“Mary Watson” isn’t good enough 

 (Sherlock Meta by Ivy Blossom)

The only thing I wanted out of Mary Morstan in Sherlock is that, if John is going to betray her or abandon her, which I think he arguably does in the original stories, (though it’s never framed that way, of course) that Mary return the favour with at least equal force.

What is clear already in His Last Vow is that John is not happy in his very new marriage. He’s having nightmares. His tremour has returned (but not yet the limp). He on the verge of bolting, keeping his things as close to packed as he can. He hasn’t seen Sherlock for a month, and a month is far too long, as far as John’s concerned.

In The Empty Hearse, Mary is delighted by John’s fixation on Sherlock. She teases him about it, encourages their relationship. She appeared to be completely unthreatened by it. By His Last Vow, John has worn through her last nerve. When we see Mary comforting her neighbour in her sitting room early in the morning, she is pretty much fed up with John’s whining, and I don’t blame her. They are both chafing inside that relationship. It’s a holding pattern for both of them.

Both of them find a release valve, and it’s the same one. Mary asks Sherlock to take John out and run him, which should appease John for a while and will give her the freedom to stop playing happy housewife. She needs to go take care of the business that has been plaguing her. As Sherlock notes, there must have been a part of her that had been missing that.

Mary and John both have the same problem at the opening of His Last Vow. They’re bored. And they’re bored for the same reason: they’re both trying to be ordinary.

When John asks Mary if “Mary Watson” is good enough for her, she says yes, but I think she’s wrong. It’s not good enough. It names and shapes one part of her persona, one that is arguably completely false. It shuts out the rest of her quite deliberately. John doesn’t even want to know about it. He doesn’t want to hear about it, and he doesn’t even want it named.

I think that’s a tragedy. I’ll be honest with you, I love the little peek into the rest of Mary’s character. She’s tremendous.

She’s cold-blooded, cruel, impatient, rude, conniving, ruthless, and manipulative. She’s at least as observant as the Holmeses. She’s smarter than John, and quite possibly smarter than Sherlock. When Wiggins poses as a beggar she dismisses him loudly and impatiently, but gives him money anyway, in spite of being in the middle of something quite important. She believes in social justice. She’s psychopath who voted lib dem. She’ll probably vote labour next time around. She bakes her own bread, can tell when Sherlock is fibbing, and can shoot a hole in a spinning coin. And killing (presumably) bad guys on a freelance basis is what she does for a living. She’s not ashamed of it. She’s proud of it. It’s not a stretch to say she probably enjoys it.

While her “Mary Watson” persona is demonstrably a lie, there is likely some truth to it (as there inevitably would be). I’m not sure what to think about her feelings about John (too complicated to judge at the moment, I’m afraid), but it’s clear that she likes Sherlock. While it wasn’t even close to enough to stop her from putting a bullet in his chest, I think they were genuinely friends. Unlike Sherlock, feelings don’t get in Mary’s way.

Is “Mary Watson” good enough? No. It can’t be. Neither she nor John can go back to their ordinary life as if none of this happened and be happy, which appears to be the plan. It didn’t work the first time, even before Mary shot Sherlock and her secrets spilled out. I can’t imagine a baby will make it any better.

When “Mary Watson” breaks apart and the real AGRA steps out, it will be spectacular.