There’s some good news this week: This is our Season Finale. Even better news, I’m not as disenchanted with Sleepy Hollow as I was when The Following ended. So, here we go. 1.5 hours into the great beyond.

So, to recap:

Ichabod Crane, Revolutionary Spy/Professor, has been re-animated to help stop the Apocalypse. He used to be bound by blood to the Headless Horseman (aka Death aka his old bestie) but isn’t anymore. He has a son, dead-ish, and a wife, also dead-ish.

Abbie is a bad mammajamma police officer, also a biblical Witness. She teams up with Crane to help stop the Apocalypse. She has a sister, thought crazy but isn’t really.

Moloch is the bad guy at the moment. Various monsters do his bidding.

Revolutionary artifacts are hella useful, most notably George Washington’s bible.

There are lots of inconsistencies. My current lament is the ‘mystery’ that ended last week’s episode, notably how George Washington was able to magically write a date after he died. I mean, seriously? Like, people can do that. You aren’t prohibited from writing down dates. Look, ready? January 23rd, 2045. I did it. In either case, I hope George Washington is a zombie.

We open to an adorable Ichabod Crane voicemail message. And then text messaging. It’s adorable. The gimmick has not gotten old. Incidentally, Andy Brooks (John Cho) shows up, and that’s fine. I like him, undead little weasel that he is. He brings some weird news, most notably that Crane will betray her. Crane has a convenient flashback regarding the bible, because, that’s how these things work.

I’m not sure Ichabod Crane knows what laissez-faire means.

ZOMBIE GEORGE WASHINGTON. Yayyyyyyyyy! Well, ressurrected George Washington. Who is capable of drawing a map in between earth and purgatory, which is, I mean, really handy. And kind of Grecco/Roman, am I right? An actual road to Hell? We get to see Parrish again, because he needs to investigate the prayer beads–aka a Rosary–to determine more about how Washington was resurrected. Parrish grabs the cursed object and gets burned, naturally. Regardless, he grabs at them again, stating sacrifice, and recants what he sees.

In the theme of things progressing weirdly quickly but slightly interestingly, Crane and Abbie begin to rift a little, which is kind of refreshing. Crane allows his desire to free his wife cloud his judgement for about two minutes, but Abbie reigns him in pretty neatly. Then some demons attack. So there’s that.

In the meantime, John Cho has been cocooned and then reborn into something pretty weird. Like, really weird. But I am still digging the SFX on this show, even if it is occasionally filmed kinda high-school-y. The Witness team, on the other hand, manages to figure out that the map is with Washington’s grave, then narrow down the burial site to one of 21 islands and find it. Then a small jab at nuclear missile rights and wrongs, and we’re off. To a huge monument on an island no one has apparently seen. And a tomb that Ichabod has the key for. I will say, the Freemasons had some awesome tombs. And trap doors, and stuff. Gotta love it. And boom! Map! Everybody party  – there’s about an hour left of episode. Also new John Cho shows up. He’s super strong now.

Abbie tries to appeal to his greater good by trying to remind him that he loves her, although that doesn’t matter so much. Well, maybe it does, because the old Andy shows up for a hot second and begs for death. Well, maybe to die again, because I’m pretty sure he died in the first episode. And, as suspected, John Cho can’t die, so they go full National Treasure/”Lara Croft: Tomb Raider” on him and trigger the booby traps. And, after all that work, Ichabod burns the map when urged, in favor of Abbie’s trust and in defiance of the prophecy.

We do get to talk more about the police captain, and how he deals with the seemingly random death of the police officer/priest at his cabin. He does this by confessing to both murders and turning in his badge. Not sure why. It’s very dramatic though. Important update–Ichabod and I use the same Moleskin notebook to record our very dramatic thoughts.

And, because prophesy is prophesy and because they wouldn’t just show us meaningless things in the recap, Ichabod’s eidetic memory resurfaces because he sits down and redraws the map that he burns. Re-betraying Abbie’s trust. Excellent. I mean, it doesn’t seem super irrational that he might betray her. He’s got a lot of feels. Like, a ton of them. Given dead-ish wife and son.

