(Spoilers follow for both seasons of Sleepy Hollow)

Season one of Sleepy Hollow was one of the biggest surprises of the 2013-2014 TV season. Before airing, the series looked like one of the most sure-fire misses on Fox’s slate, a modern-day update of the Sleepy Hollow story involving time travel and a machine gun wielding headless horseman. Just watch the trailer below and tell me that it doesn’t look like the stupidest show you’ve ever seen.

And yet somehow, the show was endearing. Sleepy Hollow was always aware of how silly it was, but did not wear this awareness on its sleeve. The characters took the situation seriously, the tone was that of a horror film, and the comedy came largely from the character dynamics and Ichabod Crane’s fish-out-of-water situation rather than the absurdity of witches and headless horsemen in modern-day America.

Most importantly, the central characters of Abbie and Ichabod were played beautifully by Nicole Beharie and Tom Mison. The two have an easy rapport that makes even the silliest, most ill-conceived scenarios work. The supporting cast, filled out by Orlando Jones, Katia Winter, Lyndie Greenwood, and (eventually) John Noble, was also game, and meshed well with Abbie and Ichabod in all of their scenes together.

This confidence of tone and easy chemistry, combined with top-notch creature design and a shockingly cohesive story arc, helped make Sleepy Hollow’s first season such a success. Also on its side: brevity. Typically when a network orders a new show, they ask for 13 episodes. If those first 13 are popular, they order a “back 9” to fill it out to a full season. However, with Sleepy Hollow, Fox instead decided to renew the show for another season and end at 13 episodes. Leaving the show at 13 episodes meant that the intended story arcs were not stretched out unnecessarily, and despite a cliff-hanger, there was a real sense of closure in the twist ending.

So, after a sleeper hit of a first season, how did the second year fair? Not nearly as well. It would be easy to attribute this to the longer season alone, but the biggest problem with year two was that the creative team seemed indecisive. They frequently made big choices, then decided that they would rather go a different direction. One character, Nick Hawley, showed up out of basically nowhere as a bit of a rogue and a collector of artifacts, was a regular for nine episodes, then completely disappeared from the show. During this time, he was a love interest for both Abbie Mills AND her sister Jenny, and his “one love” would seemingly shift from episode-to-episode. There was no real dramatization or indication that the Mills sisters were conflicted about his interest, either. A similar thing happened with an angel in the second half of the season: he showed up once or twice, seemed to be set up as a recurring character, and then never showed up again.

In the midseason finale, the show not only killed off a major character in Captain Irving (Orlando Bloom), but also killed off Moloch, the main villain and antagonist for the entire series. Realizing that they had written themselves into a hole, the writers brought Orlando Jones back as a possible villain, and then struggled to figure out what the show was about for a few episodes. Eventually they brought Ichabod’s son Henry (John Noble) back into the fray, and gave him a completely different never-before-mentioned motivation for why he was still an antagonist.

Finally, and most disappointingly, the show made an utter mess out of Katrina, Ichabod’s wife, who happens to be a witch. It was clear from the beginning of the season that the writers wanted to have a long-running arc for Katrina that ended with her becoming the primary antagonist. The early plan was to have her fall back in love with her ex-lover Abraham, who has since become the Headless Horseman. However, despite a conflict-building story involving Katrina having hidden the death of a woman from Ichabod back in the Colonial era, it was simply never believable that Katrina would leave her husband for a headless demon who has become one of the harbingers of the apocalypse.

The writers ultimately realized the problems with that motivation too. After a brief schism between Ichabod and Katrina in the second half regarding what to do with the now-free Headless Horseman, the show simply dropped that plot point. Instead, they decided to focus on Katrina’s growing power and interest in magic and her ultimate foray into “blood magic.” It’s very similar to Willow’s transformation in season six of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, except that Willow’s character arc was consistent throughout the season and put into motion by a life-changing event, and Katrina’s arc was consistent for roughly three episodes and  put into motion because she felt like it.

The show’s rationale for Katrina’s change is that when her son Henry decides to fight for his magical heritage (again, something that has never motivated Henry in the slightest before this plot-twist), she can’t help but agree with him, in a moment of mother-son bonding. The change is far too drastic to accept in the moment, and comes off as the most absurd part of a show about a headless horseman and a time-travelling Ichabod Crane.

I’ll at least admit that, if you simply accept the previous character developments as a given, it ended on a high note. Abbie follows Katrina into the past, where she intends to kill Ichabod Crane before he can prevent her evil plans, Terminator-style. It allowed the writers to swap out the “fish-out-of-water” character and revisit some of the character dynamics between the leads that had changed since the beginning of the show.

However fun this finale was, it will likely lead to further issues in season 3. Now, every single antagonist since the beginning of the show is dead. Whatever they bring in next season will be a completely new threat. Hopefully they can figure it out and stick to their guns this time.