Sherlock Series Three: A Study in Relationships

 (Sherlock meta by strawberrypatty)

This series of Sherlock is different than previous ones in that is it not mystery focused. Yes, mysteries do happen… But they are backdrop to the characters and their relationships. Please note, when I say “relationships”, I mean in the broadest sense of the word. I mean platonically, fraternally and romantically.

There are four relationships (well, three and half) that are really the core of this series. They are the ones that evolve and develop over the three episodes. While there are other relationships present, there is not much change from what we’ve seen before.

SHERLOCK AND JOHN (AND MARY) 

As with every series of Sherlock, this relationship is the most significant. As it should be. Holmes and Watson are timeless companions. Without them, there is no show.

The first episode of the series is about Sherlock reintroducing himself to John and regaining his trust. John has spent two years thinking Sherlock is dead. It is implied in the dialogue that it’s only been in the last six months that John has been able to truly move on. While no doubt he had recovered somewhat before he met Mary, during John’s aborted proposal, he says that Mary is the best thing that could’ve happened to him and that the last few years had not been easy for him. He was deeply affected by the loss. He has cut himself off from people he knew along with Sherlock like Mrs Hudson and has only recently become comfortable reacquainting himself.

Going through all of this, John has difficulty letting Sherlock back into his life. Naturally, he feels betrayed. It is not just that Sherlock lied to him. He is angry that other people knew. He lashes out at Sherlock when he discovers that Mycroft, Molly and members of the Homeless Network knew. For everything they went through, Sherlock didn’t trust him to keep the secret. Sherlock says this outright. He thought that John might say something indiscreet.

The first episode makes clear that while these two men mean a lot to each other, they are not each other’s entire worlds. John is happy working as a General Practitioner. Sherlock is taking cases. However, they are on each other’s minds. I really think what is preying on them is the fact they’re trying to ignore the other. They haven’t been able to get to the point where they can go off and have an adventure together and then go their separate ways. This is what they need to get to. They get to it in episode two and are quite happy. However, the danger of the Magnussen case– and the upcoming baby Watson– means Sherlock is shutting John out. This is to the detriment of both of them. They are stronger together.

But that doesn’t mean they have to be with each other every moment of every day. John loves Mary and he does love the life they’ve made. But he still has to have that connection the danger of being with Sherlock Holmes. Meanwhile, Sherlock does like doing cases with Molly. But he’s stuck on the fact that John is angry with him at the time and he doesn’t think John will ever forgive him.

The plot of this relationship is what exactly they mean to each other. The first episode centres around what Sherlock means to John and John’s forgiveness of him. Things are not okay between them until John admits that Sherlock is the best man he knows and a deeply important part of his life. But even this is treated with humour. Sherlock tricks John into revealing this and laughs when John becomes affronted at having revealed it. They are friends. They are true bros who will make fun of the other for revealing something so deeply personal.

The second episode is about Sherlock’s feelings for John. Sherlock worries about the wedding not going perfectly, because he knows what it means to John and Mary. He knows John wants to have a perfect, domestic life and he’s trying to pull himself away, while John is trying to prove to Sherlock that nothing will change even though he is getting married. But everything changes. When Sherlock discovers that Mary is pregnant, he knows that John can’t come out with him any longer. That the days of them running headlong into danger at a moment’s notice is truly gone. But he vows he will always be there for John and his family.

The third episode is the culmination of the previous two. We find out just why John is so attached to his life with Sherlock. It is an addiction for him. He has married a woman who is very much like Sherlock. He needs to have the danger in his life.

While Sherlock thinks Magnussen is the worst villain he has ever gone against, once he finds out about Mary his focus completely shifts. Sherlock is willing to go to great lengths in order to keep the vow he made. While there is of course the obvious, not enough attention is spent on the intermezzo. Sherlock breaks out of hospital and bleeds internally in order to discover the truth about Mary. We know he likes Mary, but his priority is making sure John is safe. He discovers the truth about her and plays marriage counsellor to the Watsons. If Sherlock were truly as selfish as many act like he is, he wouldn’t have done this. He would be happy if John lived with him again and they went back to solving crimes all the time. But Sherlock has grown. He knows those days are over. John has chosen Mary and moved on with his life. John wants to be with Mary, even if he is angry at her for her deception. That is why he becomes so angry at her. Because even after all the lies, he still loves her. And in the end, Sherlock is willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for their happiness. He makes himself a murderer and it is only by sheer luck that he is able to get out of a suicide mission.

Sherlock and John are never going to be the same after Reichenbach. They are never again going to be living together, inseparably. Their relationship has settled into something new, which is good. All relationships must grow and change. They have admitted they love each other dearly and are desperately important to one another. But Mary is the most important person in John’s life now. And Sherlock is all right with that, willing to do just as much to protect her as he would John.

They have truly gotten to the point of being each other’s best friends.

JOHN AND MARY (AND SHERLOCK) 

 We come into this relationship already in progress. We’ve seen John with other women before. We know he’s a bit of a hound. Even he had trouble keeping his girlfriends straight. But with Mary, we’re introduced to the relationship about to take the big step of engagement.

As stated above, John’s proposal to Mary suggests that she saved him. That he was still in the midst of mourning Sherlock when he met her. But Mary was able to get him out of it. She is the best thing that happened to him and John has no hesitance in asking her to marry him.

Their relationship is fun and supportive. They have no trouble teasing one another. They feel real in a way that a lot of television couples don’t. While this probably does have a lot to do with the fact Martin and Amanda are partners, it is definitely in the writing as well. Of course, the part of Mary was specifically written for Amanda. It feels easy.

Mary is never presented as a threat to the Sherlock and John dynamic. Jeanette was treated as an interloper. Sherlock can’t remember her name and she’s very cruel– even throwing on a rather homophobic comment– when John is just trying to keep Sherlock off drugs. Even Sarah is presented as something of an obstacle. Sherlock is very wary of her and displeased with her presence. Mary and Sherlock immediately have a rapport. They understand each other. Sherlock reads her and overlooks something because she makes John happy. Of course, it might have been better if he’d talked about it with her, but if wishes were horses… The only deduction he makes out loud regarding them is to Mary’s benefit, as she doesn’t like John’s moustache (of course, it suits Sherlock as well).

I know what you’re thinking… Why are you talking about Mary and Sherlock’s relationship so much when this is supposed to be about John and Mary? I could probably write a whole section about Mary and Sherlock’s relationship, but it is so tied up in John and Sherlock’s relationship that there would be too much overlap.

If Sherlock had not returned, I think John and Mary would have been very happy together. We already see they were moving towards commitment. But with Sherlock’s return, Sherlock’s approval of Mary becomes very important. Understanding Sherlock is part and parcel with understanding John. Mary is accepting of the friendship, even encouraging it.

I’ve seen lots of anti-Mary meta suggesting she’s selfish and just out for her own interests. If this were the case, she would not have encouraged John to continue his friendship with Sherlock. She would not have gotten John to take Sherlock out on cases, knowing it’s what both men want. Sherlock Holmes is one of the few men in the world who could figure out who she is. Yet she not only encourages John’s friendship with him, she forms her own. She likes him and she knows that John needs Sherlock. If she were truly selfish, she would have encouraged John to stay away, as he wanted to in The Empty Hearse. 

