About that… (happy ending)
carefreegirlat221b:
Okay at the end of TFP we get a fleeting view of Molly entering the boys’ apartment with a huge smile on her face. I’ve come across many posts which theorised that perhaps Molly and Sherlock are together now. But I don’t really think Sherlock loves Molly. If he did he wouldn’t have felt so guilty after telling her that he loves her (when forced to by Eurus) - we can see that by the way he tears the coffin apart in frustration. And what I feel is that Sherlock hasn’t been able to tell Molly the truth. He finds it difficult to confront her and tell her that he really doesn’t love her in that manner. So you see, this is what kills me (as am a sherlolly shipper too). Molly still believes that the man she’s in love with loves her back.
bassfanimation:
This is a perfectly valid reading, and one that may very well be true. My husband also theorized that this might be the case, but he wasnt sutre because of the ending scene here, where she looks like she is heading right for Sherlock with that happy look on her face. But yeah, this is something Ive also thought about quite a lot, and I wonder if the writers are that cruel. We will never know unless they decide to explain it all. If this was the case though, my god, what a waste of amazing parallels and storytelling.
whclocked:
Funnily enough, I don’t think Molly believed Sherlock when she said those words back at him. It is a perfectly valid reasoning on your end, but I feel like Molly knew Sherlock said those words to convince her more than anything. She could hear it, in his voice, more than ever yet she loves him nonetheless. She said it back not because she knew he meant it or because she is hopeful. It just felt like a resignation. It’s like; “Okay, we’ll play this game, Sherlock. You and me, like we always do.”
For me, Molly knew. She knew Sherlock better than he ever thought she would. She loves him anyway even if he doesn’t love her back. That’s okay for her, she’s fine with it. But, whatever it was, she also knew she couldn’t let Sherlock down. She might not have all the facts, but she trusted Sherlock. Through his bull and theatrics, she could always tell there was something. Saying those words hurt her, but it probably also what freed her. Perhaps the epilogue was her moving on, walking in to greet him as equals, as friends.
bassfanimation:
These are all valid opinions, but, I want to add some more to this post that makes these readings a little bit like seeing the cloud in the silver lining. I think while you can read things this way, I don’t think this is how the writers intended it at all.
So my husband saw me frantically typing my response to this post and asked what was up. When I explained OP’s view, he shook his head and said “Why do you girls always look for reasons to convince yourselves that you didn’t get a good thing?” He says this because he saw how upset I was the next day, after TFP, because he actually had admitted that this same reading could be true. When I reminded him of this, he said he HAD imagined that could be true, but after seeing it again two more times he doesn’t feel the same. He actually feels the 'I love you' was real, and that Molly coming into 221B like she did, he totally thinks they got together. He also thinks the writers meant for us to read it as real, because he feels they wanted us all to be happy.
I agree with my dude here. Moffat and Gatiss, I believe, tried to literally give everyone a happy ending. Even Martin Freeman, in an interview, said he hoped to God everyone got what they wanted in the ending. I think the writers did leave it ambiguous, BUT they also clearly intended it to be ambiguously happy, above all else. What did Molly Hooper want most in the world, since we met her? Sherlock.
While talking to my hub some more, he had an interesting view to what Sherlock was feeling when he broke down the coffin. OP thinks this is Sherlock feeling guilt over saying 'I love you' and not meaning it, hurting his friend. My husband said, as a man, men don’t act like that over guilt. If he’d simply felt guilty, he’d probably have sulked for a moment and then hurriedly want to just leave the room and move onto the next test, figuring he could just explain it all to Molly later and she’d forgive him as she always does. But no, he instead had a massive fit of rage and then slid down to his backside and sat, looking like he’d been ravaged from the inside out. He even says it: “This is vivisection.” That is far more than just guilt. I don’t know anyone who’d have such a reaction to just pure guilt. A reaction like that has to have more meaning behind it.
Another thing my hub pointed out is that it doesn’t make sense from a literary standpoint to simply show Sherlock feeling guilty over Molly. Because, and this is important, we’ve already SEEN Sherlock feeling guilt. Guilt over the most massive thing that he could have done wrong in his life: he broke his vow to John, Rosie, and Mary. His actions are partly to blame for what killed his best friend’s wife, mother of his goddaughter, and his very own close friend. S4 was about Sherlock being opened up, forcibly, by everything around him. The Lying Detective, so cleverly named, was about Sherlock and guilt. We feel guilt when we lie of course, but TLD was all about that, that was a major theme there. So, why just present more of the same in The Final Problem? It would feel repetitive.
I (and my hub) really think the writers WANTED us all to have the happy ending we all wanted. They showed us scenes that, while not being too specific, could lead everyone to believe their ships sailed. Hence we got that Sherlock-POV camera spin around Baker St, where from Sherlock’s view, we see everyone he loves as happy as can be, the last one being Molly Hooper as she comes beaming toward him, literally right to him, watch frame by frame, it’s so cool.
