11 Times Sleepy Hollow Reminded Us of Buffy!

Michelle Trachtenberg, who played Dawn Summers on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, guest-stars as Abigail Adams on this week’s Sleepy Hollow.  Just gonna put it out there and admit that I’m a Joss Whedon superfan. I consider Buffy the Vampire Slayer one of the greatest shows of all time and often suspect that the Sleepy writers have viewed a lot of Buffy themselves.

1. Both shows feature tiny lead heroines who, despite their small frames, are fearless badasses.
2. Buffy and Abbie spend a lot of time with stuffy Brits in fish-out-of-water scenarios. Buffy’s “Watcher” Giles was thrust into a situation where he spent his time with modern American teenagers. Abbie’s fellow Witness Ichabod was thrust into the 21st century.
3. Abbie and Buffy both have absentee dads and turned to older mentors as father figures. Giles treated Buffy like a daughter and Sheriff Corbin took Abbie under his wing.
4. Miss Summers and Lieutenant Mills are preordained to save humanity. In the world of Buffy, “Into every generation a slayer is born: one girl in all the world, a chosen one. She alone will wield the strength and skill to fight the vampires, demons and the forces of darkness; to stop the spread of their evil and the swell of their number. She is the Slayer.” Abbie learned that according to Biblical prophecy, she and her partner, Ichabod were chosen as the two witnesses meant to stave off seven years of tribulation and prevent the End of Days.
5. Abbie and Buffy both lost their mothers at a young age. Joyce Summers died of a brain aneurysm; Lori Mills was driven to suicide by a demon nurse.
6. Dawn Summers and Jenny Mills both have to contend with living in the shadow of “chosen one” sisters.
7. Abbie and Buffy get back-up from the Scooby gang.
8. Abbie and Buffy fight side-by-side with towering, centuries-old “billowy coat and king of pain” brooders.
9. Speaking of which, they’ve both dealt with dark angels. Buffy’s was okay as long as he didn’t have sex with her (long story). Abbie’s Orion guy is shady.
10. Sleepy Hollow and Sunnydale are homes to redhead witches. Willow Rosenberg evolved from curious dabbler into a murderous Big Bad. (She flayed a man!) Katrina Crane is supposed to be a powerful witch, but we haven’t seen her do much yet. Time will tell.
11. Buffy and Abbie have both contended with Moloch. The one Buffy dealt with was easily dispatched in one episode. Sleepy Hollow’s Moloch was a bigger pain in the ass and lingered for two seasons.
12. Abbie, Buffy and their cohorts conduct secret research in dusty hide-in-plain-sight locations. Lieutenant Mills and Ichabod spend hours in the police archives and he’s even slept there. Miss Summers and Co. study up on monsters in the school library, which is generally unused.
13. It’s the end of the world as we know it, sometimes. Buffy thwarted the Apocalypse about once a season. So far Team Witness has only had to avert one, but the series is still young!