Warning: Spoiler Alert
This week the awkward learning experience for Ichabod is yoga. He also is very uncomfortable with the term ‘buns’ to describe his posterior. Furthermore we see him reflect emotionally on the latest experience with Katrina. Then quickly regains focus.
Ichabod: But, war does not permit us the luxury of dwelling on personal matters. Nor indeed, the downward facing of our dogs.
The chosen alternative to yoga for Ichabod is a beer at a bar. At said bar, a fight breaks out. The subject of that fight is a twenty something named Joe Corbin. Yes, as in that Corbin. As you might assume, young Joe blames Abbey for the death of his father. However, I’m sure this is not the last we’ll see of Joe Corbin, despite his very deliberate ‘stay away from me’ directed at Abbey. Abbey tells a story about babysitting the younger Corbin and how he would jump on her wearing Superman pajamas and say that he would save her. “One a hero always a hero”-Ichabod.
Ichabod: Superman is…Peter Parker…? No. N-n-n-no, that’s the arachnid fellow.
Abbey: Do you want a hint?
Ichabod: No.
Abbey: …Clark K—
Ichabod: CLARK KENT!
They respond to a call regarding Joe Corbin’s truck. When they arrive, something forces Abbey to take a hard turn. They get out of the vehicle to find two men dead. One even looks impaled by what looks like are ocean coral. They find Drew and he’s babbling about what his dad knew and that it would kill us all.
Irving is talking with Henry (angrily) addressing the fact that Henry stole Irving’s soul. Well, Henry claims “it was bartered for services rendered”. Side note. No one sells their soul for the equivalent of a lawyer’s retainer. The quickest way for Irving to reclaim his soul is to kill someone. A soul for a soul. Henry points out a client in the psych ward. A man convicted of drunk driving and hitting a little girl. Turns out the little girl is Irving’s daughter, who will live the rest of her life from a wheel chair.
I’m going to jump out on a limb here and take a guess that the monster we are looking for is not Moloch, the Horseman, or anything tied to that storyline up front. This feels like the Wendigo. For any of the Supernatural fans out there.
Ichabod: In 1778, the Shawnee Tribe engaged in a hunting expedition lead by a close friend of mine, Daniel Boone.
Abbey: Daniel Boone, as in the guy that wore a raccoon on his head?
Ichabod: How is it that the man who settled Kentucky is remembered by the modern world as (in a horrible but great at the same time slightly southern American accent) the guy with that raccoon on his head?
Abbey: Probably because he wore a raccoon on his head.
Ichabod: Well…very rarely. Daniel much preferred beaver pelt.
As speculated, we are in fact dealing with an unrelated Wendigo story. Ichabod tells a story of soldiers focusing on the perils of war to an unhealthy level. Or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as we call it today, and that the effects of which could even in extreme cases lead to cannibalism. From that Abbey deduces (after reading a report on Joe Corbin’s last military stint) that Joe Corbin is the Wendigo.
The elder Corbin it seems hedged his bets. Leaving a fake last will and testament with false numbers allowing Joe Corbin to read the clues and find various items his father hid for safe keeping. It’s looking less like Joe is the Wendigo and more like he’s being hunted by one.
Correction, Joe is the Wendigo. To be fair, he is resisting the hunger as best he can. As Joe (after digging up one of those ‘items’) elbows Ichabod in the face drawing a little blood. Exposed blood triggers the hunger and the transformation begins. Joe yells out for Ichabod to run. Abbey hits him with multiple tranquilizers just before he reached Ichabod.
Side note. Just a thought. I am in no way expecting this to happen. But allow me a quick theory. Sheriff Corbin is dead. But he was the foremost expert at that time of what Ichabod and Abbey are chasing. Joe Corbin feels disconnected from his Dad and is now starting to realize what his dad was up to. If he survives this, why wouldn’t they bring him into the fold as part of the team? I trust him more than Holly, that’s for sure.
Joe finally opens up after they feed it a liver or some other type of organ. Apparently he didn’t even know it had a name. As it turns out, this has only been happening over the last two weeks. He opened a letter covered in white powder. The powder was the crushed bone from the Pied Piper’s flute that Henry bought from Holly who then crushed it. And this is why. Henry will trade a cure for the Wendigo curse for an item Sheriff Corbin left his son. A rare Chinese poison.
There is something a little too enjoyable about watching the pain shared by both Ichabod and Holly when Abbey forces them to work together.
Abbey and Joe have the first conversation of the episode where he is not downright hateful toward Abbey. It goes ideally well as she explains just how much Sheriff Corbin adored his son. Then there is a loud noise and a door opens. Its Henry with two goons. Long story short, Joe gets the poison to give to Henry in order to save Abbey and Jenny. And then follows Henry for the promise of the cure. Once outside and the poison safely in the car, Henry reaches out and slices Joe’s forearm. Starting the fourth and final transformation. This time, there will be no turning back into Joe Corbin. Unless Ichabod, Holly, and the Shawnee have something up their sleeves.
Frank Irving does face the man who drunkenly paralyzed his daughter. In the beginning he is as gracious as a father can be in that situation. Then the drunk doesn’t take the conversation as seriously as he should. Irving goes to shake his hand and only wants to know that the man responsible is truly sorry for what he did. Then he claimed he was sorry that the little girl was too stupid to get out-of-the-way. Irving in one swift motion takes the guy down to the floor and begins to choke him out. Then immediately realizes that is exactly what Henry wants him to do.
Ichabod and Holly return with a less than simple cure involving and obsidian knife, the Wendigo’s blood, and a chant written on the side of a human skull. No problem. Ichabod and Abbey cut themselves to draw the Wendigo in. They run into an area set up to trap the Wendigo. Ichabod slices the Wendigo with the knife and immediately gets thrown into a wall. He collects himself and drips the blood from the knife into the skull and reads the incantation. To no avail.
Ichabod implores Abbey to execute plan b, but she refuses. She waits for a few seconds more and the Wendigo slowly begins to revert back to being Joe. There is a long sigh of relief and even Joe in his incredible exhaustion, throws his right arm over his left arm resting his hand on Abbey’s.
Abbey brings Joe into the ‘lair’ and calls it home base. As she begins to give him a quick tour, you can hear Ichabod yelling. Upon a closer look, Ichabod is gaming online and yelling 17th century polite profanity through his gaming headset. He even takes the time to explain it to Abbey as if all of this would be foreign to her. Then Joe pulls Abbey aside to ask for a favor. This is the part where he asks if he can join in their fight as his father would have, right? No. This is where he asks for a letter of recommendation so he can potentially get in at Quantico. As in FBI. Lame.
Abbey gets a cryptic phone call from Irving. He is quiet and reserved as he explains how Henry owns Irving’s soul. Then after relaying that to Ichabod, he in turn claims he must fight for his son. Which feels like a deep-rooted problem not easily solved. All the while Henry is doing something with the poison. And when he’s done, all of the contents of the bottle come together to create a nasty looking black widow spider. Which he places on Katrina’s bed. It crawls onto her and eventually crawling into her mouth. A few episodes earlier, Moloch told Henry that she was to play her part. I don’t recall the actual quote, but I’m confident this begins that transformation. Katrina may cease to be an ally very soon.
