Underpinning the story this week is Pandora officially
being Done with the Hidden One. She’s sick of his bullshit especially since he’s
taken to torturing her after last week’s revelations.
She’s done with this. She abandons him with a hard
hitting speech about how they’re supposed to be lovers and partners like
Ichabod and Abbie are (well, they’re partners) and he treats her as a slave, or
(as he puts it) a pet – she’s now going to work against him
Ok, interval to parse this. The Hidden One and Pandora
has always been deeply problematic on two levels: it was grossly misogynist
with Pandora being this subservient, servile, cringing follower who called that
cringing love and affection despite endless abuse. She constantly begged for
any kind of affection or attention and never received any respect. On this
level, Pandora telling him she’s Done is excellent
But it’s also deeply problematic on a racial angle – with
the dark skinned Black men being this savage, anti-technology, domineering
monster who has then enslaved (his and her own words) a white woman. (And that
is something else to address – why this thousand year old woman from an ancient
civilisation which apparently isn’t Greece had to be a White woman). We have a
dark skinned Black man not only enslaving a White woman (which is cringeworthy
to begin with) but also being the big scary menacing abuser of her. Pandora
breaking free does not change the racial tropes that have dogged this toxic “relationship.”
Fleeing this hot mess, Pandora goes to the Witnesses, she
wants to reforge her box which has the power to contain the Hidden One. But to
do that they need to go back to the catacombs where Abbie was locked away for
so long – which she isn’t exactly super thrilled about this.
So this requires tracking down how to get into the
catacombs – this includes lots of history, lots of name dropped, Betsy Ross
(who was EVERYWHERE), Masons, visiting historical sites and accidentally waking
up a tar covered fire-throwing zombie soldier.
Oops.
Hijinks ensure involving American Flags, National anthems
and lots of dodging fireballs until Jenny covers the big bad in liquid nitrogen
which isn’t good for immortal tar fire zombies.
With Betsy’s original flag, they now have a guide on how
to return to the Catacombs – which will be next week
Between all this we had some major personal issues
though:
Least of which is Ezra Mills, Jenny and Abbie’s father
coming round for photo albums, memories and a whole lot of conflicted emotion
from Jenny in particular. I like this – I like the mixed emotion – the wanting
to move forwards, the being angry, willing to try but not being willing to
forget – reconciliation but reconciliation which needs to be worked for. I like
it
Far bigger is Danny Reynolds, Abbie’s boss who is impatient
about all her secrets. He also loved (loves?) her and she seems to return the
feeling (a thousand Ichabod/Abbie shippers cried out in pain and were suddenly
silenced). Abbie senses this as well and want to find a way to tell him the big
truth – but is spared that by Reynolds nearly being incinerated by the fire-throwing-bullet-proof-tar-zombie.
He can’t really ignore that and is now part of the big secret!
Not only do I love that he is now part of this (and that Reynolds and Abbie can now have a relationship without the Big Secret), but I love how it was done. I love how Abbie takes a moment to tell Danny and then just turns around and says, basically “don’t worry, I got this.” Her settled confidence that they can handle this is just so perfect even as Danny is gasping in shock. It was exceptionally well done and I’m really looking forward to seeing where we go from here. Especially since I hate “we have to hide what we do from our boss” storylines. I really really do.
I’m curious about this because Danny seems legitimately
surprised – but in the past we’ve seen him working with shadowy organisation
that seemed to know all about Abbie? So, I’m curious what is happening there –
how much was he in the know before.