As revealed in the third episode, Mary has lied to John about her past– including her name. She is a CIA assassin. But this in no way invalidates her relationship with John. She does not have a relationship with John to hide that. She had already been living as Mary Morstan for four years before she met him. If anything, John is the last person she should be with to hide herself. He worked as a detective’s assistant (a detective who shows up during their relationship). But she honestly fell in love with him, and he with her. While Mary has lied about her name and her past, she is not lying about who she is now. Both of them recognize things in each other– that they were people who liked danger and adrenaline rushes but were suppressing it.

John has every right to be angry with Mary after what he finds out. And it does take him months to come to terms with it. This is very truthful. And the fact he is able to put it behind him shows the strength of their love. It doesn’t matter what Mary did in the past, because she is the sum of her experiences and it made her the person John has fallen in love with. Who A.G.R.A was doesn’t matter, as she’s now Mary Watson, the woman John loves.

I truly believe that these two are going to be solid. After what they went through in His Last Vow, an atom bomb couldn’t shake their relationship. I also don’t think Moffat and Gatiss are so heartless that they will kill Watson’s very pregnant wife or kill both her and the baby (or leave the baby around, which frankly doesn’t make sense from a storytelling standpoint as it would be too inconvenient for storytelling). Remember: Moffat is the one who wrote “Everybody lives. Just today, everybody lives.”. He actually is far less cruel when it comes to killing off characters as fandom likes to pretend. Mary is the long-haul. This is John Watson’s future.

SHERLOCK AND MYCROFT 

We’ve had tantalizing hints as to the relationship between Sherlock and Mycroft in the first two series. But the third one really gets into detail as to what their past was like and what the truth of their current relationship is.

Previously, they’ve mostly just been antagonistic towards each other. While they still are, it becomes very clear just how much they mean to each other. For years, they were the only ones who understood each other. While Sherlock has moved on and found other companions, Mycroft still shies away from it. Sherlock worries about his loneliness, hiding it behind a veneer of mocking.

Much is spent on Mycroft as the big brother, looking after Sherlock. While everything is hidden by sniping, he’s always looking out for Sherlock. Mycroft goes undercover in order to save Sherlock from torture. Mycroft comes to see Sherlock when John has rebuked him. Mycroft and Sherlock talk on the phone at John’s wedding and Mycroft worries about Sherlock now that his friend is getting married. Mycroft comes immediately when Sherlock has relapsed. Mycroft is forced to deal with the fall out of Sherlock’s murder of Magnussen.

Sherlock knows how his brother sees him and he uses it in his own mind palace. Mind Palace Mycroft is trying to help him out, trying to get him to survive, but he does it by berating him. It is the way Mycroft shows his concern for Sherlock, by being the harsh older brother.

Mycroft is always concerned with Sherlock. When we are first introduced to him he says “I worry about him. Constantly.”. Series three truly shows this. We find out why he worries. It’s not because he thinks Sherlock will embarrass him. It is because he thinks Sherlock is going to get himself killed or worse, and that loss would break his heart. We’re given a tantalizing hint that they had another brother who met a bad end. Mycroft worries the same will happen to Sherlock.

For all of his worries and interventions, he can’t save Sherlock from himself. When Sherlock finally kills Magnussen, the ice man melts. He sees his brother as he always has– a little boy he’s tried to protect. Only he can’t protect him any longer. He has gone too far.

Sherlock has always seen Mycroft as an annoying tether. But we know Mycroft is smarter than Sherlock. He knew what Sherlock was capable of, what Sherlock’s life would lead him to. He was desperately trying to avert that in order to protect himself. In a world of goldfish, his brother is the one person he can talk to. He loves him deeply and he feels he needs to use the power of the entire British government in order to save him from himself.

In the end, Sherlock is sent off. But Moriarty returns. Could someone else combat against Moriarty? Hell yes. The man who calls Sherlock back could match wits with Moriarty and probably come out on top. But it is a convenient excuse.

Because, as Sherlock said, Mycroft can’t deal with a broken heart.

SHERLOCK AND MOLLY 

This is the relationship I’d originally started writing about, but I felt the need to write about all of the relationship developments. The fact that is was my original intention is why it’s so much longer than the others. Of course– cards up front– I’m entirely biased. But I think even if I hadn’t liked the idea of Sherlock and Molly, I’d be intrigued by their relationship as presented in series three.

If this series were called anything other than Sherlock and Sherlock Holmes had a different name, I think there would be a lot more people saying they were setting up a romance between these two. Just to be clear, while I liked the idea of these two, it was never something I sought out in canon. When I was on Three Patch Podcast, I actually said that. I didn’t want Molly to get savaged by the fandom for being in a relationship with Sherlock, so I hoped it didn’t happen.

That changed with Series Three. The writers have made me root for it to happen canonically.

Molly’s feelings for Sherlock have been clear since the beginning of the show. She had a crush on him. This was played for laughs in the first series. But by the second, it had changed. It had become serious. I think this was because Molly’s feelings had changed.

Molly no longer had a crush on Sherlock. Molly knew who Sherlock was and she was in love with him. Sherlock doesn’t realize this until A Scandal in Belgravia. Because of this love, Molly was willing to put her job, reputation and even her life on the line in order to help Sherlock with the Fall.

We pick up in Series Three with their relationship drastically changed. After John, Molly is the first person Sherlock goes to see. The scene is wordless, just sharing small smiles with each other.

Sherlock then asks Molly out. This scene is set up as nothing but a date. It has romantic music and Sherlock shuffling towards her. Molly thinks he’s going to ask her out to dinner, but he asks her to solve crimes. He assures her she’s not there to “be John” but to “be herself”. He wants her there, because he wants her there. They share flirtatious looks with one another. He asks her to go get something to eat when they’re done. He tells her how she mattered the most. If one actually looks at what happened during the Fall, Molly’s part is actually very minor. It’s Mycroft’s show. Molly is the one who mattered the most to Sherlock personally.

What confirms that the scene had romantic connotations is Sherlock’s comment about Molly “not being able to do this again” because of her engagement. If the situation had been meant to be platonic, of course they could’ve gone out and solved crimes together. What’s to stop a modern woman who happens to be a pathologist from solving crimes on the side, regardless of martial status. It is not just two friends going out together.

Sherlock congratulates her on her engagement, but there is a distinct sadness to everything he’s saying. He doesn’t say he’s happy for her. He says he hopes she’s happy. He smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach the eyes. Molly tells him about her fiancé, but she never says she loves him. It’s random information. The warmest she gets is “he’s nice”. Sherlock assures her that not every man she falls for can he a sociopath. He says it with melancholy.

But he leaves before he hears her say “Maybe it’s just my type.”

Had they not done this, the scene could have played as a good-bye scene. Saying good-bye to Molly’s former feelings. But they left it significantly open (more on that later).

When we finally meet Tom, we see he looks a lot like Sherlock. Molly has not moved on, despite her claim to Lestrade (also, if you have to SAY it, you haven’t). Sherlock doesn’t know how to process it and leaves very quickly.

In The Sign of Three, there’s very little Sherlock and Molly interaction. But Molly worries about how he will handle being a best man. She’s the only one who is. Molly, knowing Sherlock well, is the one who is right. He’s panicked about it.

