What was going through Sherlock's mind during TLD?

 (Sherlock meta by Ivy Blossom)

Q: [...] I was just curious as to what you think was going through Sherlock's mind during TLD. How do you think he understood John deserting him? Like, why do you think Sherlock never seems to doubt John, or lose faith, as John himself did? What must he have thought of John to assume or calculate that John would seriously hurt him? Why would he think that? And yet, how did he still imagine John could or would return? Was he always actually able to predict John all along, or....

A: I’m not sure it’s clear that Sherlock was planning for John to seriously hurt him in The Lying Detective; his plan doesn’t require that. Sherlock doesn’t end up in Culverton Smith’s hospital room because of John’s violence. He’s there because he’s drugged himself to within weeks of his own demise.

That said, I don’t think Sherlock is especially surprised that John hit him. John has a well-known tendency towards violence, particularly when coupled with strong emotions he can’t process. When that incident occurs, John is already sideways coping with the sudden death of his wife by blaming Sherlock and pushing him away, so I don’t think it’s a huge deductive leap for Sherlock to suspect that some level of violence against him might ensue.

When John hits Sherlock in The Lying Detective, it isn’t even the first time John’s deliberately hurt Sherlock: Sherlock incited him to it in A Scandal in Belgravia, and John hit him in anger multiple times at the beginning of The Empty Hearse. Sherlock has every reason to expect a violent reaction from John, but to be honest I don’t think he was factoring it in as part of his over all plan in The Lying Detective. It wasn’t required.

It’s interesting to consider the premise of your question: what do you think Sherlock never doubts? That if he needs John enough, John will definitely be there to save him?

I’m not sure Sherlock is convinced of that. While John is riddled with self-loathing through The Lying Detective, I think Sherlock is, too. The Norbury reference tells us that Sherlock considers Mary’s death to be his greatest failure and miscalculation. He clearly believes that he deserves to be blamed for it.

It’s not clear to me that Sherlock is so confident that John will run to his side. But he’s prepared to pull out all the stops anyway. The plan isn’t for John to save Sherlock; Sherlock is trying to save John.

I think Sherlock is very much aware that he might fail in that task, and that if he does, it will probably cost him his life. He is in the middle of this potential suicide mission even while telling Eurus-as-Faith that suicide isn’t an option. Sherlock has decided to save John, or die. His very last plan, his own death recorded via the device in John’s cane, wouldn’t have saved him. It would only have been evidence to solve his last case.

When Culverton Smith is about to kill him, Sherlock says he doesn’t want to die, and he means it. He can only mean it in that moment because he thinks it’s imminent. He isn’t expecting John to break through the door, is he? Does that mean he lost faith in John?

Sherlock’s constructed crisis wasn’t a test of John’s heroism, which is frankly never in question. When Sherlock looks at Culverton Smith and realizes there’s no way out, it’s not John who failed. It’s Sherlock’s rescue mission that failed.

Could Sherlock predict all of John’s actions? He knows John very well, and he can predict many of his choices. But not all of them, as he admits. Sherlock thinks he’s about to die, but John makes a choice Sherlock didn’t count on: he saves Sherlock in spite of everything.

It Comes Back To Reichenbach

 (Sherlock meta by Ivy Blossom)

 It seems to me that how you understand S4 comes back to how you understand Sherlock’s fake suicide in The Reichenbach Fall. What actually happened there?

Sherlock prepared a number of different scenarios. He was concerned that he would not survive. He knew John, Lestrade, and Mrs Hudson would be at risk. He knew he had to play along.

He was not required to make John a witness to his fake suicide. He was not required to keep John in the dark about it, either. Not for two years. That was Sherlock’s decision, against the advice of his brother.

This is the point where I think either you agree that Sherlock’s fucked up badly, or you think he sacrificed himself for the greater good and should be praised for it. Either John has a right to be deeply hurt and angry, or John should be thanking Sherlock for his noble sacrifice.

