YMMV / Sleepy Hollow

• Actor Shipping: Between Tom Mison and Nicole Beharie. It doesn't help that they're adorable together◊.
• Anti-Climax Boss: Despite being the Big Bad of seasons 1 and 2, Moloch dies very easily. Same thing goes for Katrina and Henry, who were supposed to be a powerful witch and warlock respectively, yet are killed by a simple bullet and knife wound.
• Audience-Alienating Ending: The season 3 finale message board comments suggest there are a goodly deal of lapsed fans who have decided not to catch up with the show upon learning that Abbie, the secondary lead, is Killed Off for Real in it. The show was cancelled after four seasons and a significant drop of ratings (a whopping 800k viewers reported on the season four opening ratings) did not return after the decision.
• Badass Decay: The Headless Horseman. During season 1, he was the walking embodiment of Nightmare Fuel, an unstoppable killing machine with a passion for decapitation. Their first attempts at Character Development, while somewhat humanizing, kept the terror in check, as he had to possess someone to communicate. The Reveal that he used to be human, if anything, made him more nightmarish. But he then spends most of season 2 pining after and being manipulated by Katrina. He effectively regains his head, cutting back on the entire point of his unsettling appearance, not to mention getting far less involved in the action and actually losing the few encounters he was given. Fans were not happy.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • There is definitely a rift between those who love Katrina and those who think that she takes precious screen time away from the other actresses. So much so that the ratings began to plunge downward from "Deliverance" and onward as some frustrated viewers who disliked Katrina's takeover began to jump ship. It didn't help that, in season 2, she makes a series of bad decisions, most of them based around the possibility of somehow redeeming Henry and/or Abraham, only for none of them to pan out until the season finally culminates in her turning into a murderous enemy. (One of the people frustrated by the character, it turns out, was Katia Winter, the actress who played the part.) Basically, there weren't many complaints when Katrina bought it in the season 2 finale.
  • Diana Thomas from season 4 became one. Many see her as a poor Replacement Scrappy for Abbie, while other have warmed up to her due to how she has a slight-self awareness in that she doesn't like "change."
• Character Shilling: There is an endless amount of it for Betsy Ross. She comes completely out of nowhere and is constantly talked up by Crane or anyone else who knew their past. She's also very much dead in the current timeline, so it left fans irritated that so much time was spent on her flashbacks in which the narrative keeps trying to insist she's a girlboss and that the fanbase should worship at her altar. As it stands, she's an alright character, but in a show that was already taking way too much focus away from Abbie, Crane, Jenny, and other supporting leads, she was a very frustrating element added to the show.
• Complete Monster:
  • Seasons 1 & 2: Moloch aims to unleash the apocalypse to destroy and subjugate all who live. As guardian of Purgatory, it is Moloch who devises all the tortures its prisoners suffer. Trapped in Purgatory, Moloch steadily corrupts humans to act as his servants, including hero Ichabod Crane's best friend Abraham Van Brunt, who becomes the Horseman of Death in return for Moloch promising him Ichabod's beloved Katrina, whom Moloch holds prisoner in Purgatory. Moloch spends centuries manipulating events, turning numerous humans into monsters and orchestrating murder after murder, punishing failure with brutal execution or torture. Moloch attempts to steal Ichabod and Katrina's infant son Jeremy, then waits nearly two centuries to liberate Jeremy from being Buried Alive to turn him into his the Horseman of War and set him against his parents. While Jeremy comes to see Moloch as a father, Moloch viciously abuses and manipulates him, informing Jeremy that he is only a servant who should follow his will before sending him on a potential suicide mission.