Their only scene together is Molly helping with the stag night. It’s awkward. Oh God, is it awkward. Sherlock asks after Tom and Molly assures him they’re having quite a lot of sex, which he doesn’t know what to make of. It is again, “look how much I’ve moved on”.

Sherlock’s interactions with Molly in The Empty Hearse and The Sign of Three can be connected to the scene he has with Mary’s ex-boyfriend. Sherlock strongly wards David off, knowing he still has feelings for Mary. He’s protective of Mary and John’s relationship. He doesn’t think it’s appropriate for someone with feelings for an engaged woman to be around her. So in The Empty Hearse he tells Molly he can’t solve cases with her anymore than that one time and the only other time they converse, he makes her to bring up Tom.

Molly tries hard with Tom, kissing him at the wedding (with Sherlock watching in the background). She’s trying very hard to move on. But she’s clearly embarrassed by him and protective of Sherlock. She is still the only one who “sees” Sherlock, sadly leaving the wedding. But she doesn’t pursue him.

Molly isn’t allowed to go after him, because this is an homage to “The Green Death” episode of Doctor Who. However, the homage isn’t perfect. If it were, John (who is the Jo Grant in this situation) would have been the one to see Sherlock. But despite moving on, Molly still sees Sherlock in a way no one else does.

By His Last Vow, Molly’s engagement is over. But that doesn’t mean things are clear for her and Sherlock. She does a drugs test on him and finds out he’s been using heroin.

We’ve seen Molly call Sherlock out before, but this was a stunning moment. She has so much love and concern for him, she’s just going to slap the crap out of him for what he’s done. You can see on Sherlock’s face how stunned and ashamed he is. But he lashes out at her, pointing out how her engagement has ended. But Molly won’t put up with it, demanding he stop it.

We get a brief scene of Molly, tantalizingly dropping a hint of Sherlock staying not only at her flat, but in her bed, at some point. Most likely, this was after his supposed death. It can be taken as Sherlock kicking her out of her room… But it can be taken as them sharing a bed too. It’s very grey.

Of course, it would be remiss not to mention Molly’s place in Sherlock’s mind palace. I’ve heard people say Molly was the obvious choice. No, actually… She wasn’t. Molly is a pathologist. She deals with dead bodies. John was not only a doctor, but an army doctor. He has dealt with live gunshot victims. Not only that, he’s been a live gunshot victim. He would’ve been the obvious choice. But Sherlock’s mind chose Molly. Mycroft and Anderson are also in the mind palace. But Anderson is cold fact and Mycroft is berating him. Molly is getting him to focus, encouraging. Molly is making him fight.

What is most intriguing about the relationship between Sherlock and Molly in series three is the lack of resolution. When we leave them, Molly is absolutely furious at Sherlock out of worry. We never get any assurance they have made up.

If Moffat and Gatiss had wanted to shut the door on Sherlock and Molly, they had an easy out. It had been two years and they set up that Molly HAS moved on. They could’ve had Molly be engaged and that was the end of it. She could’ve just been a friend and a confidant, but they have her with feelings for Sherlock and her relationship floundering. Tom was a road block. Everything between them set up Sherlock’s changed feelings and the changes in their relationship. But it was left very open for series four (and possibly five).

THE SHERLOCK-MARY AND JOHN-MOLLY PARALLELS 

With Sherlock and John as the cornerstone of the series, it’s interesting to look at the women in both of their lives and see the comparisons that can be drawn.

It is said outright in His Last Vow that Mary and Sherlock are very much alike. John makes a joke about how they should’ve gotten married. John is attracted to dangerous people. That is why he is best friends with Sherlock. He then falls in love with a woman who is just as dangerous. Mary is clever and dangerous and gets along with Sherlock because of their similarities.

I’ve written before about the similarities between John and Molly. They are both medical professionals who assist Sherlock. They are the ones who will call him out on being an asshole. This series draws even more comparisons between the two, with their choice of companions. While John needs the fact he is attracted to dangerous people pointed out to him, Molly knows it already. Sherlock, feeling he’s not good enough for Molly, tells her not every man she falls for can be a sociopath. But she knows she’s still in love with him and says maybe she has a type. She’s admitted what John comes to terms with by the end of the series. While Molly has admitted it, only the next series will tell if it will lead to anything.

Mary Watson is infinite

 (Sherlock meta by notjustfuneralreasons)

 “It’s an old enough technique, known to the kinds of people who can recognise a skip-code on sight, have extraordinarily retentive memories… How good a shot are you?

Mary Watson is infinite.

Mary Watson is the best thing that could have ever happened to John Watson after he lost Sherlock Holmes, and yet she could be that second disappointment he will not be able to live with. She’s an unexpected source of friendship, offering support freely, as she brings together those two friends again. Mary is clever, quick-witted, and not above making Janine her bridesmaid if it serves a purpose. She can be charming and, for a lack of a better word, utterly adorable.

(She likes cats, is a size 12, and has a secret tattoo. She is an only child, a romantic, and bakes her own bread. She can throw and shoot a coin, in dim lighting.)

Mary is an assassin who chose to leave that life behind to become a nurse, from killer to carer. She will pick up that gun again, if you threaten her and her loved ones. But even as Mary searches for Sherlock, she stops to for a homeless man at a street corner. Desperation, determination, and panic don’t stop her from being kind. But they can make her shoot someone she cares about, even if it’s just to buy time.

All these details are not scattered mosaic pieces, distorted fragments of an incomplete, dubious person. They are integral, real parts of a whole. We might only get a hint of her past, but in the present alone she is interesting, multifaceted, flawed… wonderful. Her lies did not leave her a façade, the truth just revealed more. She is allowed to be all the things she was and all the things she wanted to be and became.

Here is a woman who knows John Waton, maybe better than he knows himself, who has done everything to bring him ‘round’ after Sherlock’s return, and yet it doesn’t even occur to her that he might forgive her. She never pleads for absolution and yet she is given more than that - acceptance. And an ultimate act of loyalty from Sherlock, the man she shot. Her friend. She loves and she is loved.

After only three episodes, Mary is already the kind of character that could fill books. It might never be possible to say that last, final word about her.

But if you find yourself hesitating on the very first page, just for a split second, the question of a name hanging in the air… The name you choose is like a promise you make. The name she chose says so much more about her than whatever could be found on that flashdrive, labelled “A.G.R.A”.

And that name is Mary Watson.

Benedict Cumberbatch talks sex & Sherlock

 (Elle UK interview)

You may have heard that we photographed and interviewed Mr Cumberbatch for an ELLE cover recently. Not that we've mentioned it much, but word does spread... (you can read the full story here)

During the course of the day, we fell to talking about sex. Specifically, Sherlock and sex. We find it intriguing that most right-thinking females (and males, for that matter) are very attracted to Cumberbatch's Sherlock Holmes, despite the fact that the character in the BBC adaptation is a virgin, a sociopath and, we think, likely to be a lousy lay if ever he were to relinquish said virginity.

ELLE UK: A lot of women fancy Sherlock.

BC: Their problem, not mine.

ELLE UK: I do get it, he’s incredibly endearing, but…

BC: Will this tell me more about you than the answer will tell you about me?

ELLE UK: …I actually think he would be a terrible shag.

BC: Really? That’s terrible!

ELLE UK: I think he would be proficient, of course, but he would lack enthusiasm and he would find it distasteful.

