue to the succubus that made her all the more dynamic when combined with actress Caroline Ford’s multi-faceted performance. Director David Boyd handled the action well when the succubus faced off with Ichabod and Hawley, as well as incorporating the shots of the baby crib in when Katrina was having her necklace-induced visions. We’re hoping that this is the beginning of a change in pace and dynamic so we’ll no longer have the same argument repeated and that now Katrina will be on her way to getting up to some proper villainy and actually use her witch powers that we’ve heard so much about but hardly ever seen. We’re also quite keen on seeing this baby Moloch in his true form, as the Sleepy Hollow special effects team has done some truly terrific work and we’d love to see what they deliver in this area.

Questions, Comments, Concerns…

• Ichabod and Katrina watching garbage television while Abbie gets actual work done. Sounds about right.
• Maybe DON’T bring up your ex-fiance in front of your husband when it’s still a touchy subject?
• This succubus is badass. #JustSaying
• Wah wah, entitled ‘nice guy’ routine, much? #SleezeballHawley
• MACKING. PEOPLE. MACKING.
• See! Now Abbie is the one who knows mythological trivia! Pretty soon she won’t need any of these other people to weigh her down! I am fully ready for this to be re-vamped into the Abbie Mills show.
• Hawley won’t do a thing unless it’s in his best interest, pass it on.
• Abbie Mills once again is the only one tough enough to do what needs to be done. #ThisIsNasty #SleepyHollowMeetsFearFactor
• Trust the woman who’s only major plot developments involve her getting caught lying. Sure, that’s bound to work out well. *sips tea*
• I’m more interested in what this baby looks like in its true form, to be honest. The creepier, the better. Don’t let me down, Sleepy Hollow special effects team! 😀