This is the one that’s bad and the only one that will contribute directly to my dropping a show from my viewing rotation. Per THR, Nicole Beharie’s Abbie sacrificed herself in the third-season finale largely because Beharie wanted out of the yet-to-be-renewed Fox drama. But if Beharie wanted out, it was largely because in the long gap between the first and second seasons, the writers lost track of how to handle the core of the show, which was the Abbie/Ichabod relationship. And I put the names in that order for a reason. To me, it was Abbie’s show. Ichabod was the wacky and lovable time-traveler. The various robots and Kyle Reese are not the stars of the Terminator franchise. Sarah Connor is. Abbie was Sarah Connor, she was the character grounded in the real world whose life was turned upside down by the discovery that these supernatural forces, forces Ichabod always knew all about, were real. Sleepy Hollow was Abbie’s story and the decision to give up her life and her soul to stop this season’s apocalyptic event shouldn’t have been required of her, except that every character on Sleepy Hollow has effectively become disposable other than Ichabod, which is part of why, even if Sleepy Hollow is renewed for a fourth season, I’m done. The show was a two-character relationship procedural, and I might have kept watching in perpetuity for Abbie and Ichabod, but I won’t keep watching just for Ichabod learning about some vast government conspiracy. Like Arrow, though, Sleepy Hollow put itself in a position where no other character’s death would have had any emotional resonance, which is more conspicuously annoying when you look at the number of minority and female characters who were never adequately realized. Abbie and Ichabod both sacrificed themselves for each other over three seasons, but having Abbie make the final sacrifice was, to me, a huge misunderstanding of what Sleepy Hollow was built to be as a story and the power balance at the center that gave it its only remaining viability.