Previously on Sleepy Hollow: the late Sheriff Corbin’s long-lost son became a Wendigo; the jailed Captain Irving got more charges added on to his rap sheet; Crane learned to hate yoga; we learned the truth about Squire Boone, secret cannibal; and Henry sent a magical spider made of super-poison to sneak inside a sleeping Katrina’s open mouth.

In tonight’s new episode, “Deliverance”, Our Heroes face an immaculate inception, moral debates about elderly little boys lost, a new name for Moloch, the secret healing power of the Northern Lights, and the wonder of Election Day. Crane’s fake papers may not be enough to bypass local voter ID laws, but he’s more than happy to offer suggestions to Lieutenant Abbie, who’s proud that it only took 180 years and two amendments before American black women like her could finally vote, so you darn well better believe she’s gonna. As a consolation prize, Abbie gives Crane her “I Voted” sticker, so no one can say the democratic process left this privileged white man totally empty-handed.

For those who missed out, my attempt to streamline the basic events follows after this courtesy spoiler alert for the sake of time-shifted viewers…

…

…at last, the secret of Henry’s magic, evil, poison-filled, disgusting mouth-spider is revealed: it doesn’t kill her, it only makes her pregnant. This product of evil science magic, whose key ingredient was the bottle of jincan that Henry picked up last week, is Team Apocalypse’s most sinister plan yet: since Moloch’s been denied reentry into our world from Purgatory by all possible avenues, Henry and his Hessian henchmen have concocted a special evil backdoor that allows their demon overlord to be (re?)born into our world as a baby. And because it gives Henry great evil pleasure to do so, he chooses Katrina as the unlucky Rosemary. And her witchcraft is useless against it, same as it’s been against 99% of any other opponents or problems she’s encountered to date. Honestly, the Great Gazoo has a better success rate than Katrina does.

Her escape from the old van Brunt place is aided and abetted by Bram the Horseman himself, who did not approve this plan that will surely kill the woman he stalks. He even axes a henchman as she flees, but he’s powerless to accompany her out the front door because all of this initially happens in daylight, his burning weakness.

Our Heroes recover a feverish Katrina after she escapes Henry’s clutches and ends up a Jane Doe at Westchester County Hospital. They dress her in leftover lost-and-found clothes from a “drunk Goth chick” without washing them first and adjourn to the Corbin-Cave, where she recounts the ordeal and recalls that Henry’s notebook bore a drawing of a goat skull with a Rod of Asclepius jammed in its forehead, the painful-looking corporate branding of the infamous Hellfire Club, a clan of evildoers whose membership charter dates back to the 18th century and includes several mutant villains from old issues of Uncanny X-Men.

Crane already has distrust issues with Katrina after all the revelations that have continually come between them from episode one onward. Hearing that his wife is pregnant doesn’t help his temperament at first, nor does her casual mention that she and the Headless Horseman chat sometimes, because Headless/Death/Bram gave her a special necklace that lets her see the real him deep down inside so she can get to know him better than anyone else in the world can. And then she wonders why Ichabod looks at her funny.

At first, Ichabod and Katrina think their only salvation lies in convincing their little boy Jeremy, who’s now evil old lawyer Henry, that he doesn’t really want to hurt Mommy or Daddy and he should call off the pregnancy. Katrina still has 100% faith that she can reach baby boy Crane down in the heart of the murderous Horseman he’s become. Crane’s faith level is down to 5%, but it is there. Abbie and the rest of us are all eye-rolling. But it’s their show and we can’t take out Henry for them.

Crane has jailed Captain Irving trick Henry into a meeting so Crane can confront him. While Irving leaves to go collect his TV paycheck for this week, father and son sit across from each other and have a masterfully acted scene in which they fail to change each other’s minds. Small victory: Crane grabs his sin-eater son long enough to pick up a repressed memory of a young, boyish Jeremy running through a dark forest, alone and afraid. Good luck getting Henry to admit it’s a valid memory.

Meanwhile, Abbie finds the secret Hellfire Club warehouse and sneaks in for photos. When Crane reviews them later, he recognizes an artifact and declares, “I MUST INTERNET IMMEDIATELY!” Using the old 56K dial-up in the Corbin-Cave, Crane sloooooowly accesses old Benjamin Franklin archives that happen to include research material about this unique tablet. It’s inscribed with baby Moloch birthing instructions, refers to him as “the Horrid King” (not to be confused with “the Horned King”, which is a totally different guy to fans of the Prydain Chronicles), and for some reason this artifact contains another artifact called the Aurora Prism, which can refract mere sunlight into an instant Aurora Borealis that has magical properties such as curing unwanted spontaneous evil demon pregnancies. Why anyone would store an artifact’s antithesis inside the same artifact is beyond me, but maybe that’s why I would make a terrible Big Bad.

Abbie comes up with a plan for them to storm Henry’s evil warehouse: they convince mean ol’ Captain Reyes (back just in time to vote in Sleepy Hollow elections!) that the warehouse is held by “a doomsday cult”. Abbie shows Reyes her photos, whose subjects include glimpses of mutilated corpses and medical tools from Dead Ringers. For once Reyes believes Abbie about anything at all. They take a small SWAT team into Hessian HQ, and then there’s gunfighting. (One of the Hessians has just enough lines to merit a guest-star credit — Adam Sinclair, who was previously an adulterous jerk in a season-two episode of Revolution.) Abbie accepts rare kudos from Reyes, and Crane comes up with the greatest excuse ever for tagging along on all their future adventures without further interference: he convinces Reyes he’s “a criminal profiler with an emphasis on acts of historical imitation.” Reyes buys into this without asking for references, which I imagine is close to how the hiring interview went between Inspector Lestrade and Sherlock Holmes.

Crane removes the tablet from a briefcase and rolls his eyes as he guesses the combination is 6-6-6 (probably manufactured by Skroob Luggage), then returns to where Katrina’s been hiding out — at St. Henry’s Parish, the church where Henry would be least likely to want to come looking for her. Crane uses the Aurora Prism to capture some sunlight, make an Aurora Borealis laser, aim it at Katrina’s perilously swelling abdomen, and magically abort baby Moloch with no lingering side effects. So now we’ll never get to see what a Scrappy-Doo version of Moloch would look like.

(And if you doubt the power of the Aurora Borealis, keep in mind that you never see demons overrunning the Arctic Circle and declaring Alaska their new dominion, do you? See, now we know there’s a reason for that.)

Thus the day is saved! Except Katrina stops breathing, so Crane shows us that he took CPR lessons sometime after the Weeping Lady incident and successfully revives her. Then the day is saved.

While Katrina naps the nap of the just, Abbie and Crane celebrate with a fist-bump, which Crane even caps off with a silent little “boom!” at the end to show how totally modern he’s getting. Later that night, Henry has already moved on to his next nefarious scheme, which involves catching lightning and directing it into a jar containing a floating red energy ball. Or something. For all I know, it could be a Pokeball.

To be continued!

* * * * *

If you missed any previous episodes of Sleepy Hollow, you can see what’s available online at Fox’s official site, or check out MCC’s own ongoing recaps. Visit our season-one recap checklist, or this season’s recaps linked below for handy reference. Enjoy!

9/22/2014: “This is War”
9/29/2014: “The Kindred”
10/6/2014: “Root of All Evil”
10/13/2014 “Go Where I Send Thee…”
10/20/2014: “The Weeping Lady”
10/27/2014: “And the Abyss Gazes Back“