Warning: Spoilers ahead for the Season 4 premiere of Sleepy Hollow. Feel free to read one of our other fabulous articles if you haven't watched yet.
Ever since Sleepy Hollow made the shocking decision to kill off Abbie Mills, the main character played by Nicole Beharie, we've been hearing about all the changes that would be happening on the show. Now that Season 4 has premiered, we can tell you exactly what the four biggest changes looked like, and, with a couple of exceptions, the show is almost unrecognizable from its first three seasons. Let's start with the biggest change, shall we?
Sleepy Hollow Doesn't Take Place In Sleepy Hollow Anymore
Isn't that a lovely photo of Ichabod Crane in front of the Lincoln Memorial? You might be wondering what he's doing in Washington, D.C., and the answer, surprisingly enough, is actually that he lives there now. I know! Sleepy Hollow has abandoned the small town that was the focus of all the action for the first three seasons of the show, and has taken the supernatural events to D.C. How did this happen, you ask? Well, you might remember at the end of Season 3 that Crane was whisked away from the cemetery that Abbie was buried in by a big black SUV filled with mysterious government officials. When Season 4 opens, he's still being held and questioned by those enigmatic individuals two weeks later. When Crane finally escapes their clutches (which was actually a relatively easy affair), he finds that he was underground in the nation's capital. By the end of the episode, with no more real ties to Sleepy Hollow and obvious supernatural forces gathering in D.C., he decides to stay in town and do what he does best: fight demons and other creepy crawlies.
There's A New Team Witness
Well, this can't help but make sense. Crane is now fighting evil in a new city, so he would have to have a new team behind him. After Crane escapes from custody, he runs almost immediately into a demonic crime scene in progress. He helps save Homeland Security Special Agent Diana Thomas (Janina Gavankar) from a demon as she tries to capture the monster that just killed her partner. After he convinces her that he can help find the demon, she takes him to Agency 355, an X-Files like government agency known as The Vault, which keeps track of unexplained phenomena. There they meet Jake Wells (Jerry MacKinnon), who handles the cataloging of weird news and information, and Alex Norwood (Rachel Melvin), who works with artifacts and machines. The duo, it turns out, are working for the very agency that George Washington started to battle the supernatural, so, naturally, they are pulled into Crane's efforts to fight the demon.
One thing that's cool about this new team, aside from the fact that Jake is a Crane superfan from his time tracking all the weird happenings in Sleepy Hollow and Alex can make bullets from pennies, is that The Vault offices will work well as a new Team Witness headquarters. The office is filled with dusty old tomes and reports of unexplained cases. Plus, it looks almost exactly like Crane's old work place back in Sleepy Hollow, complete with creepy tunnels leading away from the building and throughout downtown D.C. Way to give the audience something familiar, Sleepy Hollow.
Crane Is Fighting A Whole New Big Bad
After three seasons of supernatural baddies like Moloch and Pandora calling the evil shots and making life a living hell, Crane is now going up against a new villain, who appears, right now, to be totally human. Malcolm Dreyfuss (Jeremy Davies) is a big time businessman who's favorite pastime seems to be unleashing demons on D.C., and using generally nefarious means to continue to grow his business. He released the demon that killed Diana's partner, and since he got what he wanted out of the arrangement, an artifact that he will likely use for evil-doing, he's just fine with a little murder. Dreyfuss has a lot of money and a lot of power, along with a pretty extensive knowledge of the supernatural, which should make him a formidable foe for Team Witness during Season 4.
We Might Have Found Our New Witness
Oh, what's that? You say you thought Diana was going to be the new Witness since she's clearly Crane's new partner? Well, Sleepy Hollow had us all fooled. Toward the end of the premiere, Jenny Mills shows up to help battle the demon, and, during some down time with Crane, she reveals that she's been off looking for the clues that would lead them to the Witness who would take over for Abbie. Apparently, when one Witness dies that person's duties go to the next one in line, along with some of the soul of the dead Witness. Well, unbeknownst to everyone so far, it looks like Diana's 10-year-old daughter, Molly (Oona Yaffe), might be the next Witness. Right around the time Abbie died, she had a fainting spell and then woke up mute. She's also been, secretly, drawing very accurate pictures of Crane, even though she's never met him. So, while it's possible that this is a trick to make us think Molly is the Witness when she's not, it's more likely that she's about to join Team Witness. And, I'm sure her mom will be super enthused about all the danger she's about to be in.
You can see how all these changes work for the show when Sleepy Hollow continues, Fridays on FOX.