Many fans are deeply invested in Sherlock having been required to lie to John in The Reichenbach Fall because so much depended upon it, including John’s own life. We wanted that hurt to mean something big and emotional, but what we learned from The Empty Hearse is that it meant nothing. It was just a miscalculation.

That’s why Sherlock can arrive back in John’s life making jokes and being jolly. He didn’t understand the hurt he caused; it never crossed his mind that he had torn John to shreds. He had no idea he was loved. It was an emotionally tone deaf, cruel mistake, one Sherlock learns from in S3 and will not make again.

With the perspective of S4, we can say that S2 Sherlock didn’t believe he was capable of having a friend who cared so much about him. He’d believed his whole life that that would be impossible, he was unlovable, only entertainment at best. He constructed a self-image where he wouldn’t and couldn’t have friends who could be taken from him and hurt, and he didn’t know why.

Knowing what we know now, It looks as if he might have deliberately destroyed his extremely close relationship with John out of some kind of subconscious fear of loss and pain, out of fear that someone would take his beloved friend and kill him just to watch Sherlock squirm. But he doesn’t know that he’s reliving a traumatic memory from his past. And that means he doesn’t really understand why he’s crying on the roof before he jumps.

Either you believe Sherlock is emotionally aware and noble at the end of S2, or you think he fucked up. Which side you land on may determine how you read S4.

Why did they have John beat up Sherlock in TLD?

 (Sherlock meta by Ivy Blossom)

Q: [...] Why do you think Mofftiss chose to have John beat up Sherlock in The Lying Detective? They didn't have to go there, right? What was the point of going that far, and then not even showing us the emotional 'pay-off' we assume happened before The Final Problem? Why do this if the point of the show is to portray the devotion between Sherlock and John and their journey to a legendary partnership?

A: Perhaps we can come at this by considering what narrative function John’s violence serves in the story.

First things first: an important part of John’s characterization is that he cannot express his most intense feelings in words. He doesn’t say the things he needs to say.

I don’t think you can overestimate just how much John hates himself in The Lying Detective. He has failed in every way that matters to him: he cheated on his wife (as far as he’s concerned), he’s abandoned his daughter. He’s drowning his sorrows in alcohol. He’s hallucinating. John is broken. He says nothing, which means he’s not yet completely broken.

The slow breakdown of John Watson isn’t just about Mary’s death, but that does bring it to a head. It’s also about the still-steaming revelation of Mary’s past and how she lied to him from tip to tail. He placed all of his faith and trust in Sherlock, and he failed to deliver. He feels betrayed, but unable to express that. He must accept things as they are because it’s the right thing to do, but he can’t do it. He hates himself for failing everyone he knows, and he hates everyone he loves for failing him. He is rudderless. Still: he says nothing. He hasn’t quite hit rock bottom yet.

And then he finally does.

When John breaks completely and hits and kicks Sherlock, he has been dragged into a case after forcefully pushing Sherlock out of his life, repeatedly reminded that he’s a failure even at the one thing he’s valued for (writing about Sherlock), and has to face that fact while waiting outside a loo while Sherlock gets high, literally on his way to killing himself again. Then he watches Sherlock apparently falsely accuse a man of being a serial killer and then threaten him with a scalpel. Sherlock is out of control too. It’s John’s job to keep Sherlock in line, isn’t it? But what good is he at that?

John is angry with Sherlock for letting Mary die, for betraying him, for failing to be the man John believes him to be. John hates himself for failing to live up [to] even a single one of his own standards. Hurting someone he loves, something he also did to Mary without her knowing it, is, I think, the ultimate expression of how broken he has become. He is there to protect Sherlock, but he does the opposite. It is his final and ultimate low. John is now utterly broken.

He does not apologize for his actions. Or at least, we don’t hear him apologize. He stands at the foot of Sherlock’s hospital bed and bears witness to the evidence of his rage, the damage he caused to someone he loves. How long does he stand there? We don’t know. How does he feel? Does he regret what he’s done? Is he ashamed of himself? He comes to say goodbye, but he can’t face a conscious Sherlock. He still can’t say any of the things that matter.

