A Few More Thoughts on Abbie Mills (Sleepy Hollow)

Expect spoilers for the recent Sleepy Hollow season 3 finale/excrement, as well as various Abbie-related spoilers from throughout the show’s run.

Nearly a week in, and I’m still dinged up from last week’s Sleepy Hollow a.k.a. The Night Those Bastards Killed My Abbie and Spit on Her Corpse.  In my post-finale venting, I mentioned that, at the very least, it’s in character for Abbie to sacrifice herself for others.  However, while I can’t deny that it’s a heroic trait, within the context of this show, I’ve also found it problematic.  Abbie has been poorly served by the writers in many ways, but this is the trait I want to look at today.

Abbie is totally a Jump in Front of the Bullet person, which we see bearing out nearly every time the show needs a big cliffhanger.  Season 1 ends with her taking Katrina’s place in Purgatory, she jumps into an unwelcoming past to save Crane from the (now-evil) Katrina at the end of season 2 (less self-sacrificial than the other incidents listed here, but still very self-risking,) and she does this twice in season 3, pushing Jenny out of the way and being sent to the Catacombs mid-season and ultimately being consumed by Pandora’s box in the in aid of defeating the Hidden One.  Throwing herself into the path of danger for others’ sake is just what Abbie does.  It’s weird to say this, like I’m arguing against an awesome woman being heroic and badass, but the accumulation of these moments troubles me.  Why is it always Abbie?  Why is she always the one to jump into the portal or fall on the supernatural grenade?  She and Crane as Witnesses are meant to be equal partners (and the disgusting season 3 finale tries to claim she was just a sidekick to the One True Crane,) but it seems like Abbie’s doing much of the heavy lifting.  She constantly gives of herself, whether in the general business of demon-fighting, helping Crane with his colossal family drama, or saving her partner in clinch situations, and while Crane speaks eloquently about their bond, Abbie’s actions tend to speak louder than his words.

This is especially evident in how these self-sacrifices shake out.  Obviously, the last one ends in Abbie’s horrendously-mishandled death, which I won’t rehash again, but let’s look at the others.  In Purgatory, Crane Moves Heaven and Earth to save Abbie, only to be sidelined by a doppelganger.  Abbie, however, figures this out and decapitates the imposter because she’s amazing.  Her time-travel experience is all about her saving Crane, so she’s understandably on-point there, and since past!Crane hasn’t met her yet, he can’t be faulted for not being Team Witness off the bat.  Eventually, though, Abbie wins him over; she’s been taken captive at this point, and he dashes off to rescue her, but Abbie totally rescues herself.  (I should point out that Crane is more helpful later, both in the past and the present.)  Finally, in the Catacombs, Crane Moves Heaven and Earth to save Abbie, except Pandora untethers his astral projection.  This leaves Abbie to be a Big Damn Hero, defy Pandora, and escape the Catacombs on her own before saving Crane, helping his astral self find its way home.  Now, Abbie is awesome through all of this, and again, I don’t wanna be all “why doesn’t the man come in and save her already?!?”, but it bugs me that Crane’s good intentions to come through never really pan out.  Something always gets in the way and Abbie always has to save herself.  While there’s of course nothing wrong with saving oneself, by the time I watched her escaping the Catacombs, I thought, “Does Abbie have to do everything around here?”  At this point, the woman has spent ten months in total isolation in another dimension, unbound by the time, sleep, or hunger, and terrified that she’s going crazy.  If that’s not the time for Crane to step in and take some of the load, when is?

Let’s Talk About Last Night’s Sleepy Hollow

Diving into spoilers in three, two, one…

Okay, I need a minute to vent about the horrific garbage that was Sleepy Hollow’s third-season finale.  I was just disgusted afterwards; I had to go run off some steam at the gym, and when that didn’t help, I had to get ice cream and watch Daredevil hit people for a while.  That helped a bit.