BC: Ah, these are terrible stereotypes. And come on, he seduced Janine.

ELLE UK: But they didn’t have sex?

BC: Oh you’re right, very good, you spotted that.

ELLE UK: What do you think Sherlock would be like in bed? How would you play a love scene as Sherlock?

BC: You know I’d get the, I’d probably test the latex, if it involved prophylactics, beforehand. I’d do a little experiment to do with durability, length, girth, and um, strength. And um, I would probably take a lot of vitamin supplements to make sure that I could perform, and had had my sleep, and probably not had many cigarettes. Or drink, for that matter. Not that he does drink.

ELLE UK: You see. Proficient, but lacking enthusiasm.

BC: Yeah, no wait for it. I would probably watch a lot of porn… I might have to shave, um, areas to fit in with a modern idea of bodily hair. And then I would be devastating. I’d know exactly how to please a woman, I’d know exactly where to put my fingers, where to put my tongue, where to put my – his I should say – his fingers, his tongue. Think about violinists, think about what they can do with their fingers. And I’d know exactly how to get that person into it, and get pleasure out of making that person feel pleasure to the point that I probably wouldn’t even have to enter… But when I did it would be explosive.

ELLE UK: But does he ever lose control?

BC: So in sex, would he lose control? I think to have really good sex he would probably have to.

ELLE UK: So he’d decide to lose control. He’d make a controlled decision?

BC: This is a very dark alley we’re going down. No pun intended. Um, Yeah. Yeah. If it was necessary yes, yes. Very much so.

ELLE UK: I’d quite like to watch that love scene now.

BC: You never will. It’s not that kind of a programme, is it?

Unpopular opinion: I don’t actually think Tom was all that bad

 (Sherlock meta by iamazonian)

Yes he was a bit of the wonky type, and he was awkward and stuff, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that! And if you think about it, his theory was actually kind of sound. I mean, a dagger made of the same thing it aims to pierce, so the murder weapon camouflages itself in the body it murdered? I actually like it!

And he was just trying to make conversation with Molly and she cut him off with a fork stab, which was probably the physical form of the emotional pain caused by Sherlock cutting Molly off in previous seasons whenever she made conversation. And he was all awkward and shy and I actually felt a bit for him because… He might actually really have loved Molly, and was then being continually slapped in the face by the presence of someone /better/ (in Molly’s eyes).

Where have we seen this before? Didn’t we all feel so INCREDIBLY bad for Molly in A Scandal in Belgravia? We got so annoyed at the writers doing everything they could to show how Molly was “eclipsed” by the amazing flawless beautiful Woman. The lipstick, the gift, the body, the phone, everything! And then, the same thing happened to Tom. [...He] turned out to be a normal bloke who fell in love with Molly Hooper and got his heart shredded slowly.

What I’m saying is, Tom was innocent. Tom was almost like Molly in the way that Molly was to Sherlock in the [previous] two seasons. Molly actually seemed a bit crueler considering she was committing herself to the man whilst being so obviously in love with another. –

An interview with Steven Moffat on ‘Sherlock’s Return in s2, the Holmes-Watson Love Story, and Updating the First Supervillain 

(By Alyssa Rosenberg)

Sunday nights are chock-full of great television, but last night marked the long, long-awaited return of Sherlock, Steven Moffat’s brilliant update of Arthur Conan Doyle’s story about an Afghanistan veteran, his brilliant-but-off-kilter flatmate, and their adventures in a London full of shifting social norms, new technologies, and criminals both diabolically brilliant and accidentally malign. And the show came back with a bang, bringing the previously asexual Sherlock up against Irene Adler, an opera singer with a scandalous secret in the stories turned into a thoughtful, melancholy dominatrix in the update. I spoke to Moffat about our contemporary obsessions with sex, watching Sherlock grow up, and how to interpret Moriarty, the world’s first supervillain, in a way that’s not a cliche given all the characters who were based on him.

You’ve adapted both Sherlock Holmes and Jekyll and Hyde, stories from the turn of the century. Are there parallels you see between that time of technological develop and social change and our own? 

Not on purpose. And to be honest, this hasn’t been a long-term plan that I’d adapt victorian fiction. I just like both stories. It wasn’t my idea to do Jekyll, it was a guy called Jeffrey Taylor who approached me about it, and I liked that because I’d always liked the story, and I’ve always been a Sherlock Holmes fan. Is there something particular? I think probably any era is analagous to any other era. People don’t change that much. We’re always doing the same sort of thing. So I think that probably just works. When you’re looking at what causes a scandal in Bohemia as opposed to Belgravia, you have to up the ante a bit, and Irene Adler doesn’t really qualify as a bad girl anymore. She’s an opera singer who married a man and moved house, as far as I can see. As far deadly femme fatales go, she was a little bit on the limited side. I remember when I was reading that story as a kid, Sherlock goes on and on about The Woman, the only one who ever beat him, and you’re thinking, he’s had better villains than this. And then you click: he fancies her, doesn’t he? That’s what it’s about.

I loved that line where Irene says to Watson, ‘you are a couple.’ They’re not sexually involved, but they are partners. Given that there’s always been this speculation over Watson and Holmes, I thought that was an interesting way to resolve the tension. 

It’s always definitely a love story. I don’t see why that means that sex has to be involved. What a weirdly sexualized world we live in where you insist they much be having sex as well. Why would they? John isn’t wired that way, whatever Sherlock is. But I think that whole scene, when Irene Adler has to say she’s mostly gay, she has had relationships with men as well, it’s not what it’s about. Sherlock Holmes is indifferent to sex. So is Irene. She uses sex to get what she wants, and John Watson happily has a string of girlfriends. Sex is not really the issue among any of these people. Love is. Infatuation is. I think John Watson is infatuated with and fascinated by Sherlock Holmes. I think Sherlock Holmes absolutley relies completely and utterly on John Watson and is devoted to him. I think Sherlock is infatuated to the point that he can barely function around Irene Adler. And Irene Adler isn’t initially fascinated by him and then falls for him completely, thinks, ‘There’s another person in the world as damaged as I am, how brilliant.’ Who says any of them are having sex with each other?

Well, it made me think about Victorian relationships, which could be coded and repressive, but also provided frameworks where people could build lives and households along different terms. Maybe our identity categories and relationship categories aren’t really sufficient to describe human nature? 

I was pondering when I wrote that, why is sex so important? And has it always been this important to ever previous era of humanity? I bet it isn’t. I think we’re obsessed with it, to the point where I know a lot of people are saying ‘Well, John and Sherlock clearly love each other, they must be having sex.’ But you can love someone without fancying them. If your’e not wired to fancy someone, you just won’t. But what’s that got to do with it? Really, what’s that got to do with the important relationships? We know that love grows, sex sort of wanes. Older people, you don’t have sex as much later on as you do at the beginning. We know it’s the lesser thing. I always say, you have love stories and sex scenes. That’s the difference in stature in our lives.

And Sherlock sort of realizes in that wonderful and very painful Christmas scene that his indifference isn’t producing the results that he wants. Detachment may not always be as strategic as it was for him before.