  • Season 3: Etu Ilu, the Hidden One was a cruel, arrogant, hot-tempered deity, driven by lust for power and a hatred of mankind. Ten thousand years ago, due to his evil nature his fellow gods banished him to the Catacombs, where he seduced Pandora and tried to manipulate into slaughtering his fellow deities using a box which could steal a god's power, only for the humans to use it to instead imprison him in the Catacombs. Awakened in the present by Pandora with his power source lost, the Hidden One has his minions summon monsters from all over world to Sleepy Hollow so he could feed off them, causing many deaths. Murdering The Kindred and The Kindress after they falled in love them, the Hidden One abuses and tortures Pandora and cursed Jenny Mills's boyfriend Joe Corbin to become a Wendigo, forcing Jenny to kill Joe. Finally regaining his former powers, the Hidden One imprisoned Pandora then bragged how he would wipe mankind out gradually, so he could bask in their fear and suffering.
  • Season 4:
    • Malcolm Dreyfuss was an internet tech billionaire obsessed with gaining immortality. After being forced into a Deal with the Devil, to avoid keeping his end of the deal Malcolm sought the Philosopher's Stone, causing numerous deaths, including Diana Thomas's partner Eric, and attempting to sacrifice over 100,000 people. Becoming immortal, Malcolm decided to conquer America and raised The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. For Pestilence, Malcolm spread a supernatural plague through Washington, D.C., causing multiple deaths through spontaneous combustion or having their soul devoured; for Famine, Malcolm released a Chinese hunger demon which killed several people through either starvation or cannibalism; for War, Malcolm turned Diana, effectively killing her. Malcolm then attacked Camp David and used the Four Horsemen to slaughter the entire US Army, forcing the government to crown him immortal dictator of America. Malcolm proceeded to ruthlessly suppress all freedoms and execute all dissidents, using the Four Horseman as his personal hit squad. Unable to kill the Witnesses, Malcolm had Crane imprisoned and adopted Diana's daughter Molly, rechristening her Laura; he spent years lying to and manipulating Laura, until upon one assault to wipe out the last of the resistance she learned the truth.
    • Jobe, a "Prince of Pain from the sixth circle of Hell", served as Malcolm's assistant, bodyguard, and assassin. Implementing the majority of Malcolm's plans, Jobe never missed an opportunity to commit murder, often choosing particularly painful methods for his victims. It was Jobe who originally shanghaied Malcolm into a deal for his soul, setting him off on the path to becoming a monster. Without Malcolm's knowledge, Jobe manipulated the terms of the deal to also send his best friend, the completely innocent Ansel, to hell. Jobe personally joined his fellow demons in torturing Ansel for 20 years, even carving his name into Ansel's chest. Assisting Malcolm every step of the way, Jobe murders Mr. Wong in such a brutal manner it's mistaken for an animal attack; tortures Jake Wells for information, partially through physical pain, partially by giving him a nightmarish vision of him murdering Alex; and raised an army of Hessians as Draugurs to restore the Headless Horseman. Having no more use for them, he sent them to burn Sleepy Hollow to the ground. Disliking the prospect of serving Malcolm for eternity, Jobe helped bring about his downfall, and happily dragged the screaming Malcolm into Hell.
  • "Go Where I Send Thee": The Pied Piper is an extremely sinister demon who is known for mass slaughter of soldiers and for what it does with children. Each generation, the Piper preys on a daughter of the Lancaster family; the child, when she turns 10, is kidnapped and taken to the Piper's lair to await her fate, which is usually her bones being made into the Piper's instruments—but only after being starved to death. Out of nothing but spite, when the girl is rescued, the Piper proceeds to infect all the girl's siblings with a fatal illness to force the parents to either return the chosen girl to the Piper or watch their other children die.
• Creator's Pet: Once Hawley was introduced, he ended up appearing in every episode for no reason, having more screen time than anyone besides Abbie and Ichabod (to the detriment of Jenny and Irving), taking the street connection spot (and, most of the screen time) from Jenny, and getting in a Love Triangle between Jenny and Abbie.
• Creepy Awesome: The Headless Horseman and the Sandman.