But honestly.  Honestly.  I can’t believe those dickwads killed Abbie.  I mean, I can believe it in the sense that the show practically sidelined her into oblivion last year, so they clearly don’t understand a good thing when it’s being an awesome BAMF right in front of their faces, but I just can’t believe it.  What on God’s green earth were they thinking?  How is it that they still don’t get that the Witnesses are what make this show?  Witnesses, plural.  Crane is great, but the show is Crane and Abbie, plain and simple.  Accept no substitutes.

I hate that she’s killed in the first half of the episode and no one even realizes it’s happening.  Everyone thinks she’s just transported somewhere (not unprecedented for her) and they can get her back.  And when the bomb drops, it’s in the midst of so much craziness, there’s just… It’s awful.  You can’t do Abbie like that.  It’s not right.  I hate the bull they try to pull at the end of the episode about the whole “Eternal Soul” thing, the idea that Abbie’s spirit will be uploaded into a new Witness for the hypothetical season 4 and it’ll be just as good and you’ll never notice the difference.  I hate that Crane and Abbie seemed to be moving toward something that will never happen now.  Yes, I shipped them, but I’m not saying I needed a sex scene or a passionate kiss or a grand declaration of love.  But something, something more than we got.  And not just because I’d have liked to see them together.  Because Abbie was so amazing, and I needed someone to say that in no uncertain terms.  Finally, as lovely as the scenes between her and Crane are when he’s momentarily caught in that in-between place with her, I really hate that she says she’s “done” because she’s taken Crane as far as she can.  The whole point of the Witnesses is that they’re two equal partners and both are vitally needed to combat the coming apocalypse.  To kill her off for nothing and then suggest that her life was all about facilitating Crane’s journey is so gross and reductive and stupid, not worth the dirt on Abbie’s shoes.

Let me try to bring a few modicums of fairness into the conversation.  First, Nicole Beharie apparently wanted to leave the show – and given Abbie’s treatment in season 2, I can understand why – so it’s not like she was thrown under the bus for Teh Drama!!!  Second, it’s hugely in character for Abbie to sacrifice herself to protect others.  It’s not really a season-ender without Abbie leaping into the path of danger on someone else’s behalf, but she’s always come back, and it sucks so hard that she won’t this time.

In the event that the show is renewed for a fourth season, I think I might be out.  And look, I watched all of Dexter.  I stuck it out with How I Met Your Mother until the bitter, bitter end.  I do not quit shows easily, and this would be a huge bummer, because I still love Crane and Jenny’s still wonderful.  But what would be the point?  Abbie was what got me into the show, and Crane and Abbie are what made me stay.  They’re what kept me hanging in there even when things went south, and whether I’ve rooted for them as friends or lovers, they’re the beating heart of the series.  Without Abbie, it’s just… I can’t begin to imagine what they were thinking.

Sleepy Hollow: Abbie Mills & Ichabod Crane, Revisited

The new season of Sleepy Hollow has aired two episodes so far, and I’m a bit surprised that my stance on Crane and Abbie has changed.  While I’ve always loved them as friends, compatriots, and witnesses, the third-season premiere marked the first time I’ve really wanted to view them in a will-they won’t-they light, leaning heavily on the will-they.  (Some Crane family spoilers.)

Don’t get me wrong – platonic friendships are my jam.  When I began the show, I was all-too-happy to see Abbie and Crane as such and hoped they’d stay that way.  I was fine with Katrina’s rescue from purgatory in season 2, but as her screentime increased, Abbie’s diminished, which was not okay.  And yet, I didn’t resent Katrina for being Crane’s wife or blocking any potential Crane/Abbie romance.  I was only annoyed because Abbie ≥ The Bomb, which is not true of Katrina, and I’d rather watch Abbie being amazing than Katrina doing her thing.  While I didn’t like Katrina’s presence upsetting the Crane-Abbie dynamic, it was the friendship I was missing.  Fast-forward to season 3, and I’m cautiously, happily dipping my toes in the shipper pool where Crane and Abbie are concerned.  In the most recent episode, as they have roommate adjustment issues (Crane is currently without a residence, and Abbie offered to let him stay with her) and open up about secret regrets… Well, I didn’t squee, but let’s just say I could have.

