Hooper

 (Sherlock meta by odamakilock)

Ok, Talk to me for a minute about Molly here, because I re-watched the speech last night and I am about 99% certain I heard Lestrade say (and I’m paraphrasing from memory) “Dr. Hooper, I invited him here. Co-operate; that’s an order”

Let me repeat that.

“Doctor Hooper, I invited him here”

Doctor. Hooper.

Doctor. 

So, First of all: YAAASSSSSSSSS HELL YES MY GIRL IS A DOCTOR THANK YOU.

Secondly: Let that sink in. Victorian Molly Hooper is such a bad ass. At some point she realised she was clever, she had a vocation for medicine and her whole world said ‘shut up, female, you will get married and produce babies and be nothing’ and she replied with a resounding ‘NO’. As far as the realities of her story define, as a young woman she decided to up sticks and fake it till she made it, and she made it. 

She didn’t walk into that morgue on the heels of the Ricoletti conspirators, she must have been already THERE. For her to be there must have taken YEARS of work. She got herself through the end of school perhaps as a boy. She got herself through university as a man. She got a job, not a big glamorous practice, but she got a job where SHE was in charge and people had to call her by a title she could only ever have earned and never could have married to obtain. She’s angry and strong and a fighter and a murderer because she lives in a world where she decided she had to be.

Modern Molly is softer and kinder but modern Molly didn’t get a ‘no’, she got an ‘Go ahead if you must’. To which she gave a firm ‘I must’, and then did it.

NEXT: I think we should tally Molly up with more credit for the Ricoletti murders. She was at the house; she was the bride slipping out of the window, it’s not improbable to assume she was the one who stabbed Sir Eustace. She’s a doctor, she knows how to stab people.

She may also have been the gun holder who made the martyr of Emilia Ricoletti. Ricoletti needed a doctor; she was dying of TB. She also needed someone she could safely confide in; why not Molly? Molly had to be there to assist in swapping the bodies and painting ‘YOU’ in blood on the mortuary wall. Molly had to find the corpse looking like Ricoletti too- this was planned; they could only proceed once Molly was able to pop up from Barts and say ‘I’ve got one!’. Molly would probably have known how to do the makeup- she’s got her own moustache, wig and sideburns. She’s got some kind of theatrical cosmetics experience.

AND: Ok, OK so it’s all in Sherlock’s head but nonetheless, it still gives us a big spotlight on Molly Hooper as a character and her relation to the main characters. John Watson is a good doctor; in Sherlock’s head at least a bit of him thinks that Molly Hooper is absolutely John’s professional equal. He knows John is capable of being a soldier and killing. He thinks Molly Hooper given the right conditions, could be just as capable. He assigns her a lot of credit in this.

Molly Hooper is a bad ass.

LAST: (and this is just my personal rambling non-concrete musing so feel free to skip this)

To drag out the meta a bit further, here’s something I wondered about: There’s this flip flop of gender. Molly’s dressed as a man but she’s clearly not one nor does she perceive herself as one. John knows, which means Sherlock knows, though he plays ignorant. She appears at the end and we can see she’s very much a woman fighting for women and she hasn’t even cut her hair to make ‘Dr Hooper’ easier for her. Her man persona is temporary; just an inconvenient costume to help get what she wants, like the ghostly bride is just a costume. She’s not The Woman, she’s not the Highly Intelligent Lady with Rare Perception but I think that’s almost the point of Molly Hooper. She’s exceptional by being her, not a symbol of irregularity from her gender.

Sherlock’s behaved badly to her, and assumed things about her, and now he’s reached the point where (perhaps for the first time) he actually knows a person who happens to be female. Molly’s not really there to be sexy (even though she fancied him and flirted). She’s not trying to get between him and John (She wants to be Molly Hooper to him, not John 2.0). She’s not a client. She’s not his opponent. She’s there to get her job done, and if he’ll get his head out of his arse, be his friend at the very least. They’ve moved past the ‘silly girl with a crush’ stage long ago. She raised her standards and started making him scrabble to meet them at the bare minimum.

John is very much in Sherlock’s brain narrative trying to make him a man. An adult with standards and a grasp on how to be a functioning human with feelings and impulses, even if they’re different to other people’s. John’s there ultimately to make him a ‘good’ man despite himself. Yet… John in every incarnation is shit with women. To the point where even Mycroft is better. 

Maybe Molly is there, in his head, as a hand in the murder of powerful, patriarchal misogynists, as a sign of Sherlock wondering about what type of ‘good’ man he should be.