• Die for Our Ship: Some Ichabbie shippers were hoping that Katrina was dead/will die. They got more virulent once she was out of Purgatory. They got their wish in the season 2 finale. And then came the season 3 finale which killed Abbie off too.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Captain Irving has gotten this treatment for his ability to dish out the snark.
  • The Washington Archives duo of Jake Wells and Alex Norwood are being praised as the only good additions to season 4 and wished that they hadn't been introduced in a post-Abbie season.
• Fandom Rivalry: Ironically, it is both this and Friendly Fandoms with Pitch (2016). Pitch fans are often fans of the first half of Sleepy Hollow, as both have significant black female leads while disliking the show after Abbie was Demoted to Extra and eventually killed off.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Ichabod/Abbie is easily the most popular ship in the fandom, overshadowing the canon Ichabod/Katrina and any of Abbie's canon romances. This is mainly due to the chemistry between their actors and the fact that their friendship is the focus of the the first three seasons. Fans of this ship practically exploded with Squee after Tom Mison (Ichabod's actor) gave an interview in which he said that Ichabod was completely in love with Abbie. These fans did not take it well when Abbie was killed off in the Season 3 finale.
• First Installment Wins: season 1 was massively popular and critically acclaimed, gathering a lot of praise for its tight writing, a variety of interesting and complicated storylines, and a brilliant cast. Then the other seasons happened.
• Friday Night Death Slot: Unfortunately, this behavior is par for the course with FOX Network. Midway through season three, Sleepy Hollow was moved to Fridays and that was one of the signs that it was beginning to circle the drain, as Fox has a reputation for shifting shows it's about to murder to the Friday block.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • With Elementary, as they both have female characters of color who take no shit.
  • With Pitch (2016), as they are both Fox shows with black female leads.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • It'll take a long memory, but when John Cho guest-starred in Charmed back in The '90s, his character was heard to sarcastically mutter: "My afterlife is in the hands of a cop named Andy" (referring to another main character). In this show, he plays a zombie cop...called "Andy."
  • Similarly, from the movie version of The Return of the King, when we meet Denethor for the first time, Gandalf tells him that "War has come to Gondor." Apparently, War was already there, ruling as king.
    • Doubly hilarious when Henry comments later on how "Fathers are never what they're cracked up to be." Considering what Noble's character was like in the films...
  • If you remember the character Amandla Stenberg (Macey) played in The Hunger Games, you'll know she gets horribly killed by a rival Tribute. In Sleepy Hollow, she plays Captain Irving's handicapped daughter Macey who gets possessed by a demon and kills two grown men singlehandedly. Talk about Took a Level in Badass...
  • The last episode Clancy Brown appeared in was titled Ragnarok. Then, in 2017, he voiced Surtur in Thor: Ragnarok.
• Informed Ability: Katrina is mentioned numerous times as being an incredibly powerful witch, yet performing simple spells often seems too challenging for her.
• Jerkass Woobie: Andy Brooks and the Headless Horseman. Brooks is being forced to work for Moloch against his will and is plagued with guilt over it. The Horseman is basically evil because his best friend inadvertently "stole" his girlfriend and he got shot and turned into a monster when he lost his temper about it. He's gaining some points with fans due to his wanting Katrina to accept him of her own free will (although he does say he'll force her to be with him if it comes down to it) and telling Henry that he refuses to cause her any unnecessary pain.
  • Actually, Andy had already sold his soul to Moloch when the series started, and it's strongly implied that he did it for the same promise Moloch gave Headless, that Moloch would give him the woman who didn't want him (in Andy's case, Abbie). He slightly redeems himself after Moloch kills and resurrects him by trying to help Abbie a few times.
