Fox Saves 'Sleepy Hollow' for Third Season

by Julian Spivey
Ichabod Crane isn’t the only one that can seemingly come back from the dead. Fox has decided to renew its supernatural drama “Sleepy Hollow” for a third season, despite the show having lost 40 percent of its audience from its popular first season.

The network had previously announced its concerns over the show’s drastic decline in the Nielsen ratings and thought that the second season’s more serialized tone had led to its decline. The show’s original showrunner Mark Goffman recently announced that he was leaving, which left fans wondering whether that had any impact on if the show would be renewed or canceled.

It turns out Fox was intrigued on what a new showrunner might be able to do for the once successful series and announced on Wednesday, March 18 that “Sleepy Hollow” had been picked up for a third season with executive producer Clifton Campbell taking over as showrunner. Campbell previously oversaw “The Glades” for A&E and “White Collar” for USA. 

The third season of “Sleepy Hollow,” which Fox announced will consist of 18 episodes, will take on a more episodic feel with Ichabod Crane (Tom Mison) and Lieutenant Abbie Mills (Nicole Beharie) tackling a crime or villain per week. The season will reportedly also delve further into the partnership/relationship between the two friends.

The bad news is these last ditch efforts on the part of networks attempting to revive once successful series rarely, if ever, seem to work. When a show loses almost half of its audience from its first season to its second there’s probably no way possible for it to regain even a fraction of that number back – no matter what they do. Switching from serialized to episodic episodes and killing off a particular character that many fans seemed to dislike probably will only do so much. It’s nice that Fox is giving “Sleepy Hollow” another chance, but season three will probably be its final season.