The Katrina-heaviness of season 2 is part of it, I think.  Seeing the Cranes together in the present shows how ill-suited they are for each other, and how simpatico Abbie and Crane are by comparison.  Not that I think a relationship is automatically better if it involves romance – far from it – or that two people of corresponding orientations belong “together” if there’s a bond between them.  Nor does Crane “deserve” Abbie on the grounds that she’s better than Katrina, like Abbie is something to bestow on him.  Not at all.  But… I don’t know.  I see the way he desires the love of someone who understands him, someone he can trust implicitly, and in many ways, I think he and Abbie already are that for each other. 

And as for Abbie, I mentioned before that I like how romance is a non-issue for her.  I still like that she’s not defined by her relationship status and that she has pursuits that are all about her.  However, I’ve tried to think more closely about her character and the intersectionality between her race and her gender.  It feels progressive to me that the female lead in a series isn’t instantly paired with or earmarked for a male partner, but does the same hold true when that female lead is Black?  We’ve seen a couple of Abbie’s exes and others expressing interest, but we’ve never seen her with a boyfriend, or even on a date.  When this dynamic plays out with a Black woman, is there an unconscious underpinning that she isn’t desirable in that way?  There’s also a tendency to think of female characters without romantic attachments as stronger or more feminist (a trap I’ve fallen into before,) but that’s just one narrative.  A strong woman doesn’t “need” a man (or woman or otherwise-gendered person, obviously,) but does that mean she can’t be with one if she wants to?  An unexpected side effect of attempts to highlight a woman’s independence and capability can be to imply that men aren’t interested, not really interested, in being with a woman like that.  In Abbie’s case, it’s not as clear-cut, since she’s definitely had guys interested in her, but it’s getting conspicuous that we’ve still never seen her in a romantic situation.

But back to the specific pairing at hand.  The biggest thing preventing me from whole-heartedly shipping these two is concerns about the writing – the show doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to romance, and I’d hate for a) Abbie’s character to be assassinated in the process of an Abbie/Crane pairing, and b) the lovely relationship Crane and Abbie have now to be sacrificed for something more typical and not as good.  If, however, they can be written as lovers the same way they’ve been written as friends and witnesses, it could be spectacular.  Their trust, their confidences, the way each relies on the strength of the other, the way they bounce ideas off each other, the way they share both the demon-researching and the demon-fighting, Abbie’s teasing, Crane’s regard – that could look fantastic as a romance.  

Lastly, to be really honest?  I think a tiny part of it is the hair.  In the season 3 premiere, I noticed Abbie’s new, shorter haircut and thought it looked good on her.  But when Crane make his first appearance (after the two have been apart for months) and his hair is cropped, too?  I dunno.  It just clicked.  There’s something endearing about it, a nice little “in-sync” note that, for whatever reason, finally cemented it for me:  Abbie/Crane?  I think I want it.

Relationship Spotlight: Ichabod Crane & Lt. Abbie Mills (Sleepy Hollow)

Back when I started writing about Sleepy Hollow, I’d just caught up with the show’s first season, and I was in love with it, its lead characters, and the bond between them.  After that, season two happened, and I started cooling on the series.  I still liked Abbie and Crane, and at its core, I still liked what their relationship was about, but I feel the show lost its way somewhat when they tampered with the Crane-Abbie connection.  It’s not a dramatic shift but a subtle erosion, taking them further and further apart as another character monopolizes more of Crane’s time/interest and a wedge is slowly driven between him and Abbie.  However, monkeying even slightly with the show’s strongest quality was ill-advised, and I wasn’t a fan of the change or the reduced focus on Abbie.

Fast-forward to this week’s season finale, and I’ll cop to some internal Snoopy dances, because Crane and Abbie are definitely back.  They’re screen partners for the majority of the episode, and the show returns its attention to one of the finest demon-fighting duos ever.  Care is taken to address the damage and make amends for it, and in light of my high hopes for a restored dynamic in season three (if there is one!,) I’m finally doing a post on Team Witness.