• Magnificent Bastard: "Whispers in the Dark" & "Dead Men Tell No Tales": General William Howe served in the British army during the Revolutionary War as a strategist and supernatural expert. He used mystical resources to try to bring down the rebellion, bonding a Whispering Wraith to a traitor and sending him to kill George Washington's spies, leading an army of Draugur to take control of Manhattan, and sending a spy to infiltrate and sabotage Washington's expedition to the Catacombs (this time coming close to killing Washington and Betsy Ross). Having Crane captured, he tempted his former subordinate with an offer of amnesty in exchange for naming Washington's spies. Resurrected as a Draugur by Pandora over 200 years after his death, Howe raised a new unit of undead to attack Sleepy Hollow before being lured into a trap so his soldiers could be destroyed with Greek Fire. He chose to incinerate himself rather than grant Crane the satisfaction of killing him.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "NO JOHN CHO STOP NO" is an oft-heard cry in reaction to Andy Brooks.
  • As of "Bad Blood," Ichabod needs to make a list of people he's pissed off.
• Mind Screw: Given the fourth season events in Washington D.C., the crossover with Bones definitely induces one. That series is set in the same town, but experienced none of the stuff that would’ve been tough to miss.
• Narm:
  • The Headless Horseman's Horse is in the habit of rearing and whinnying for no apparent reason every time it appears on camera. While it's believable that the Horseman encourages his Horse to do this as an intimidation tactic, it also does it of its own accord while rider-less. After the first couple of instances, it quickly crosses the line from dramatic to absurd.
  • Towards the end of the series premiere, the Headless Horseman attacks two police officers by shooting at them. With an assault rifle. It's just wacky to see, and it made him seem less menacing than when he was going around decapitating his victims with an axe.
  • In Ichabod's version of Purgatory, he's confronted by his father, played by Victor Garber, who tries to convince him to drink some wine, which would trap him there. Ichabod figures it out...and his (now demonic) father raises the glass to his lips and shatters it by biting it, causing blood to pour from his mouth while he bellows at Ichabod in rage. Chewing the Scenery indeed; it's simply ludicrous.
  • Andy's transformation into some sort of half-demon/half-human...thing. It looks ridiculous, and after all that, he's dealt with incredibly easily. He goes from being dead to demonic to dead to demonic to dead in the space of about...oh, ten minutes or so.
  • Katia Winters has a very...interesting...method of delivering her lines, to the point where the fans who rather dislike Katrina have started calling her "Whispers" or "Whisper Witch."
• Narm Charm:
  • The show basically runs on it. The vast majority of critical reviews (favorably) use some variant on "stupid, goofy and batshit insane" to describe it. On the other hand, many people watched the series specifically expecting this trope, only to find it a lot more straight-up enjoyable than they anticipated.
  • One of the most notable instances was Captain Irving doing a Matrix-style dodge to avoid a spinning axe thrown by the Horseman. In slow motion, no less!
• Nightmare Retardant: Possessed!Macey from "The Vessel" is probably supposed to be scary. But a bad make-up job, the actress slipping a little in mouthing the Voice of the Legion lines, and...well, the fact that she's a short teenage paraplegic really nullifies it.
• One-Scene Wonder: Badass Biker Big Ash only had a short scene in "And The Abyss Gazes Back," but fans are already campaigning for him to become a series regular. It helps that he's played by Eddie Spears.
• Replacement Scrappy: Janina Gavankar's Diana was this for Abbie before any of her episodes even began. This has died downed considerably since the season 4 premiere and she is now more of a Base-Breaking Character.
• The Scrappy: Betsy Ross. Getting hammered in as Washington's greatest agent and Ichabod’s partner despite never having been mentioned before, and taking time and focus away from other already established characters, made her quite unpopular. Compounding these issues, all her appearances (barring one) were told from Ichabod's recollections, making providing her with any form of Character Development or establishment incredibly difficult. Many fans complained that the near-constant praise she received felt unearned, and they were unable to relate to her. The fact she also took away from the Mills and Crane pairing also didn't help.