He walks out of the room expecting to never see Sherlock again. Mary forces John to admit that he can’t stop thinking about him. And that he hates himself. Is he sorry? I think he’s beyond sorry, but he says nothing.

Until he finally does.

I think the violence, the balled up emotions that never get expressed, are there to underscore the moment when they finally are. Finally, finally, when Sherlock asks John if he’s okay, he is truthful: no. He is not okay, and he will never be okay.

And then the floodgate is open. John says the things he never said. He asks the questions he always wanted to ask. Having reached the ultimate rock bottom, John is finally cracked entirely open. He is talking, and he is honest. And 221b blows up so that they can rebuild it and start over.

I think John hurts Sherlock in order to explode the part of him that holds him back. It is Sherlock’s guilt made flesh and blood, and it’s the action that pushes John to finally be brave to open his mouth.

An explanation for John's reaction as Sherlock says “I Love You” to Molly

 (Sherlock meta by Ivy Blossom)

Q: Ok but what other explanation is there for this reaction from John as Sherlock says “I Love You” to Molly? I really want to try and figure out what other reading I can glean from this because…. Why? He looks similar to when Sherlock proposed to Jeanine (although John is more upset in this photo). Why would Martin select this acting choice for this scene. What other meaning can there be?

A: [...] To me, this is a pretty important moment to pay attention to when you’re trying to work out where the relationship between Sherlock and John is at this point in the story. We know already that it’s changed; John’s long-awaited moment of honesty at the end of The Lying Detective and Sherlock’s subsequent acceptance and embrace is a profound turning point, so where are they now?

It’s honestly a bit hard to tell, because The Final Problem is a non-stop action adventure, and Sherlock and John have no scenes properly alone together. It’s also the first episode that isn’t about Sherlock and John’s relationship, which is super interesting. Why would that be? Because that relationship is now resolved and it has settled into its fated state, and we are seeing it at it’s birth. Literally: this new relationship between them began on Sherlock’s birthday.

So how does this moment help us understand what the new state of affairs between Sherlock and John is?

John doesn’t appear to be jealous; his flat out jealousy comes with a trademark angry smile. Is he devastated? Perhaps. Could it be empathy? Empathy for whom?

If John is feeling empathy for Molly, it means that he understands what it feels like to have to speak the most painful truth imaginable to the person it hurts the most to tell. We know John does understand how that feels, because he did the same thing at the end of The Lying Detective. It’s possible that he’s remembering that very damp and devestating moment.

Or: John is feeling empathy for Sherlock. Does that mean he knows what it’s like to cause someone you care about unbearable pain? He certainly does. Is it understanding that Sherlock knows he can’t give Molly what she want from him, he can’t be the person she wishes he were? He knows all about that!

But I think there’s something else at work here.

I think it’s is hard to John to watch Sherlock hurt Molly because he knows exactly how this much it hurts Sherlock to do so. Again. Because now, finally, after years of thinking Sherlock didn’t feel things, John knows that that’s not the case. He knows that Sherlock is not proud of the cold and casually cruel way he’s behaved most of his life. John and Molly, two people who love Sherlock most, have received the brunt of this in recent years. Sherlock pretended to be dead for the lulz, for one. Sherlock also created a near-replica of this “I love you” scene at a Christmas party at 221b and hurt Molly terribly. Sherlock has repeatedly hurt the people he cares about in ways that will never fully heal, and he knows that.

Sherlock wants to be a good man. He is trying very hard to be. But this situation is forcing him back into the horrible fake-sociopath shell from whence he’s just emerged. Going back to that, to confront the depths of his own past callousness, hurts him. And John knows that.

Who should be hurting the most here? Molly, obviously. But it’s Sherlock who combusts in an emotional frenzy and destroys the coffin.

John: Look, I know this is difficult and I know you’re being tortured. 

This is new. For a long time, John has assumed that Sherlock is pretty impervious to emotional pain, and certainly not harmed by casually destroying people, even people he knows well (including John). He’ll do it in a pinch. He’ll do it for a case. He’ll do it because it’s the best decision in the moment, right? Not anymore.

