Why did Eurus flirt with John?

 (Sherlock meta by theleftpill and anarfea)

Q: Hi! Why do you think Eurus flirted with John? I mean... if she wanted to know more about him or his relationship with Sherlock she just needed to read John's blog, right?

theleftpill:

I don’t know, really. I haven’t let myself delve too much into Eurus’ storyline, because I’m not really resolved to embrace it yet. (I’m not really a fan of the retconning required.) But to explore it a bit -

Reading the blog gets you only so far in knowing John. It’s clear that there’s a lot that John is leaving out: whether out of privacy or laziness or forgetfulness, the blog entries are not the whole picture. And when you’re writing for an audience, you write with a “persona”, you present a picture of yourself to the world which may not be entirely genuine. You don’t see interactions, body language, emotion, etc. So reading the blog wouldn’t necessarily give Eurus a complete picture of John, or his relationship with Sherlock.

A big question about why she flirted with John is WHY? Was she trying to understand him, and for his own sake or Sherlock’s? Was she looking for material for her game? Did she just want to know her brother’s best friend? Was she testing his loyalty in his marriage? I think this is one of the major elements that suffered in (my imagined) compression of the stories into S4. As it stands now, for me, the flirting has no reason, doesn’t really go anywhere (except to make John guilty), and just serves no purpose. At least to my mind.

I’d like to hear others’ opinions on this - I know a lot of you have been exploring Eurus’ storyline and motivations a lot more than I have. Thoughts?

anarfea:

@drinkingcocoa-tpp had an excellent answer to this question on the most recent episode of 3 Patch Podcast during the S4 reaction roundtable. In a nutshell, Eurus understands that Sherlock’s friendship with John is the thing that separates him from her and Mycroft (and also Moriarty). John is what grounds Sherlock (not saying I agree, but I think that’s the point the creators are trying to make) and Eurus is alone in the sky with nowhere to land.

So I think on some level she’s trying to figure out what’s so special about John, and if it will work for her, too. Like, if she seduces him, if she can be close to him, can she get something like what Sherlock has with John? And the answer is no, because Eurus isn’t actually capable of connecting with people because she sees them all as unconscious bags of meat.

But it’s Sherlock’s ability to connect with John that convinces her of his ability to help her. Sherlock functions as a bridge between Eurus (the sky) and ordinary people (the ground). John is what makes Eurus think that Sherlock will be able to talk her down. And I think this is why she shows up as “Faith” with the cane and the gun in her handbag and is basically re-creating the circumstances under which Sherlock met John, in a way. And Sherlock is nice to her. Like, he reaches out with such genuine kindness, and I do think that she genuinely does like him. She got what she was looking for–the goal of her game wasn’t actually for Sherlock to kill Mycroft (that was a test that she hoped he would pass and that Jim thought he would fail). She wants him to find her room. She wants him to talk her down. And John is what convinces her that’s possible.