• Seasonal Rot:
  • Already suffering from the Sophomore Slump, season 2 was universally agreed to be inferior to the first series. This was due in part to a shift of focus away from Ichabod and Abbie's relationship and already popular characters onto other less popular and more controversial ones without them receiving any Character Development to balance it out. The second half became even worse. Killing Moloch gave what had been (up to that point) the series plot an unsatisfying conclusion, the remainder of the season lost direction, with the writers forced to randomly introduce new antagonists who never lasted longer than one episode. This completely destroyed the series' sense of urgency and faith that there was an overall plan, causing many fans to lose interest. The disjointed nature of the penultimate episode and the season finale did little to help.
  • Season 3: The first half was regarded as something of a return to form, with a stronger storyline and a new villain, Pandora. However, the second half proved to be worse, with Pandora being reduced from the mastermind to her husband's submissive (not to mention abused) follower. The Hidden One was underwhelming, with him doing little more than sitting around and whining about his loss of power. The majority of the episodes had no overall focus, save the vague idea of restoring the Hidden One to his former power. Killing off Joe Corbin (one of the more well-received changes of the season) wasn't taken well either, made worse by the writers choosing to do so by reintroducing a problem that had already been solved twice by this point, in an act that they unashamedly admitted was to make Jenny more miserable. The season finale was greatly disliked, due to it stuffing the Hidden One's death and Pandora returning to being the main antagonist resolution into one episode while most fans felt it would have benefited from more time. It climaxed in killing off Abbie in a way that pretty much destroyed what was left of the show's fanbase.
• Shocking Moments: The first season finale's ending: Henry Parrish is actually Ichabod and Katrina's son Jeremy, risen from the dead by Moloch 13 years prior, and the second Horseman, War, and the episode (and season) end with Ichabod trapped in what was formerly Jeremy's grave, Irving in police custody, Katrina in the clutches of the Headless Horseman, Abbie trapped in Purgatory, and Jenny unconscious in a car wreck after the Headless Horseman shot out one of her tires.
• Shipping:
  • Within a day of the premiere, people were already shipping Ichabod and Abbie (Ichabbie, or Crabbie).
  • Da Chief's actor, Orlando Jones, ships EVERYTHING.
  • Some of the current popular ships include Katrina/Abraham, Abbie/Hawley (whose shippers are usually in Ship-to-Ship Combat with Ichabod/Abbie and Jenny/Hawley shippers)... Really, there's pretty much something for everyone.
• Sophomore Slump: Season 2 was considered a letdown compared to the first due to an overemphasis on personal subplots at the expense of the historical and biblical aspects of the show, poor writing for Abbie that sometimes strayed toward Chickification, fan favorite Jenny Mills being Out of Focus, a new focus on Katrina that wasn't rewarded with actual Character Development, the Villain Decay of War and particularly Headless, and the introduction of Hawley. Viewers seemed to concur with this analysis, as the ratings dropped precipitously in this season (with some blame also being laid on the "limited series" tag, as other shows in this category like Under the Dome and The Following also suffered this). Despite the ratings struggles, the show will get a chance to turn things around after getting renewed for another 18-episode season on March 18, 2015. Clifton Campbell has been named as the new showrunner. It may help that Hawley was Put on a Bus and never mentioned again and that Katrina was Killed Off for Real.
• Special Effects Failure: The CGI bird that does Katrina's bidding looks really fake.
• Take That, Scrappy!: Katrina's death in the season 2 finale has (so far) been largely celebrated by the fandom, if Twitter and Tumblr are any indication.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Fans of the show are starting to complain that the writers keep killing characters who had the potential to make the story more interesting, such as the priest in the pilot and poor Caroline, who could have been a great recurring character but instead is unceremoniously murdered for the simple crime of crushing on Ichabod, after one scene in the first season finale and about seven minutes of "The Weeping Lady."
  • If you were looking forward to Katrina bringing some much-needed magical expertise to the side of the heroes, her handling during the second season becomes nothing but one disappointment after another; a voluntary prisoner of the Horsemen for most of the season, accomplishing little of value, then she gets a few episodes of contributing only to turn evil in the season finale and get killed off.