John says: “I know you’re being tortured.” He knows Sherlock far better in this scene than he ever has. He knows the inner workings of Sherlock’s heart. He knows what hurts, and he knows why.

What has passed between them since The Lying Detective to give John this much insight into Sherlock’s most private world?

I think what you’re seeing on John’s face is both empathy and love.

Not Soldiers Today

 (Sherlock meta by Ivy Blossom and 8minutehooper)

Ivy Blossom:

I’ve been thinking about the things we aren’t permitted to see.

What we learned in The Final Problem is that there is another Sherlock his harsh exterior has been protecting. Sherlock is most definitely not a high-functioning sociopath. He’s a deeply emotional, loving man who needs companionship and affection.

We see the secret Sherlock a couple of times in series 4: at the end of The Lying Detective when he holds John and tells him what he needs to hear (”Even you”), and, fleetingly, with John and Rosie in a snippet of a scene that can only be described as their happiest moment on record. Sherlock is so happy he looks out of character. We have never seen John grin like that before.

But we don’t really get to see Sherlock and John behind closed doors again. And I’ve been thinking that.

Sherlock has a secret self that is different than the persona he has been cultivating. How weird would it be to drop a mask like that? He can’t drop it entirely, can he? Certainly not while he’s solving crimes. That is who Sherlock is now. He can be gentler and kinder, but he’s still Sherlock. He’s still got to be that person.

The hat goes on and he becomes Sherlock Holmes for the world, the logic machine, the famous consulting detective, but at home, when the door is shut, does the secret Sherlock emerge? In The Final Problem, John says they are “soldiers today”. John is aware that they both put on a guise in public; Sherlock is the calculating genius, John is the hero. But there is a time when they stop being soldiers.

Maybe no one gets to see the secret part of Sherlock. Not the clients, not the police, not even us. But John has seen it. John knows that secret Sherlock well. Maybe only he ever will.

There has always been a Sherlock for the outside world, but finally Sherlock has an inside world in which he is not alone.

8minutehooper:

I agree, but I’m gonna take it one further and say that those who know him best have all seen the secret inner Sherlock, not just John, (who is incredibly blind to some things), but also Mary (Just look at the way they smile and tease each other… “Motherhood is slowing you down” “Pig!”), Mrs H (“No, not Sherlock, he’s more emotional….karate chop the fridge…”), Molly (goes without saying…she wouldn’t be in love with a ‘thinking machine’ for 7 years, plus we know Sherlock is different around her when they’re alone, we’ve heard about it “Sherlock was complaining-saying” and we’ve seen it in The Empty Hearse when nervous, smiling Sherlock asked Molly to solve crimes.) We also saw it the first time we see Sherlock with his mum and dad (“Promise?” “Promise”), Lestrade even gets a little glimpse here and there. So try as he might, Sherlock can never completely keep the emotional affectionate side of himself hidden from those he cares about (even Mycroft!), and it’s not just John he reveals that side to.

Ivy Blossom:

I haven’t articulated what I meant clearly enough.

The secret Sherlock I’m talking about isn’t fully fledged or visible to anybody, probably not even to Sherlock, until the end of The Lying Detective. But it’s starting to shine through, because Eurus sees it when she’s mascarading as Faith. She can see Sherlock’s sweetness when he doesn’t know he’s letting it show. In fact, he may not entirely know it’s there himself!

The entire arc of Sherlock is the story of his slow emotional metamorphosis; it’s the story of a great man becoming a good man. It’s in that context that I believe I see the evidence of the new and emotionally complete Sherlock, one we are barely witness to. Sherlock reaches an emotional apex in The Lying Detective, and instead of just keeping that to himself, I believe that he has shared it with John. Not with us: just with John.

I agree with you that John has indeed missed some critical things in the past and profoundly misunderstood Sherlock. John has always believed the lie that Sherlock doesn’t feel things the way other people do. That’s largely why I believe he’s gotten to know this secret Sherlock in a way that we have not: his misunderstanding has been fully corrected by the time we get to The Final Problem.