Now, y’all, please listen, because I want everyone to be happy and not be so pessimistic about this. The writers, had they chosen, could have been crystal clear as to what happened if they’d wanted us to think things went a certain way. Molly could have walked into 221B with her bags, looking like this was the same type of friendly stop-by we’ve seen before. She could have still looked somewhat shy, smiled and gone right over to John and Rosie, remaining in the position she was in at the beginning: a good friend and included in Sherlock’s world, but not too close to him because ‘he doesn’t love her that way’. She could have walked in with Tom, maybe they’d patched things up as she was finally free to love someone else other than Sherlock. She could have also come in with some new dude altogether to show us she’d been freed. Finally, if they had wanted Sherlock to experience romantic love, but not with Molly, Irene could have been the last one to come in to 221B, looking beamingly at Sherlock, finally coming to fulfill hers and Sherlock’s love story. But the writers chose to do it the way they did so that we could read in what our hearts really desired. They essentially gave Sherlock to us, the viewers, and said “Here he is, he’s yours now, imagine with him what would make you happiest.” You know, similar to how Conan Doyle said he didn’t care what other writers did with Sherlock Holmes. Heh, perfect. Moffat and Gatiss really ARE fans of how ACD worked.
In the end, Moffat and Gatiss chose to let us have our Sherlock happy ending without committing to anything, because honestly I think they wanted us all to be happy. The Sherlollians. The Johnlockers. The Adlockers. Hell they even gave us a bit of Mystrade. Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss did give us all a happy ending, under the condition that we make it ourselves, because they’ve done their part already. They don’t want you to see the cloud in the silver lining. They want you to see the sun, and that’s what they gave us. Please, bask in it. Don’t do like I did right after TFP and try to talk yourself out of your happy ending. That was not the point of the show at all, and definitely not what the writers wanted. I truly believe that.
Sherlock is ours now. His end, his story from here on out, is ours to create, and it’s all as real as we want it to be.
swjmart:
[...] I tink the writers have made it clear that Molly sees through Sherlock, so I don’t think it’s likely she thinks he loves her (romantically) if he really doesn’t. The possibilities for the big smile in the end to me are:
- She realizes that he has a platonic love for her and she has made peace with that
- He is working on sorting through his feelings towards her /he is uncertain OR he knows he has romantic feelings towards her but he isn’t sure what he wants to do … either way she understands that and they are in a good place
- They are in a romantic relationship
As far as Irene being mentioned in TLD - I don’t think this negates 2 or 3, because if he does have romantic feelings for Molly - I don’t think he realized it until the ILY scene…the ILY scene was about awareness imo - “all those complicated little emotions” - he wasn’t in touch with his feelings towards Molly yet in TLD, if that makes sense…
penelope1730:
Agree. I think the thing about Irene (TLD) is that John has always informed Sherlock that connection with others is important. From the very beginning. But, at the same time, no one really knows Sherlock’s heart - so they have to guess, make deductions - which may or may not be true.
At the end of the episode (TLD), John learns Irene is alive…Sherlock saved her, which leads John to make two erroneous deductions:
1) That it’s Sherlock’s birthday, which it’s not. The timeline narrative from TST to the end of TLD doesn’t add up. Sherlock’s birthday is January 6th, which is one week after his exile ended. A whole lot of time has passed since then, but not a full year. Maybe four to six months at the most. Nevertheless, Sherlock allows John to believe this.
2) John also believes there’s something going on between Sherlock and Irene, even though Sherlock adamantly tells him there isn’t. But, John is grieving, heart-broken, and wants Sherlock to understand that relationships, especially romance and love aren’t entanglements to be easily dismissed. They can actually make him a better person; a better man - and complete him as a human being. That’s what Sherlock needed to hear. It wasn’t about Irene, per se, but that she was the catalyst for that insight to be given.
Everything John described to Sherlock wasn’t about Irene - it was about Molly, which is a given. She sees who Sherlock really is and the man he can become - and that’s the person she always speaks to. It’s why she becomes infuriated with him when he refuses to recognize this, or place himself in unnecessary risk, and also why she’s been pulling away since HLV.
The aftermath of the coffin scene is telling from John’s perspective, too. First of all, Sherlock and Molly have been laid bare before Mycroft and John. They don’t have the details, but they do learn the ‘friendship’ between Molly ans Sherlock is far more complex than what they previously believed, or suspected. It was an eye-opener, at least for John.
John, with this new information, sees Sherlock as tortured, not because he doesn’t understand what vivisection is, but because he knows what emotional torture looks and feels like. He’s going through it himself. It kinda echoes back to what Molly told Sherlock in TRF: “I know what it means to look sad when you think no one can see you.” Both perspectives are valid, btw - Sherlock is mind, and John is heart, but John’s viewpoint actually carries more weight given what was said in the previous episode. That chance for exploration was 2 seconds away from being ‘gone before he knew it.’
Sherlock’s devastation wasn’t from guilt alone, although it probably played a part. From the thoughtless things he’s done and said - to all those things he can’t quite bring himself to understand or say.
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