It’s the beginning of a three-episode process, as you’ll discover, where Sherlock grows up a bit, becomes more of a man, stops being the genius child…he was completely blind, he was completely blindsided by who that present was for, he realizes she cares for him. He realizes she’s really hurting. And he realizes, possibly for the first time in his life, that he doesn’t like what he just did. He thinks ‘I’ve got to fix that.’ He’s been cruel before, but it’s always been srot of accidental, or it’s been minor. And he thinks ‘I’ve got to fix that. That’s not good enough. I can do better than that. And I do care that I’ve just hurt her.’ What Mark and I always say is our Sherlock is twenty years from being Basil Rathbone. And our Sherlock is twenty years younger than Basil Rathbone. The accomplished version would never be that cruel, would never be that silly. Probably isn’t a virgin. I can’t imagine that man as a virgin. Something happened, somewhere. I think Sherlock would have to, somewhere. He’s a man with a past…You see more of this in Baskerville, where he encounters fear, and doubt, and loss in Reichenbach Falls. These are the fires in which the great hero is forged. He’s not the Sherlock Holmes we know and love yet.

What about Mycroft, who is also a long way from the man we’re told has his fingers in the affairs of state but mostly spends time hanging around his club? 

To be honest, Mark and I sort of took that version of Mycroft from Billy Wilder in The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, where Christopher Lee plays Mycroft, and Mycroft is slim and he’s actually rather cold, and he’s like a frightening Secret Service guy. The original Mycroft we’ve left a long way behind. It’s again trying to put Sherlock Holmes where he would be. You somehow know he’s got to come from a rich family because only a rich family would indulge him. Whereas his brother’s done magnificent things and is worried about his tearaway brother who’s recently announced he’s going to become a private detective and help solve crimes.

And how about Moriarty? You’ve sort of leveled him up from a Fagin-esque runner of crime rings to an international terrorist. 

With Moriarty, Doyle does such a brilliant job of writing a mafia don before they were invented. Every other supervillain ever since sounds like Moriarty. Goldfinger sounds exactly like Moriarty. He invented the supervillain. If you do him like that now, he sounds like the biggest cliche on earth. So we did a quite different kind of Moriarty, one that would be more alarming, I suppose, to Sherlock. He’s super-clever. But then I don’t think super-clever people behave the way that super-clever people used to. He’s different. And you could not do Moriarty the way he’s done before. Everyone else has done it. Sherlock and John I think are very much the originals, but Moriarty is different.

Sherlock, Molly and Season 4

 (Sherlock meta by penfairy)

I really believe that Sherlock is gearing up for Molly to become Sherlock’s love interest in the next season.

Just think about it. If Moffat and Gatiss had wanted to take a Sherlolly romance off the cards they would have married her off to a nice young man and simply kept her as Sherlock’s friend. Instead they engaged her to a dumb Sherlock lookalike whom she dumps by the third episode.

Molly is a fan favourite and the writers know this. They know we want her to be happy, so they would not stop her from moving on and attaining happiness unless they had planned a romance more suited to her tastes in later seasons. The Tom/engagement arc is important because it would have been insulting to Molly’s character to simply have her moping around, alone, waiting for her beloved to return. But The Empty Hearse makes it clear that Sherlock is the only man for her. Almost all of her dialogue and body language is centred around showing how much she adores him. By comparison, her relationship with Tom seems strange and forced, an obviously inferior substitute for the relationship she truly wants.

Molly is in love with Sherlock Holmes. No surprises there. But what about Sherlock? How does he feel about her?

We know Sherlock only has one true friend in this world - John Watson. John is the only person he trusts to assist him on cases, the only person he will deign to eat dinner with. Yet in The Empty Hearse, Sherlock invites Molly to solve crimes with him and, at the end of the day he casually asks, ‘fancy some chips?’ He asks Molly to eat with him, an invitation that even the enigmatic Irene Adler could not procure. It is clear that Molly has pierced Sherlock’s most intimate sphere, a place that until now has only been broached by John.

Sherlock also makes it clear that she is not just a replacement for John. ‘You’re not being John, you’re being yourself,’ are his words when she expresses doubt in her abilities as his helper. For a man who is usually so callous and dismissive, who accidentally labelled her ‘John’ in Reichenbach while she was helping him because he simply could not be bothered to look up, this is a huge step. He values Molly’s companionship as much as he appreciates her help, and at the end of the day he thanks her for everything she has done for him, congratulates her on her engagement, wishes her happiness and kisses her on the cheek.

What does all this show? On a basic level, it shows that Molly Hooper is Sherlock Holmes’ friend. There is a beautiful softness and a sincerity in the way he treats her. She humanises him. She can make him apologise with a single look. And let’s not forget that she was the only person to notice he wasn’t okay in Reichenbach and she was the only person he ever showed fear in front of. He drops his mask when he’s around her. He trusts her unconditionally.

Let’s examine some other moments in season 3, shall we?

• They shared gentle jokes and smiles throughout the Empty Hearse, an episode that also featured an intense Sherlolly kiss which, although fake, could easily be read as foreshadowing 
• Sherlock refused to say anything bad about her fiance, when once he might have cruelly intervened as he did upon meeting Jim 
• Sherlock went to her for friendly advice on how to plan a stag night 
• Molly was the only one who realised how much Sherlock would struggle with public speaking and tried to rally help for him 
• Molly shed tears during his Best Man’s speech, a speech that emphasised the ability of this 'machine’ to love 
• Molly was the only one to notice Sherlock leaving the wedding early 
• Molly slapped Sherlock three times and reprimanded him in a way that John has never been able to do 
• Sherlock’s memories of Molly helped to keep him alive after Mary shot him. The Molly of his imagination told him which way to 'fall,’ reminiscent of the way she saved him in The Reichenbach Fall.

And then there’s Janine. Her appearance would hardly seem beneficial to Molly/Sherlock relationship, but it did show that he at least has the ability to mimic the workings of a romantic relationship and even hints that Sherlock is not asexual. Although he and Janine did not have sex, his statement “I was waiting til we got married” seems to suggest that while he does not engage frivolously in sexual escapades, he could engage in a relationship as long as he loved and trusted his partner unconditionally. Since Molly ticks both those boxes, I would contend that it would not be out of character for Sherlock to become romantic or even physical with her.

Further evidence of Sherlock’s sexual interest may be found in Irene’s appearance in The Sign of Three, where she turns up naked and alluring in his mind palace and he has to suppress the memory in order to concentrate on cracking the case.

All of these subtle hints finally lead us up to the big one: Moriarty’s return. It was only with Molly’s help that Sherlock was able to survive the fall: we all know the line.

“Moriarty slipped up. He made a mistake. Because the one person he thought didn’t matter at all to me was the one who mattered the most.” 

When Moriarty and Sherlock meet again, he won’t overlook Molly this time. Whatever happens in the next season, Molly will be heavily involved. Moriarty will come after her. And so, with Molly set to be a big player in the next series, I suspect we will see more development between her and Sherlock that will probably culminate in an expression of love or even a relationship.

Well, maybe that’s just wishful thinking. But whether you ship it or not, remember:

This smile, this beautiful, perfect smile right here, was for Molly.

Is Sherlock going to have to do a real apology to John at some point?

 (Sherlock meta by Ivy Blossom) 

Q; Sherlock is going to have to do a real apology to John at some point. Tears, begging, the whole nine yards. John’s heart broke when Sherlock jumped. John knew Sherlock could not be trusted with his heart again after that kind of betrayal.

