Sleepy Hollow - S2E16 - What Lies Beneath

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Previously on Sleepy Hollow, ‘Spellcaster’

A survey team that is acting suspiciously like a group of frat boys are mapping out the “seriously old-school tunnels” under Sleepy Hollow. They find a bricked up tunnel that ends in a clearly magical manhole cover. As they pry it open, a noise like a demon emits with the smoke (because this is Sleepy Hollow, and there’s probably a demon down there). Lightening fast, one of the surveyors is pulled down the manhole…then two guys…three guys! All of the guys have been pulled down the manhole cover!

Crane and Abbie take a stroll by a historic warship and both voice what we’re thinking. Does every moment of our lives have to be captured digitally and instantly shared with the universe? Oh, and also, who exactly is the real enemy now that Moloch is gone?

CSI: Sleepy Hollow

Abbie has to bounce a photographer away from the missing surveyor crime scene, but it turns out he’s Calvin Riggs, Ace Reporter-the brother of one of the missing men and an embedded investigative journalist with the military, which is practically like being actual military. But he grew up here and remembers the stories, and three men don’t just go missing in Sleepy Hollow. She assuages him with promise of the first phone call as soon as she knows what’s going on. Um, did she not see him? She needs to call him sooner than that.

Since they have maps of the tunnels back at the batcave, Ichabbie easily finds the last location of the surveyors in the tunnels, and also the manhole cover, and also the phone’s video capture of them being dragged away. The workers left behind their underground radar mapping equipment and proof of an underground palladium designed 200 years ago. Only Thomas Jefferson could have built that!

At the Sleepy Hollow Dive Bar, Cap’n Irving searches out Jenny Mills to ask a favor. He needs her to retrieve his wedding ring from the evidence locker so he can commence reconciling his marriage. He can’t call in any police favors for the help, so he basically needs Jenny to steal it. As he’s talking he accidentally reveals a sinister looking tattoo across his wrist, but doesn’t notice Jenny noticing it.

Ichabbie take time out of their busy life-saving schedule to research the Jefferson chamber; Ichabod doesn’t know what was in there because he and Jefferson ended up on the outs, but he at least knows it was called the Fenestella. The Fenestella is also mentioned in Grace Dixon’s journal, but all it says is dark damned souls will be used to guard the chamber.

Armed with not even an idea of what is down there, they drop down through the scary magical manhole cover. Abbie tries to reach the men via radio but it breaks in and out-then they’re attacked on all sides by slash-faced demons!! Abbie tries to haul Crane out of the tunnel, but one of them grabs him and tries to pull him back; luckily Ace Reporter Calvin Riggs, who has been tailing them, shows up and starts flashing his camera. The lights scare off the demons and they get the cover shut.

Riggs is all angry that Abbie didn’t call him, and Ichabbie are trying their hardest to keep him from calling in all of his military connections. She convinces him she can save his brother, and her gut tells her that he can be trusted. Ichabod’s gut is not on board, but since his gut has made several questionable decisions in recent past, this episode belongs to Miss Mills.

The markings around the manhole cover indicate the creatures are Reavers, feral supernatural sentries of The Fenestella. The Reavers have been down there for 200 years and should be starving by now, so the survey team doesn’t have a lot of time left. Ready to form new team Ichabbie + Riggs!

Irving is breaking into the precinct, and Jenny is along to be his 5 minute look out. He’s not looking for his ring, though- he’s looking for all of the demony artifacts of the Hellfire Club! Jenny, who ain’t no fool, catches him in the act and confronts him. He explains that his soul is tarnished, but when he’s not evil he’s really, really good. Like, wants to set up offshore accounts using the Hellfire Club’s money to take care of his family after his inevitable evilness comes back kind of good.

Team Ichabbriggs are ready to spend more time in the tunnels, but Riggs gets left at top of the tunnel “just in case”. Ichabod rigs the camera flash to shoo away the Reavers while they descend the ladder, and they have free access of the tunnels. As the Reavers come back and start to descend on them, the door to the Fenestella magically opens and they slide in just in time…to be greeted by Thomas Jefferson?

It’s not really TJ-it’s his living, thinking, magical hologram spirit, brought to us with help from science and the local Sleepy Hollow Witch Guild. He can’t help them in their mission to save the survey team, but he has a damn fine tour of the Fenestella lined up for them and he thinks they’re going to like what they see. If only he’d made mini muffins!

 

 

Crane questions TJ about his knowledge of the Witnesses, but is only answered in riddles. Meanwhile Abbie follows a magical extension cord that leads to TJ’s hologram generator, right in the middle of the Reavers’ nest…where she also finds two of the surveyors, hiding but alive! TJ gives Crane a book on Eschatology, a study of the end of days-the whole Fenestella is one big collection of what the Witnesses need to know to save humanity. Corbin, Washington, Franklin, even Jefferson, they all worked for this and all were lost in the struggle. The Reaver nest is fragile, and if they destroy it to save those two measly men, the entire structure and all of this invaluable knowledge will be lost. Poor Jefferson, his advice could not have fallen on deafer ears.

Luckily for Ichabbie, one of those surveyors was laced with tryptophan, and the Reavers are heavy sleepers after their big meal. They get all the way across the nest and rescue the two surveyors. As they tiptoe back to the entrance, the Reavers wake up and give chase into the Finestela. Through the tunnels, up the ladder-has it really only been 10 minutes, or is Briggs that patient?-they race for their lives. Abbie gets pulled up as the manhole cover slams shut. They saved the men, but the Reavers are too dangerous to just lock up down there; they’re going to have to destroy the Fenestella.

Crane goes once more into the breach to destroy the hologram generator power source but TJ makes one more attempt to reason with him. Crane argues for humanity and convinces Jefferson that it is what he would have done. He sets up the detonation points and runs for the manhole; they slam it shut just as a blue-flame explosion destroys the halls and the Fenestella, and with it probably the key to the Witnesses saving the world.

Big Brother Riggs gives Abbie a hard time for feeding the rest of the press with a “rabid animal” story to cover what really happened. She convinces him that part of her job is to make the call when people know about the real danger they’re facing. He emails her a picture of herself and promises that he never reveals his sources.

Cabin Corbin

Katrina wakes up from her nap to find Henry in her room. He doesn’t explain how he survived killing Moloch, but he does say that he killed the demon for her, for “their kind”. He presses a rose into her palm, drawing blood, and she wakes up with a start! Whew, it was all just a dream…until she gets up to wash her hand and sees the basin filled with her blood. That dream was a real dream!