The "I love You" Scene Is Beautiful 

 (Sherlock meta by i-want-to-bethlieve)

So I’ve been thinking about THAT SCENE (I haven’t done much else for the past few days) and I was thinking that Louise Brealey was right. That scene is beautiful. Not because of the declaration of love that was forced upon Sherlock and Molly, but because that one scene shows us how much Sherlock has learned about love, respect, and cruelty over the course of the show. When Sherlock realizes he has to get Molly to say ‘I love you’ to him, he is visibly upset. He already knows it will hurt her. He knows it is one of the cruelest things he can do to her because he knows she is in love with him. The man who couldn’t be bothered to notice he was being asked out on a date. The man who had no problem using Molly’s attraction to him to get what he wanted. The man who could see everything except that Molly went to the Christmas party for him (something everyone else could see clearly). That man was upset he had to make Molly say three words. Season 1 Sherlock would have brushed it of. It’s only words??? What’s the big deal if it saves a person’s life? But season 4 Sherlock knows exactly what a big deal words can be. He now understands how his words can hurt a person, and he cares if his words hurt Molly.

Perhaps what Moffat was trying, and failing, to say about the scene is that it is more painful for Sherlock because now, for the first time, he knowingly has to hurt someone he cares about. We’ve seen him hurt people before, but it was always because of his lack of understanding human emotion/feelings. During the phone call Sherlock is forced to revert back to his cold, ignorant (of feelings) self in an attempt to keep things unemotional. He says, “I just want you to do something very easy for me” and then, “if it’s true just say it anyway.” He thinks without involving emotion it will be less painful when she says it, but it doesn’t work. The old Sherlock cannot get her to say ‘I love you’. It doesn’t work because Sherlock isn’t the only one who has changed after all this time. Molly has changed as well. She will no longer bend to his old tricks of flattery and ignorance. She will not open up her heart simply because he asks for her help, or explains that “it’s for a case”. If she must say ‘I love you’ then he must say it first, and not just say it, but ‘say it like he means it’. So the same man who famously said “sentiment is a chemical defect found on the losing side” must now show sentiment to save his friend’s life. If that’s not coming full circle then I don’t know what is.

I do think it is plainly obvious that Sherlock loves Molly. Essentially, Eurus was emotionally torturing Molly to get to Sherlock, which I think speaks volumes as to how he feels about Molly. If he didn’t care, Eurus’ experiment would not work. If you want to argue that he doesn’t feel romantic love for Molly, you can. I personally think the scene works better if you do interpret it as romantic love, simply because we have never seen Sherlock quite like this before. Which I think is the point of the episode. Each stage brings a different emotion out of Sherlock, and I would say he was out of control with emotion when he was breaking Molly’s coffin. But of course the scene works whether you think their romantic love is mutual or not because either way, Sherlock is shook. There is no “winning” in his situation, as Eurus points out: “You didn’t win. You lost. Look what you did to her. Look what you did to yourself. All those complicated little emotions, I lost count. Emotional context, Sherlock. It destroys you every time.” I think it’s beautiful that we got to see Sherlock become an emotional wreck. It is heartbreaking too, but feeling emotions means opening yourself up to pain as well as happiness. It just proves the one thing that Sherlock has been denying all along; he is human.

There is so much more to be said about this scene. It left so much open to interpretation that we can essentially talk about it forever (which I think we just might). I had a lot of problems with The Final Problem, but I am glad Molly was in probably the most thought provoking scene in the episode.