On the surface, there has been a lot of forward movement on television for black women. We’re now able to see an incredible breadth of black female characters, including Cookie Lyon (Taraji P. Henson) on Empire, Rosalee (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) on Underground, and Dr. Rainbow Johnson (Tracee Ellis Ross) on Black-ish. But all representation isn’t created equal, and it’s important to not confuse this new hyper-visibility for total progress. Genres like science fiction and fantasy — which trade in visceral pleasures and fun rather than the literary, downtempo feeling of so-called “prestige” television — don’t make much room for black women. Instead they demonstrate a frustrating lack of imagination when it comes to crafting any interiority or narrative purpose for their black female characters.
This year has been pretty terrible for women in television, particularly genre television, which tries to keep audiences on their toes by making it seem like anyone can die at any time: Important characters like Arrow’s Laurel Lance/Black Canary have been brutally killed off, with their deaths framed as primarily painful setbacks for the typically white, male leads. As Maureen Ryan states in Variety, this doesn’t feel true when “I can think of dozens of gay, female, and non-white character deaths that were used to prod growth or vengeance in white, straight or male characters — but I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen that dynamic play out in reverse.” Out of the many startling deaths to happen this television season, it’s the loss of Abbie Mills (Nicole Beharie) on Sleepy Hollow that hits the hardest.
In its first season, Sleepy Hollow found success thanks to the chemistry of its leads, Abbie and the out-of-time Ichabod Crane (Tom Mison). The show quickly developed a dedicated, vocal POC following thanks to the diversity of its cast and its depiction of Abbie as a capable, badass, funny, smart lead in a genre that often had great female characters but rarely any who were women of color. She completely lived up to her destiny as a “Witness,” an emblem of good and slayer of evil named in the Book of Revelation as key to fighting against the apocalypse itself. But between the first and second seasons, the show went through great upheaval, switching showrunners and changing up its writing staff. That wound up reflected onscreen in a second season that effectively sidelined Abbie and her importance in the narrative.
