‘Sleepy Hollow’ Insiders Reveal 3 Things You Need to Know About the Rest of Season 4
Sleepy Hollow‘s Ichabod Crane (Tom Mison) reached a turning point in the last week’s episode: When a demon was nearly successful in using guilt to drive Crane to suicide, it took the new version of his team (including new Witness Molly) to pull him out of his despair.
As Ichabod continues on his fight to save the world from evil, the cast and executive producer Albert Kim offered up 3 teases about what’s to come.
Ichabod’s unique relationship with the new Witness leads to new storytelling opportunities.
Though being a Witness can be a deeply dangerous journey, Sleepy Hollow will explore a bit of its lighter side as Molly (Oona Yaffe) occasionally gets to be a kid. “On an acting level, it’s fun to see Tom Mison act with children,” Kim says. “He’s just great with kids. We noticed that last season when he interacted with a bunch of grade school children in the episode with the tooth fairy demon. He was so good at it, we were like, we have to have more of that. We put him in lots of situations with kids: coaching youth soccer; we shot a scene at a school play. There’s lots of fun stuff to play with there.”
“All of that stuff opened up a whole new world for Crane, which was really fun to write to,” Kim continues. “He’s obviously a fish out of water, and that humor never gets old. But finding new situations for him was awesome; we hadn’t been in a situation to find him at a youth soccer game or a school play. This was a good way to get him into those.”
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Do Jake (Jerry MacKinnon) and Alex (Rachel Melvin) have a spark?
The duo’s partnership investigating the paranormal predates Ichabod’s presence in their lives—and he’s a believer, while she’s a skeptic—so Kim acknowledges it’s natural to see shades of The X-Files‘ Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson) in the duo. “It was important to us to make them more contemporary,” he says. “They’re younger, they’re definitely of our time. And more of our world than the government conspiracy world of X-Files. That was something we talked about.”
The yin and yang nature of the partnership works for the duo. “She thinks Jake is like a hopeless romantic: his thoughts can carry him away,” Melvin says. “She probably envies that a little bit, because she no longer has that. But at the same time, I think she gets concerned for him, because she got hurt and she doesn’t want that fate for him. But I do think there’s a great level of admiration toward him as well. He has a lot of qualities that she doesn’t, that I don’t necessarily know she wants, but she admires.”
As for Jake, he just wants Alex to fully get on board with what’s going on around them. “I believe he’s always been doing this, and he’s like, ‘Why are you not believing this? There he is!’ MacKinnon says. “Every episode, there’s a new demon and you’re still skeptical. It could be tiresome, but he’s not going to give up on her.”
And like the The X-Files characters, the relationship between Jake and Alex is…complicated. “Look, I think they’re best friends, and I think when people are best friends, it creates a foundation that most romantic relationships strive to have,” Melvin acknowledges. “I think you can be best friends and have no physical attraction—that’s what prevents the romantic from unfolding. But I think if there is physical attraction and you are best friends, it’s kind of inevitable that you’re going to get together at some point if the feeling is mutual. I do think that they do have a great and deep understanding of each other; they have worked with each other for a long time. There’s a level of trust between them that is unbreakable.”
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Jenny (Lyndie Greenwood) bonds with the new team…and one of their foes?!
As the second-most veteran member of the revamped Team Witness, many of the newbies find themselves drawn to Jenny. “They’re really capable and she quickly comes to appreciate them,” Greenwood says. “They’re very willing students. She knows this is such an important fight. She’s in it for life, and she’ll take all the help she can get.”
But another connection could prove to be more troublesome: Jobe (Kamar de los Reyes) and Jenny meet in an upcoming hour. “That was some of the most fun I’ve had,” de los Reyes says. “[Greenwood]’s so much fun to act with. A great person to be around, and she’s fierce; the character’s fierce. They wrote some really fun stuff for us. There might be a little connection.”
Greenwood echoes de los Reyes’ praise, calling their big episode “a great, great episode,” but notes the writers didn’t immediately follow up on the newfound chemistry. “It’s something where you write something, you hope it’s going to be interesting, but you don’t know what kind of chemistry is going to develop,” she says.
However, might this new tie be enough to sway Jobe away from his evil colleague Dreyfuss (Jeremy Davies)? “Well, I think there would need to be more,” de los Reyes laughs. “His ultimate loyalty is not to Dreyfuss and/or Jenny Mills. It’s to someone much higher, deeper than that.”
Sleepy Hollow, Fridays, 9/8c, Fox