Fox Renews Sleepy Hollow for Season 3, Names the Series' New Showrunner

The Headless Horseman will ride again! Fox has renewed its struggling supernatural drama Sleepy Hollow for a third season and named a new showrunner, the network announced Wednesday. According to TV Line, Season 3 will consist of 18 episodes, just like Season 2.

And when Sleepy Hollow returns, it will be under the leadership of former White Collar executive producer and The Glades creator Clifton Campbell. Campbell steps into the showrunner/excutive producer vacancy left by Mark Goffman, who stepped down earlier this month after shepherding Sleepy Hollow through Seasons 1 and 2.

Now that it's guaranteed another season, Sleepy Hollow has some work to do, both creatively and in the ratings: The show's viewership fell from an average of 8 million viewers per episode in Season 1 to fewer than 5 million viewers per episode in Season 2 as it struggled to squeeze in too many characters that muddled its already complicated mythology. Meanwhile, Fox's recent decision to cut back on Sleepy Hollow's serialized storylines in favor of more episodic ones left many fans worried, but so far, it's turned out to be a bit of a blessing in disguise.

By the end of its Season 2 finale, Sleepy Hollow had jettisoned much of its dead weight by eliminating characters whose stories were dragging it down. With Katrina and Henry both out of the picture, here's hoping the series can return its focus to what really matters: the relationship between Nicole Beharie's Abbie Mills and Tom Mison's Ichabod Crane.

Assuming the series continues on its path toward incorporating more standalone plots, its potential to succeed as a procedural is somewhat unclear, as so much of what made it great in Season 1 was rooted in a fast-paced, complex narrative that felt different from anything else on TV. Hopefully Campbell will retain at least some of Sleepy Hollow's serialized elements—including an overarching story involving the Headless Horseman and the fight against evil—so that it doesn't lose sight of what made fans fall in love in the first place.

Are you excited that Sleepy Hollow is returning? What do you hope to see in Season 3?