'Sleepy Hollow' Postmortem: Showrunner Talks Abbie's Fate, What's Next

Warning: This article contains spoilers for the ninth episode of Sleepy Hollow’s third season.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that death is rarely permanent on Sleepy Hollow (unless your name happens to be Katrina Crane). So when paranormal investigator Abbie Mills disappeared through a hellbound portal at the end of the midseason finale, the show’s fanbase was 90 percent sure (okay… maybe 70 percent sure) that she wasn’t gone for good. “Our fans are sophisticated enough in genre and have a strong enough relationship with this show to know that anything is possible in Sleepy Hollow,” admits showrunner Clifton Campbell.

Sure enough, Campbell didn’t waste any time revealing Abbie’s fate. Just before the end credits in the winter premiere, “One Life,” we catch a glimpse of the cop-turned-FBI agent waking up in an otherworldly realm, although where exactly she is — and, more importantly, how she plans to get back — are being saved for future episodes. In fact, Campbell held back on including an extra moment with Abbie to maximize the dramatic impact of her return. “We were originally going to take her scene a beat further, but we realized that what we had set the table for the episode that follows. Abbie’s storyline is going to play heavily into the origin of this season’s big bad, as well as the overarching ‘twistory’ this season involving Betsy Ross and her relationship with Crane. So it was the right thing to do — this scene really sets the table for the back half of the season.”

Besides providing proof of life for Abbie, the episode put a number of other key plotlines in motion that Campbell says will play out as the season races towards its finale — one that he promises will wrap up this particular arc, while laying the groundwork for a fourth year. Read on to learn whether “Joenny” will replace “Ichabbie” in shippers’ hearts, if Nikki Reed will ever leave Betsy Ross’s corsets behind for contemporary street clothes, and when we’re going to hear Ichabod opine about the Broadway smash Hamilton.

“One Life” pulls the trigger on the Jenny/Joe flirtation that’s been building all season with a passionate kiss. Why now?
We’ve enjoyed watching that relationship take root. It was always our design in the beginning of the season, but we took it one scene at a time and one episode at a time to make sure it was working and we were all feeling it. It became very clear that both Zach [Appelman] and Lyndie [Greenwood] felt comfortable with each other, so it was easy to move them closer together. I think audiences are going to appreciate having a grounded romantic relationship that allows this crazy world they’ve been dropped into to play out in an interesting way.

Since so many romances on genre shows end in tragedy, how worried should we be about Jenny and Joe?
As we’ve all learned, there’s no such thing as “final” in Sleepy Hollow! Genre fans will appreciate this romance for what it is, and the fact that it was borne out of tragedy with the loss of Joe’s father, August Corbin. He and Jenny have a history that includes Joe having been a monster, a Wendigo, that she and Abbie had to help in Season 2. So that’s a very strong first encounter between two characters who have since fallen in love, and it challenges them in the back half.

There are actually two romances on the show, now that Pandora has been reunited with her lover, the Hidden One.
We’re loving that story. Their origin story is that they’re from very disparate backgrounds: he’s a banished god who hopes to have his kingdom once again, and she started out life as a human. Their love caused the Hidden One’s kingdom to skip a rail, and 4,000 years later, they have an opportunity to have what they once had again. When you’ve got the ultimate super couple, you can expect to see sparks fly.

With Abbie trapped in another dimension, it looks like Agent Foster will be pinch-hitting for Crane’s team. We learned that her archaeologist parents disappeared under mysterious circumstances — what else will we learn about her in coming weeks?
One thing is that she’s a little freer to laugh. She comes from a bigger family than Abbie and Jenny, and hasn’t been tortured by the same dire consequences the Mills sisters have had to endure. She also doesn’t take things at face value, which helps her not only accept what’s going on, but also ask the appropriate questions as a team player. We knew we were building out the Witness family this season with Joe, and it felt right to expand from there, allowing Abbie and Crane’s relationship to become front and center, and let the B-squad connect some of the dots on the A-cases. And Jessica [Camacho] has worked out super-well from the beginning. She plays well with these guys, and we’re excited by what she does in the back half.

Speaking of Ichabod, he has a nice moment in the episode where he talks about what it means to have a partner like Abbie. How will his grief continue to affect him?
Crane and Abbie’s bond will be challenged in ways that I don’t think the audience is going to see coming. It plays deeply into the whole mythology of what it means to be a Witness. If we’re ever at a loss for Ichabod’s feelings, our instinct is to discuss it with Tom. We all know how [strongly] he feels about this character that he’s built.

So far, his relationship with Betsy Ross has remained firmly in the past. Any chance that she’ll visit him in the present day?
We’ve already got one man out of time, and that’s a hard and fast rule we feel is worthy of protection. His relationship with Betsy is something we enjoy, but we’re keeping it in the past. There won’t be any jumping back and forth. We were committed to have an overall “twistory” arc this season with the crossing of the Delaware, and how that turned the war in our favor. That’s been building, and there are players we’ve seen before that will come back, but in very interesting ways.

I think I speak for all Sleepy Hollow and musical theater fans when I say that we need to hear Crane’s thoughts about Hamilton. Any chance he can take a quick trip into New York City to meet the modern-day Schyler Sisters?
[Laughs] I don’t think it’s a big surprise to hear that Hamilton is much talked about in our writers’ room. We’re all fans, and there may be a mention of it or two coming up.

Sleepy Hollow airs Fridays at 8 p.m. on Fox.