A: Interesting. I think I disagree with you here. I think Sherlock already got his apology on the train in The Empty Hearse, and I think it was legit. John does forgive him. I think John even trusts him again.

I don’t think it’s decision, it’s just how he’s built. John has trust issues he struggles to overcome with everyone else, but he default trusts Sherlock from the moment they meet. I don’t think it’s a choice, I think it’s a compulsion. I think he trusts Sherlock even when he doesn’t want to. Even when he knows he shouldn’t. He trusts Sherlock again way too fast in series 3, not because Sherlock has earned it, but because John can’t help it.

When he discovers that Mary’s being lying to him, it’s Sherlock he feels safe with. Sherlock says, “bring your gun to my parents house for Christmas dinner,” and John is like, “What? That’s CRAZY!” but he does it anyway. For all his caution and cynicism, John trusts in Sherlock the way other people trust in gravity. But after the Magnussen incident John has every reason in the world to trust Sherlock; he knows Sherlock sacrificed his great self and everything he could have done in his life for John and his family, which I’m sure John can’t begin to fathom.

No, I don’t think there will be any more apologies. They’re not necessary. But there is no apology that can remove the consequences of Sherlock’s behaviour. My fear is that the real consequence of Sherlock’s behaviour is this: he will make the very logical deduction that he was right in the first place; emotions cloud his judgement and prevent him from doing good work. And he wouldn’t be wrong. Being in love with John is a problem for Sherlock. It makes him sloppy and it blinds him to the obvious. He makes bad choices because of it. So maybe he needs to stare those feelings in the face, acknowledge them, and swallow them. And never let them interfere with his head ever, ever again. He’s wise enough now to really understand the danger, and not just in the abstract. He might look at John and think, yes, I love you, I’m in love with you, I always will be, but that isn’t the life I’m going to get to have. It’s too dangerous, and it’s too complicated, and I’m married to my work. So I need to be satisfied with the fact that I love you, and you love me, but we’re never going to do this. Because I can’t, and because I choose to solve crimes instead. 

It would be horrible. But it the wistful and melancholy understanding it would give him would certainly make him a better detective.

Endings

 (Sherlock Meta by writemeastoryofsolitude)

Okay, but consider this:

S1 ended with John and Sherlock thinking they were going to die together, but then they didn’t, and it took them a good couple months to find their feet again before taking on their first major case since that night, during which John was self-aware enough to be blindingly jealous of Irene, and Sherlock was desperate enough to solve Irene’s puzzle in like 8 seconds in order to impress John with his wits, since Sherlock genuinely thinks that’s all he possibly has to offer (oh god)

S2 ended with John thinking Sherlock was dead, but he wasn’t, and John still wasn’t really over it by he time Sherlock came back two years later, but was self-aware enough to recognize that Sherlock was the best thing that ever happened and likely would happen to him but he needed to move on bc he’d obviously let the opportunity for anything more slip through his fingers; meanwhile, Sherlock has undoubtedly thought of John nearly every moment of every day since The Fall and is incapable of imagining it was any different for John, “what life, I’ve been away” (jfc I’m in pain)

S3 ends with Sherlock knowing he’s going to his death, but not telling John, and John is self-aware enough after Sherlock’s return and him being shot and almost dying again to realize it’s always been useless to fight it, #sherlocklives means #johnwatsonlives and John is incapable of conceiving of a life anymore that doesn’t include Sherlock as the central feature, so is it any wonder he doesn’t seem to really believe this is truly goodbye? meanwhile, Sherlock just leaves with a feeble joke that’s not really a joke “Sherlock’s a girl’s name—(but) I think it [Sherlock Watson] could work” and a handshake, then gets on that fucking plane with tears in his eyes and the hand that had last touched John’s skin held to his mouth (ah hahaha please kill me)

So clearly S4 is obligated to end with Sherlock thinking John is dead/dying and finally reaching the fucking limit of what he can endure in silence, aka Three Garridebs, that’s the narrative arc of this show, that’s the logical conclusion into which Moffat and Gatiss have written themselves so just give it to us, give us the Garridebs, give it, give us the kiss and the love confession, you’re the only ones who WOULD and CAN give it to us, the only ones who can finally write Sherlock Holmes and John Watson out of the closet for the first time in 128 years, everyone knows the enormity of your ego, Moffat, so just do yourself the favor of going down in television and Holmes-fandom history, never to be forgotten, and just DO IT

How HLV Hides John’s Feelings

 (Sherlock Meta by archipelagoarchaea and recentlyfolded)

archipelagoarchaea:

Okay! So I wrote in the tags of this post by rebootingcheesecake that I really think John’s emotions were deliberately obscured in HLV. I thought I’d mentioned it before in my HLV breakdown, but apparently not. So I thought hey, why not write a post just about that.

To clarify, here’s what I think: Martin Freeman played John as being desperately in love with and protective of Sherlock, but the director, DP, and writers (mostly Moffat, but he says Gatiss always has a hand in writing) made sure we saw as little of that as possible. From a writing perspective, this meant leaving out scenes that would be pretty standard in an episode that includes a main character who gets gravely injured, e.g. the scene in which John finds out that Sherlock will be okay (replaced by the scene where he transmutes his feelings for Sherlock into feelings for his wife), and the scene in which he spends time at Sherlock’s bedside. These would be normal for any depiction of platonic friendship, yet we don’t get so much as a second of this. There’s also the several months between confrontation and Christmas, which could have been a gold mine of characterization, and yet there’s nothing. No John helping Sherlock in his recovery (which almost certainly happened). No Mary asking after Sherlock and being apologetic about his condition (inconsistent with rest of episode, but would make the reconciliation more plausible). No John twisting his wedding ring between his fingers while watching Sherlock sleep. No John contemplating his choice (which absolutely should have happened if the reconciliation is real — it’d be a narrative crime not to). No John trying to play the Rizla game with Sherlock in the hospital while Sherlock tries to remind John of what he loves about Mary. Nothing. Then, from a production standpoint, when John is in a situation to show serious concern it’s filmed either from a distance or a weird angle, or with a shaky camera, or with John obscured in some way by the lighting. Every. Single. Time. Images behind the cut. Lots of them.

Just to be absolutely clear, I’m not suggesting that the only reason for filming a particular way is to conceal John’s feelings. I’m not a photographer, and I’m not going to try to look at this from a cinematographer’s point of view. For example, there’s not much to conceal here, though do take a look at the incredibly phallic flowers in the corner. Then again, if John were only concealed in scenes where he’s falling apart over Sherlock, the technique would be a little too obvious.



In moments where John would be most likely to show his desperation and love for Sherlock, the show makes it very difficult for us to see, and you don’t have to be a cinematographer to notice that. For example, here’s John checking Sherlock’s breathing. So easy to see his face, isn’t it?



Distance and funky shadows when asking who shot Sherlock.



Yes, John’s here, watching Sherlock. What, you didn’t notice on first watch?



This bit was quick, and filmed with an overlay of flashing lights. This is probably the clearest frame in terms of showing his concern — though it’s natural he would be in ‘army doctor’ mode while trying to save Sherlock — and it’s literally the last one.



John’s mouth is open here, I swear.



Lestrade was filmed unclearly during the search as well, but it’s convenient that John is somewhat difficult to read.