In many ways, Abbie and Crane are cut from the same cloth a few hundred years apart.  Both are of course brave and dedicated, both are clever and observant, and both can kick some serious demon butt.  Upon learning of their role as witnesses, both go on separate journeys from skeptic to believer, stunned but ultimately pragmatic.  Additionally, both have a penchant for putting themselves in danger (I know they’ve signed up to do battle against the harbingers of the apocalypse, but even so.)  For both of them, their streaks incline towards recklessness, stubbornness, and adrenaline-junkiness.

However, Crane and Abbie are also quite different people – and I mean beyond the obvious, like the fact that she’s not afraid of the Internet and he’s a former pal of George Washington.  Though both wear a number of hats in carrying out their mission, they often come at it from different angles.  Abbie is a true-blue cop, probing a scene for clues and picking out the telling details.  She approaches things more practically and, on an unrelated note, doesn’t take herself nearly as seriously as Crane.  She takes her work seriously, of course, but she’s a lot more likely to own up to her flaws and make a joke at her expense.  Meanwhile, although Crane has loosened up a fair amount under Abbie’s influence, he’s still awfully buttoned-up and doesn’t always appreciate Abbie’s affectionate ribbing.  When it comes to the mission, he tends to use the combined tactics of research and memory.  He loves old books, old maps, old artifacts, and old recollections from his 18^th-century days.  This is understandable, given his history, but he’s not inexorably tied to the past; he’ll even brave Google for the sake of the cause.  Between our two heroes, these separate strengths are vital.  They make one another better, each complementing the other’s aptitudes and backing up the other whenever they need it.

Finally, at their best, these two will do anything for each other.  That penchant for putting themselves in danger gets cranked up to a near-biological imperative when one of them is in peril.  Though they disagree about things and sometimes opt for different battle plans, their general state is trust each other when it really counts, and they know each other well enough that they can pretty much instantly sense when something’s amiss.  Abbie-Crane for the win!

Relationship Spotlight: Jenny & Abbie Mills (Sleepy Hollow)

Oh, how I love the Mills sisters.  The Crane-Abbie partnership is probably the show’s best-known quality, and rightfully so, but there’s so much great material to dig into where Abbie and Jenny are concerned.  It’s been fantastic to watch how their relationship has grown and deepened over the series, and I’m eager to see where they go in the future.

Any discussion of Abbie and Jenny has to start with their childhoods.  The fissure that’s colored their relationship formed on the day the two girls saw a demon in the woods.  When the missing sisters were brought to the police and asked to explain their unaccounted hours, Abbie was adamant that they keep mum.  Separated from their mother, bounced around the system, and finally in a decent foster home, she was afraid that two disadvantaged black girls spouting stories about demons would be wanted even less than they currently were, and she didn’t want them to lose their living situation or, worse yet, get split up.  Jenny, however, couldn’t tell anything but the truth, and her bid for Abbie to back up her claims went unanswered.

This is the moment they veered off.  While Abbie has some reckless years before being taken under the wing of a caring mentor and getting her act together, Jenny has a much harder time coming back from their experiences.  She presses against the bounds of the law, the bounds the society’s definition of sanity, the bounds of what most people would call reality.  Her time between incarcerations (criminal, mental health, or both) is spent dangerously while Abbie slowly gains respect as a police lieutenant.

Even though the actions of both sisters in that moment were understandable – impulsive, earnest Jenny doesn’t want to lie, and shrewd, protective Abbie is looking at the big-picture implications – it leads to such a divide, such hurt, between them.  Jenny blames Abbie for leaving her to be branded a liar and lunatic, for turning her back as Jenny gets lost in her precarious life.  Meanwhile, there’s a part of Abbie that wants to reach out to her sister, but she feels so responsible for the way Jenny’s life has turned out that her guilt overwhelms her.  Of course, any attempts to help on her part are met by Jenny’s resistance anyway, a square-shouldered dismissal that Abbie’s never cared about Jenny’s well-being before, so why should she start now?

