Lanterns made of human heads! Oh dear, we’re really in the thick of this apocalypse thing now.

Let’s bitch it out…

‘The Midnight Ride’ picks up where we left off last week, with Crane (Tom Mison) reconnected with the Freemasons. When he arrives at the secret clubhouse for his “No Girls Allowed” meeting, he walks into a massacre. The Headless Horseman has decapitated four Freemasons while looking for…something. Thanks to some very detailed exposition (need to get those new viewers onboard!) we are reminded that once the horseman reunites with his head, his brothers will rise. And so the race is on to find his head before he does. When Crane and Abbie (Nicole Beharie) retrieve the object in question (thanks to some help from Orlando Jones’ Captain Irving) they try to destroy it. However, the head proves immune to hammers and liquid nitrogen.

Unfortunately for the Freemasons, their heads are not so difficult to destroy. This is where it gets gross: the Horseman removes the skulls from the Freemasons that he decapitated earlier, and uses the remaining skin to make lanterns for Abbie and Crane to find. Payback’s a bitch.

Seeing the heads spurs Crane’s memory about how to prevent the Horseman from reuniting with his head (Side note: I still can’t get over the tenuous connections in this show, and the liberties taken that Crane was always in the right place at the right time in his former life to acquire knowledge pertinent to the present day mysteries. Then again, it’s a show about demons and witches. And I guess he was picked as the Witness for a reason. But I digress…) Essentially Crane remembers a manuscript that Paul Revere had on his famous ride, a copy of which the Freemasons own and that it must contain a clue about how to destroy the Horseman.

When Crane and Abbie track down the manuscript, they quickly learn that it’s in code. Thanks to a little help from Paul Revere (“he’s an acclaimed dentist!”), they discover the code word on the inside of the Horseman’s teeth, thereby allowing Crane to crack it. Good thing they didn’t destroy that head. after all!

Meanwhile John Cho’s Andy Brooks returns (am I the only one who didn’t see that coming?) to tell Abbie there’s no way to kill the Horseman, but he can be trapped. Apparently Andy is willing to help because he cares about Abbie (um…do we believe him? Did John Cho have a pilot that got cancelled?). It’s helpful for our duo to have someone in direct contact with the Horseman, as they immediately discover when they have Andy set up a sunset meet in their “go-to” tunnel.  Andy could be an interesting “go between” character in the future, feeding our heroes useful information from the dark side.

Thanks to the manuscript’s instructions on how to trap him, Abbie and Crane trick the Horseman with some creepy Halloween skulls and UV light. As the light paralyzes the Horseman, Crane shackles his feet. Annnnd…that’s all folks.

Other Observations:

• There are some good (and “to be determined”) developments for the secondary characters. In a welcome “Thank God they don’t drag this out” narrative decision, Captain Irving (Orlando Jones) finally sees the Headless Horseman for himself while sneaking the head out of evidence. This means he’s learned that Abbie and Crane aren’t crazy and so becomes a (not-so) happy addition to the apocalypse-stopping team.
• Also, John Cho warns Luke (Nicholas Gonzalez) to stay away from Abbie (apparently he must do this so that she can be saved?). Not sure what that’s about – and not sure I care enough about Luke to lament the cancellation of his coffee date – but I’m willing to keep an open mind…
• Fish out of Water Scene o’ the Episode: Ichabod meets the Internet. Even knowing that the porn pop-up had to be coming, it still made me laugh.
• I LOVED Crane’s indignation in this episode. From his reaction to the inaccuracy of modern-day lectures on Paul Revere, to Thomas Jefferson stealing his quote and fathering children with Sally Hemmings. Tom Mison’s dry, quick, incredulous delivery sells it.
• I wonder what the direction was to the stunt guy playing the Horseman in the last scene. “What’s my motivation?” “Writhe around like you are getting burned by the sun…and that you can’t believe they caught you…and that you really miss your head.” He just really seemed to work it.

What did you think? Are you glad Captain Irving is officially in the know? Oh, and did anyone miss the unseen Katrina (Katia Winter) this episode? Comment away below

Sleepy Hollow airs Mondays at 9pm EST on FOX