Slight tangent, as John’s worry is concealed somewhat by confusion, here, but I’m very interested in how this scene was lit. If you check the mirror, you’ll note that it’s completely dark: the moon lamp isn’t lit. Yet it seems nearly every other light in the entire flat is — including the lights in Sherlock’s bedroom. In the confrontation scene, by contrast, the moon lamp is definitely lit and shows up in the mirror. If someone who understands this stuff wants to explain that, please do.




You’ll note that in contrast to scenes where John is interacting with Sherlock, he’s pretty easy to read when looking at Mary.




Again, slight tangent. This is John reacting to Mrs. Hudson before he goes into anger-mode, and he looks like he’s falling apart. It’s also an example of how the flat is lit for this scene, which makes a difference between when he’s looking at Sherlock and when he’s looking at Mary.



Being angry at Mary, fairly well-lit and close-shot.



Telling Sherlock to shut up, higher contrast and slightly pulled out (latter probably meaningless), with one eye in deep shadow. I don’t know about you, but I feel these shadows make him more difficult to read.



Again, angry with Mary.



Then Sherlock, asking ‘why is she like that?’ Wow he’s hard to see here.



Slight tangent again. Including this so you can see that he’s definitely looking at Mary when he kicks the table (re-watch the clip if you’re unsure), even though it’s Sherlock’s words that set him off. Again, though, shadows make this a bit difficult to see.



Immediately afterward is the only time he looks sad when looking at Mary. I think he really is blaming himself, here, which is pretty heartbreaking.



Then back to the angry looks. We’ve escalated to ‘eye-murder’.



He’s better lit once they sit down and the conversation becomes all about Mary as client and her history, then Sherlock’s excuses for her.




Then the paramedics arrive and the camera pulls back. Now we shift from Mary to concern for Sherlock, and the cinematography really gets crazy.



I mean look at this. Shaky camera, lens glare, paramedics getting in the way.




Seriously? The lens glare is over John’s face far more than anyone else.



John’s face is deeply shadowed when saying ‘she shot you’.



This is probably the most visible his concern gets in this scene. His chest is heaving and he’s glaring daggers at Mary, but once again he’s at a distance and the shadows are deep, and the glare passes over or close to him.



Moving on to Appledore. The lighting’s not as bad as above, but John’s still pretty dark when he’s at his most anguished.



Then the Tarmac scene. This one is much better lit, clearly, but there’s still lots of little things keeping us distanced from John. Here he’s outright blurry. And yes, he’s doing his hand thing.



Then distanced and frequently from the back.



The sun is in his eyes (probably reflected off the plane), which makes him squinty and hard to read.



He turns away (unsurprisingly) when he’s at his most emotional, and we don’t get a view from the back to see what he looks like when he does this.



Part of his face is sometimes blocked by Sherlock himself.



Then the worst part: the handshake goodbye. It’s filmed from a considerable distance and from the wrong side to see John’s hand tremor.



Sherlock is filmed much more clearly, with less obscuration and fewer cut-aways and no squinty light.

Again, I’m not saying the sole purpose of this design was to conceal John’s feelings. But the way this episode was filmed certainly did a good job of it. This is probably at least in part because Series 3 was primarily from Sherlock’s point of view, and Sherlock fails to see how much John cares for him, but the principle is the same. For some reason, John’s love for Sherlock is being obscured, and Martin Freeman’s fantastic acting with it. And if it has nothing to with Johnlock or the ‘reconciliation’, then what is it about?

And for the record, this is not my desperate attempt to dig for evidence of John’s love. This is just something I perceived the first time I watched HLV. Hopefully the screencaps helped clarify my position. If not, try rewatching HLV with these in mind. It’s a relatively subtle thing, but I think it makes all the difference for this hiatus.

recentlyfolded:

Yeah, this bothered me in the first viewing of the ep and I just assumed at the time that it was to keep us off-balanced, much as the addled timeline seemed intended to do. With further thought about the whole series as well as the ep and with rewatching, I tend to agree: we’re not seeing John because Sherlock doesn’t see John. The lack of seeing (that we perforce share with Sherlock) underscores the lack of his understanding in a lovely way.

And, stylistically, this shooting aesthetic actually ends up fostering wank just because everything is so fractured into glimpses. It’s been oft-repeated, especially by meta critics, that a single screen cap fails to communicate the action in a scene and leads to overly-focused misinterpretations. But with things so hard to see at times in this episode, it’s often only by stopping the action and framing through it that we can figure out what’s going on. I don’t mean to suggest that the crew meant to encourage wank, but just that this is one of the many sorts of uncertainties, of obscuring facades that makes this episode so difficult to come to any consensus about.

Why does Sherlock still trust Mary?

 (Sherlock Meta by Loudest Subtext In Television)

I don’t think he does. Sherlock trusts her until the moment she shoots him, and then no more. We get a lot of indications that Mary shooting Sherlock is The Fall 2.0, and part of that is that Sherlock is feeding John another lie after. I address it in the HLV portion of M-theory in MUCH more detail, including Sherlock’s various possible hypotheses about Mary, but I’ll give a quick summary:

* We get the Bart’s rooftop color shift and fall music when mind palace Molly tells Sherlock “fall now.” (Credit to mid0nz for this, as always.)
* We get Moriarty in Sherlock’s mind palace, quoting directly from when he told Sherlock to jump off Bart’s: “One little push, and off you pop.”
* This time around, Sherlock ACTUALLY gives John his miracle and stops being dead.
* This time around, John is still in danger from a sniper.
* This time around, Sherlock has to sell John another hurtful lie: Mary is trustworthy.

How do we know Sherlock doesn’t trust her? Tons of reasons and tells:

* Sherlock only comes back to life because he believes Mary is definitely a danger to John. Moriarty in his mind palace says, “It’s [John] that I worry about the most. That wife. You’re lettin’ him down, Sherlock. John Watson is definitely in danger.”

* Moriarty put a sniper on John. Somehow, in Sherlock’s absence, John ended up with a sniper. And Sherlock knows what we say about coincidences: the universe is rarely so lazy. To believe that Sherlock genuinely trusts Mary, we have to think he’s beyond stupid. (In M-theory I also talk about the fact that Sherlock was nervous about that sniper, which is why he lied to Anderson about how John was totally safe the whole time. Of course John wasn’t safe. If John had been safe, Sherlock would have contacted him; he missed John like crazy and admits he thought about contacting him a lot. Mary isn’t the same sniper, but Sherlock doesn’t know that; he doesn’t know who any of the snipers were or where they were. If he’d known about them beforehand, he wouldn’t have sent John out into the open, he’d have had John hide deep indoors somewhere.)

* Here is the mind palace clip right before Sherlock flees the hospital. Mary does not look sweet and sympathetic in his mind: she looks cold, guarded, and calculating. He knows she shot him with the precision to merely incapacitate him him, and makes the sniper connection. If Sherlock genuinely trusted her, and just thought, “Oh, she only shot me because she loves John so much!” he would have just stayed in the hospital. After all, Mary could have killed him in the hospital and she didn’t, so Sherlock is safe there. Sherlock flees because he needs to ensure John is safe; after all, if Sherlock wasn’t supposed to find out about Mary’s cover, then for all Sherlock knows she has no reason to keep John alive now that the cat’s out of the bag.