That’s the messy backdrop against which the two women are brought back into each other’s lives.  Much of Jenny’s violent or illegal activities in the intervening years have been embroiled in the good vs. evil battle that Abbie and Crane now fight, and they need allies where they can find them.  Jenny’s skills, knowledge, and fortitude are vital, but bringing her back into the fold isn’t easy.  Aside from all the massive issues mentioned above, there’s Abbie’s status as a prophesied witness and Jenny’s belief that it’s undeserved.  Why not her, the sister who told the truth and took a stand against evil from the start?  The one who didn’t abandon those she cares about or deny the evidence before her eyes?  It’s so complicated and tangled, and though they’ve come a long way, it’s definitely been a two-steps-forward-one-step-back situation.  I love watching them work through all this baggage – the genuine hurt, the guilt, the misperceptions – and slowly coming together on the same path again.  For so long, they’ve been the good one and the bad one, the officer and the criminal, the cynic and the believer, the mentee and the loner, the stable one and the crazy one, and it’s incredible to see both women start to throw off these labels and recognize one another as their true, more in-between selves.

Favorite Characters: Lt. Abbie Mills (Sleepy Hollow)

 

Abbie could’ve easily been a nothing character.  A small-town police officer, she’s mundane compared to Ichabod Crane the time-displaced Revolutionary War soldier.  Since she’s more reluctant than Crane to believe all this headless horseman business, there’s a tendency to automatically label her the Scully of the pair, an important but often thankless role.  And yet, she’s awesome.  Seriously – I’m a grown woman, and when I watch Sleepy Hollow, my brain keeps saying, “I want to be Abbie when I grow up.”

 

First of all, as you get to know her, you see there’s nothing mundane about Abbie.  At the outset of the series, she’s preparing to leave Sleepy Hollow for Quantico; clearly, she’s no flatfoot.  Her early actions show her to be driven, curious, perceptive, warm, and tough (and no, those last two aren’t mutually exclusive.)  And while Crane obviously has more extensive experience with the supernatural, Abbie’s life hasn’t been untouched by the freaky and inexplicable:  back in junior high, she and her sister blacked out after seeing a demon in the woods.  It’s an event that had a profound effect on her life, and she spent a long time getting in trouble as she tried to bury it. 

 

So, though she’s skeptical about horsemen of the apocalypse, warring covens, and Crane being from the 18^th century, her newfound partner doesn’t have to drag her kicking and screaming into the brave new world.  Her rationalizations, excuses, and comments about Crane being certifiable dry up fairly quickly.  Granted, she still makes plenty of “you’ve gotta be kidding me” remarks, but it’s more about acknowledging how bizarre her life has become than remaining willfully ignorant in the face of blatant evidence.

 

As she starts to believe, it’s in a hesitant but inevitable way; her head wants to tell her these things can’t be true, but she also can’t deny the things she’s seen.  This is a major adjustment, of course, especially since she tried so hard to put her encounter in the woods behind her, but Abbie steps up like a pro.  Before long, it’s second nature to scour scriptural passages or centuries-old legends for vital information.  She stands her ground against spirits, witches, and demons, and she accepts that “impossible” is a word that no longer has a place in her life.

 

Also, she’s hardcore amazing.  The woman has nerves of steel and a real hero’s heart, she’s a shrewd tactician and a dogged researcher, and she can more than hold her own in a fight.  She’ll put herself in danger for the greater good, she goes to extreme lengths to help those she cares about, and she displays tremendous strength and grace when confronting her fears.  She’s an honest cop who prefers to keep everything above board, but she’s not such a stickler that she won’t step outside the lines when she has to.  Plus, she has a fun sense of humor and enjoys teasing Crane during her frequent crash courses for him on 21^st-century living.

 

On a side note, I find it interesting that several characters have expressed romantic interest in Abbie but, apart from awkward conversations with an ex-boyfriend coworker, she’s basically untouched by it all.  Her focus is on the mission and her friendship/partnership with Crane, and I never get the sense that she’s a) angsting about being “unable” to pursue a romantic relationship because she’s trying to combat the apocalypse, or b) secretly pining for the unavailable Crane.  I like that romance isn’t a big part of her storyline and that lack of romance isn’t, either – no one’s running around making constant comments about her being unattached.  It’s so refreshing.