  • Solomon Kent is a rather clever, charming, powerful, and ruthless warlock whose main motivation to be on The Dark Side was covering up the accidental (wo)manslaughter of his love interest; Katrina had a boatload more reasons tying her to the good side and was switched in about two episodes, so this guy could have been turned into an enemy, opponent, or floating voter type of character as needed. Oh, and the directors apparently thought of him as the type of warlock who would prefer to do his spells shirtless—not a bad counterpoint to all the corsets Katrina had to show off this season.
  • Abbie, the second lead character, fell Out of Focus as time passed, with fans and her actress becoming frustrated that her life and relationships were terminally underdeveloped/examined compared to Ichabod's. The season 3 finale, in which she was killed off, alienated a significant chunk of the fanbase—possibly for good.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • The second season finale set up what could have been a brilliant premise for the third series. Abbie and Katrina are transported to the past, where Abbie is immediately treated with disdain for being black. She then has to find Ichabod and convince him that she is from the future, and that Katrina is a witch hell-bent on revenge. There was even the possibility of Katrina rekindling her relationship with Abraham, but instead the issue was resolved in one episode, making it all seem very anti-climatic.
  • Considering the crossover with Bones, one has to wonder if there wasn’t a way they could have gotten David Boreanaz’ character Seeley Booth, who’s supposed to be related to John Wilkes Booth, to make a guest appearance during the arc involving the historical Booth in this series.
• This Is Your Premise on Drugs: Frequently described in reviews as The X-Files, only stoned. Alternatively, it's also been described as Fringe on drugs, which may strike some as Hilarious in Hindsight given Walter Bishop's predilection for LSD, as well as John Noble joining the cast in the sixth episode of season 1.
• The Woobie:
  • Ichabod is killed, crawls out of his grave to find a world he doesn't really understand, his wife is dead, and everyone he meets thinks he's insane. Okay, Katarina's not quite dead but still. Things went From Bad to Worse for him when he found out what happened to his son; the sheer brokenness of his face after he kills the Golem (his son's replacement father figure and an embodiment of his rage, pain and grief) is enough to break the hardest of hearts.
  • Abbie, who sees the trees and Moloch in high school, is pretty much ostracized after the fact because of it, then turned to drugs and running with bad people to just try and forget, before she was arrested and managed to turn her life around. And now, she's lost her partner Gus Corbin, who was a surrogate father to her, a friend of hers, and once again, everyone is starting to think she's crazy.
  • Jeremy, Ichabod's son. Poor, poor Jeremy. First, his mother is forced to give him up, then his powers activated as a baby, resulting in him accidentally burning his foster family (Abbie's ancestors) to death. Then he was shipped off to an orphanage where he was beaten and maltreated. He managed to use his powers to create the Golem, but not even this was enough to stop him being hunted down and the Golem banished. And what became of Jeremy? The Four-Who-Speak-As-One killed him by stopping his heart and buried him somewhere in the woods. He became a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds as of the end of season 1. Turned into a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds now that he's been revealed to have been Hiding In Plain Sight as Henry Parrish, and is in fact the second Horseman, War.
  • Katrina's husband was essentially killed, she gave birth to a child she had to give up, and then spent 200 years in Purgatory. In the season finale, she is finally brought back to the real world, only discover that her son Jeremy is alive, is War, and hates her, and to be abducted by the Headless Horseman. Then in the second season, the show seems relentlessly determined not to allow Katrina and Ichabod to have even a moment of stable happiness together.
  • Poor sweet Caroline; she develops a huge crush on Ichabod but then mistakenly thinks he's married to Abbie, which turns the situation very awkward indeed, and then is drowned by the Weeping Lady aka Ichabod's Psycho Ex-Girlfriend Mary, simply because she fancied the wrong guy.

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