The second half of the finale begins with Ichabod in a weird flashback, as though he’s not accustomed to being there. It turns out he’s stumbled into a war re-enactment, which is kinda good because I was going to kvetch about that girl’s haircut. Parrish also dreams that Moloch summons up another demon. Ichabod might buy new clothes. Oh, he does. But it’s the same as the outfit he had already. Good for him.

Jenny is back! And she has news about the Captain. Ichabod is befuddled as I am about why the captain turned himself in. Parrish shows up and repeats his dream. Jenny and Abbie and Ichabod pick up the dream. War, the second horseman, is to rise. And he has a baller flaming sword.

We’re at the point now where Ichabod can literally just say: “According to secret messages hidden in George Washington’s bible…” and the plot chugs forward. I am a more discerning audience member than most, but seriously, that shouldn’t be good enough! It’s been a few hours, tops, and Ichabod has a solution for a problem they didn’t have at breakfast time.

Oh, uhhhh I redrew the map. Hehehe.

Jenny, as per usual, chimes in with some good old fashioned logic. “Hey, uh, you were super anti-map, but, like, I guess now it’s our only chance? This is dangerous, you idiot.” and Abbie’s like, “Yeah, well, SUCK IT UP.” and off we go. Jenny finally relents, reluctantly, and we get a small piece of that familial love I like so much. Abbie, Ichabod, and Parrish head off in search of purgatory. Parrish reminds them how dangerous this whole thing is, and tells them how to get to and fro to purgatory.

What we see next is Purgatory. We’re all warned that it would seem real, but definitely wouldn’t be. For Abbie, she sees Cho and her old boss, and is informed that she did in fact go to Quantico. Abbie seems to succumb right away to the illusion, which is kind of disheartening. Ichabod, on the other hand, is back in his old time, with his weird beard, and presumably back at Oxford, and England has won the Revolutionary war. Crane was never a spy. There are some more Grecco/Roman tie ins, and both Crane and Abbie get very close to eating proverbial pomegranates. Abbie’s pie starts to bleed, and Corbin and Brooks get a little demon-y on her. Similarly, Crane doesn’t drink  and his family gets revenge-y. In both cases, they are thrown from the illusion and into the far-creepier actual purgatory. Crane locates Katrina.

Katrina tells them that she can’t actually leave Purgatory without being forgiven, or swapping another soul in. Hint: This is probably where Crane sells Abbie out. Or Abbie volunteers, and the prophesy is fulfilled by their own volition. And not 10 seconds later, Abbie volunteers. On the other hand, if Katrina just leaves, then the walls would fall around Purgatory, and that’s bad, so, there’s that. Abbie just stays in Purgatory, and the Cranes leave. Abbie begins to full on fight Moloch.

Katrina basically spends the next fifteen minutes being magical. Jenny has been sleuthing on her own and finds an abandoned church. It’s named something awful, but I don’t know what because they’re being mysterious about it, but it has to do with something. “The saint’s name is a sign.” and Jenny panics about it. “You can’t trust–” she starts before the Headless Horseman shoots at her car. At least SOMEBODY knows how to shoot at tires. Honestly.

Abbie gets some Alice in Wonderland style things in the fabled childhood dollhouse with her younger selves. Well, her memories. Moloch has imprisoned the memories in purgatory. Which is actually a pretty neat little plot point, actually. Solid work. In the meantime, Parrish starts acting sketchy. So, probably the one that they were going to be warned against.  Even more dramatically, Parrish is the horseman of War, risen 13 years ago when Abbie and Jenny first saw Moloch. OH SNAP. IT GETS WORSE. War is Jeremy! Ichabod’s son! 

So, um, basically, Sleepy Hollow follows it’s pattern of having a very exciting last 15 minutes. And like, I might actually be excited for Season 2. Because this season, for all of it’s vast inaccuracies and hapless gallivanting through plot and character development, ended on a hell of a high note.