* Sherlock has to act like he forgives Mary or Mary will kill him. She makes that very clear, to his face, before they head to Baker Street. I’m frankly shocked that anyone takes Sherlock’s forgiveness at face value when he’s under that kind of duress.

* Sherlock knows that Mary has had her current identity for five years, and it wouldn’t be lost on him that’s within the time frame of Moriarty messing with him. He doesn’t need to know Moriarty is alive to find that suspicious.

* Sherlock is clearly angry with Mary here, not sympathetic. When she says her selfish bit about lying to John so she won’t lose him, Sherlock looks like he can hardly conceal his loathing. He isn’t moved by her depth of devotion or something.

* Sherlock has to pretend to trust Mary for the sake of the baby, and to hide the fact that he’s on to her while he tries to figure out who she’s working for and why. He doesn’t want Magnussen’s documents merely to protect the baby, he also wants to know everything about Mary’s past. When Mary puts the USB drive down on the table, Sherlock fixates on it, which the camera makes very obvious. He’s not cool with the assassin thing, and he doesn’t trust Mary to give them all the information he wants.

* We get a clue that Sherlock is carefully controlling his emotions and reactions to John and Mary when he snaps at Mrs. Hudson, “Then what exactly is the point of you?” Poor Mrs. Hudson is the only person he can take his anger out on.

I’ll quote a longer bit from M-theory here:

Sherlock is going to go on to make excuses for Mary, but we keep getting these hints that he’s absolutely livid. Sherlock has no reason to be that angry at Mrs. Hudson or John. Sherlock is angry at Mary. Remember, even if this had nothing to do with John, Sherlock has a very particular moral code. This is the guy who won’t work for Mycroft because people like Mycroft start wars. We have never seen Sherlock kill anyone before this episode, and he only almost killed Moriarty when he thought it was necessary to save lives. But Sherlock ensured Mrs. Hudson’s husband was executed (and it’s worth remembering Mr. Hudson was used as a mirror for Mary last episode). Sherlock went all the way to Minsk only to gladly turn down an unsympathetic case and send a murderer to his death. Sherlock didn’t care about the guard in Magnussen’s office because he was a white supremacist. Sherlock stepped on the cabbie’s wound when he was bleeding to death and demanded to be given a name. In short, Sherlock would never approve of contract killing unless he could be certain Mary only killed bad people, and Sherlock has never cared if murderers die. If Mary weren’t carrying John’s child, she would be the kind of person Sherlock would leave to die without a second thought. She’s no better than the Golem, and Sherlock did try to kill him: he shot at the Golem repeatedly when he ran away, and was frustrated he missed.

Past that, Sherlock is angry Mary shot him in the heart instead of fessing up and asking for his help like a mature person. Sherlock is angry Mary pursued a relationship with John knowing it would be based on lies. Sherlock is angry that he has to convince John to stay with someone who has lied to John and isn’t worthy of him — Sherlock hardly considers himself truly worthy of John, so of course Sherlock doesn’t approve of what Mary’s done, and of course Sherlock would rather John be in a happier relationship than this.

* During the 221B scene, Sherlock shows impatience toward everyone in this scene from time to time, but John is the only one he ever is the least bit gentle towards. Sherlock is business-like with Mary, and looks at John like his heart is breaking for him. Which it literally is.

* Sherlock sees that Mary has not apologized and does not appear to do anything wrong, so he has to shift the focus on to John’s faults in order to get John to think he can never do better than Mary anyway, and to get on Mary’s good side. (I talk about this in great detail in the M-theory entry.)

Then I’ll just quote this bit from the M-theory entry, too:

Sherlock knows that John chose Mary because she wasn’t like that, and kept choosing her as an alternative to someone like Sherlock: John would have never bothered with things like therapy if he didn’t want to behave differently, if he weren’t struggling, and John always tries to present himself as more normal than he really is. Sherlock has seen that John keeps choosing a domestic life even though he hates it, which John wouldn’t do unless he felt he was supposed to. John was unhappy at the beginning of this episode because married life wasn’t dangerous enough, and that’s exactly what Sherlock had expected to happen. Sherlock was the one who pointed out that John was a danger addict looking for a fix that he hadn’t got from his marriage.

Sherlock knows that this situation is John’s worst nightmare, not something he asked for or should have predicted. Of course it isn’t John’s fault: if Sherlock couldn’t tell Mary was an assassin, John couldn’t have. As far as Sherlock knows, Mycroft and the whole British government couldn’t tell Mary was an assassin.

And even if it were all some sixth sense for danger, Sherlock doesn’t think John deserves something like this. Sherlock thinks John is the “best” and “bravest and kindest and wisest” man he’s ever known. No one could ever convince Sherlock Holmes that John Watson deserves this kind of pain.

Saying all this is literally killing Sherlock.

Moving on:

* When Sherlock says Mary befriended Janine to get close to Magnussen, and Mary says, “You can talk,” Sherlock gives her a weird, eye-twitchy half-smile. It’s very similar to the I’m-going-to-enjoy-ending-you smiles he’ll shower upon Magnussen at Appledore. It is not fondness or sympathy; Sherlock’s fond and sympathetic smiles are absurdly warm. [Clip.]

* In the same clip, when Mary says, “You did see that,” Sherlock looks distinctly uncomfortable. He doesn’t express agreement, he simply lets her say it. If Sherlock genuinely sympathized with her, he’d nod sympathetically — something, anything to back her up. But he doesn’t, because he doesn’t sympathize. Mary continues, “And you married me. Because he’s right.” We get another shot of Sherlock looking even more uncomfortable. This is exactly what Sherlock needs John to believe, and it’s working that Mary is going along with it, but he doesn’t like blaming John. “It’s what you like,” Mary finishes. And Sherlock changes the topic, visibly struggling with the literal pain in his heart as he asks about what Mary wants from Magnussen.

* Sherlock explains what happened at Magnussen’s office in the most sympathetic light possible: Mary really did intentionally incapacitate him, but Sherlock chooses to refer to that as saving his life when we know that Mary could have just accepted Sherlock’s help. Notably, Sherlock leaves out the part where he offered his help, because that would make the story unsympathetic.

* The whole conversation Sherlock just states his story and never once looks like he feels sorry for Mary or likes her at all.

* Sherlock tells us over and over the reason he detests romance is that it’s destructive: people hurt each other, and we’ve seen him be awful to clients who have lied to their spouses. Why would anyone believe Sherlock is suddenly cool with that behavior when it’s taken to the level Mary has taken it?

Also, note that the episode title is a play on the ACD story "His Last Bow." The majority of the episode is actually a retelling of “The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton,” so what elements of “His Last Bow” might be present here? Well, Holmes pretends to be on the side of a spy in order to get the evidence necessary to take him down, and chloroforms the spy in the process. That’s literally the entire story. In HLV, Sherlock pretends to be on Mary’s side so he can get the evidence necessary to take her down, and drugs her unconscious in the process. (I give all the evidence that Mary is Moriarty’s spy in M-theory.)

Then at the end, we get John asserting that Sherlock is the East Wind: Sherlock is the “terrifying force that lays waste to all in its path” and “seeks out the unworthy and plucks them from the earth.” Mary had better wrap up warm.

Hope that covers it. If we were supposed to believe Sherlock genuinely trusts Mary, we wouldn’t get all these hints that he, well, doesn’t trust her at all. And it makes a lot more sense that he wouldn’t trust her.