‘Sleepy Hollow’ Premiere Recap: Ichabod Crane & Officer Abbie Mills Team Up Against The Headless Horseman

Sleepy Hollow aired its pilot on Fox on Monday night, offering a modern retelling of Washington Irving’s 1820 short story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”

Ichabod Crane (Tom Mison) engages in a battle of the Revolutionary War in the year 1781 in New York’s Hudson Valley. Ichabod is squaring off against a massive masked man branded with a bow on the back of his hand. After beheading the foe, Ichabod suffers a grave injury and slips out of consciousness. When he awakes, he’s in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y., in the year 2013. Disoriented, he climbs out of the cave he found himself in and wanders onto a main road. Following two close calls with oncoming cars, Ichabod runs for safer territory.

Meanwhile, local Lt. Abbie Mills (Nicole Beharie) and her partner August Corbin (Clancy Brown) get called to a local farm where they find the decomposing body of a decapitated man. Captain Corbin finds a similarly headless man in the barn, who kills him before choosing to spare Abbie and riding off on his white horse. Abbie calls for backup, which arrives in the form of fellow officer Andy Dunn (John Cho). Dunn spots Ichabod on the way to the scene and decides to arrest him in connection to the murder.

Abbie tries to tell Dunn that Ichabod wasn’t the man she saw, informing him that he had a red coat and brand on his hand. Overhearing the officers, Ichabod asked if the man’s brand was of a bow, and if he was wielding a broad axe for a weapon. Of course, the answer is “yes” to both, and Abby wonders how he knew. He explains succinctly that he had cut off his head.

Ichabod’s bizarre appearance and incredible claims about hacking off the killer’s head land him in an interrogation room and considered a prime suspect. A polygraph test sees Ichabod reveal that he left his professorship at Oxford to fight against the patriots in the Revolutionary War, but later became a double agent for George Washington. Sleepy Hollow’s new police captain is wary of Ichabod and commands that he be taken to the mental hospital.

Abbie negotiates to be the one to take Ichabod to the facility so that she can question him a bit more. After some tense moments together, the two begin to see that they can help one another. Abbie insists on bringing Ichabod back to the cave he woke up in. There, they find a bible – George Washington’s bible to be exact – that was buried with him. A Book of Revelations passage about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is marked. The discovery causes Ichabod to reveal that Washington believed that the Revolutionary war was simultaneously a fight of good versus evil – and that slaying the mercenary was part of that fight.

Ichabod tries to convince Abbie of the headless horseman’s murderous plotting to finish what he started over 200 years ago, which includes killing the town’s pastor. Before they get to the pastor, he’s already been acquainted with the horseman’s axe. Irving wants to blame Ichabod, but Abbie informs him that he hasn’t been out of her site. Regardless, Irving wants him admitted.

After leaving Ichabod at the mental hospital, she goes snooping in Irving’s office and unearths a file that appears to be dedicated to all things supernatural. Among the unexplainable occurrences is that which involved Abbie and her sister years ago. Meanwhile, Ichabod receives a visit from his deceased wife, who was a member of a witches’ coven that sought to protect the town. She informs him that Ichabod and the horseman’s bloodlines have been intertwined, which will complicate things.

Abbie takes the files she found to Ichabod and breaks him out of his padded cell. Among the artifacts she has with her is an old map of George Washington’s. Racing against the horseman and Andy Dunn, the new duo gets to the horseman’s skull first. They’re able to make away with it, as the horseman is forced to retreat with the coming of daylight. Ichabod, now on Irving’s good side, tries to explain his feeling that he and Abby were meant to fight this force of evil together.

Sleepy Hollow airs Mondays on Fox at 9/8c.

– Chelsea Regan

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