John now knows how Sherlock feels, and how deeply he feels. John knows this secret Sherlock well enough to understand exactly how difficult Eurus’s tasks are for him. Even an episode ago, certainly a series ago, John would not have had that insight. He was stunned that Sherlock didn’t know he was John’s best friend; he was gobsmacked by Sherlock’s best man speech. As close as they are, John doesn’t really know Sherlock very well. But he does now. Those errors have been corrected.

John being up to speed on Sherlock’s emotional life is functionally confirmed by Sherlock insisting that John stay while Mycroft reveals the Holmes’ family dirty laundry. Sherlock has nothing left to hide from John, so Mycroft can share something as deeply personal as this: “[Sherlock] was, in the early days, an emotional child. But after that he was different, so changed.”

The story makes no room for John to be surprised by this, but he should be. Unless he’s already met Sherlock’s deeply emotional side. He must already know that Sherlock’s persona is a grand construction before Mycroft tells Sherlock in front of John: “Every choice you ever made, every path you’ve ever taken, the man you are today is your memory of Eurus.” This is Sherlock’s facade acknowledged and laid bare.

Mycroft knows about Sherlock’s false persona because he knows his brother’s whole history; John can be present for this conversation because he now knows that Sherlock is not the cold, calculating machine John believed him to be. He must already know that Sherlock’s persona is protecting a very sensitive man underneath.

Sherlock still puts the hat on when he goes out to meet Molly for cake after his heartfelt conversation with John at the end of The Lying Detective. His persona remains intact for the outside world. Softened, certainly, and now informed by empathy, but the Sherlock Holmes most people meet is still a facade. But it doesn’t matter: his invented self has become real, and his emotional self has a home. In order to support his persona, that home must only exist behind a closed door.

John really cares about Sherlock in s4

 (Sherlock meta by Ivy Blossom)

Q: [...] are there any particular moments in Series 4 that suggest or demonstrate to you that John really loves and/or genuinely cares about Sherlock? I guess secondarily, how do you read Sherlock putting off rescuing John from that well until after he dealt with Eurus In TFP?

A: Any particular moments? It’s hard to pick, it’s kind of infused through the whole thing, but okay, I’ll do my best.

In The Six Thatchers, John should be deliriously happy. He’s got what he wanted: the normal life with a job, a wife, and a new daughter, but he’s also got Sherlock, who is as committed to maintaining this careful and potentially awkward balance as he is. They still solve crimes together, and Mary and Rosie aren’t an obstruction. In fact, sometimes they join in! John’s devotion to Sherlock is pretty obvious from that alone, but Sherlock’s special place in John’s life is underscored by John asking him to be Rosie’s godfather.

John should be happy, but he’s not. He’s never managed to get over what Mary did and who she really is. His happy life with wife and baby is a lie. As his trust in Mary continues to decline, his trust in Sherlock never waivers. John and Sherlock confront threats together as a team while Mary lies, drugs Sherlock, and scarpers. Sherlock, weird, rude, and difficult, is John’s stable rock, and Mary does not look good in comparison.

After Mary dies, John blames Sherlock and cuts him off. I’d suggest that this is more indicative of how much John cares about Sherlock than otherwise. Not only because he thought Sherlock was a superhero who could could genuinely protect Mary and Rosie from everything forever, but because, as we later learn, the reason why John pushes Sherlock away stems primarily from his own self-loathing. John betrayed Mary, and his guilt and despair at not being able to live up to Mary’s, Sherlock’s, and his own expectations leads him to push away the things he loves most, including his daughter and his life with Sherlock. This is underscored by his goodbye scene in the hospital, where he leaves his cane as a silent final message: you saved me, I didn’t deserve it, and here I betray you. 

We’ve had Sherlock’s mind palace for a while, which is a wonderful way to see what’s actually going on in his head. In The Lying Detective, we finally get the equivalent for John: Mary. Hallucinated Mary isn’t a ghost or even a memory, she’s the honest part of John. And she adores Sherlock. She talks about him constantly. She watches him mid-deduction with love and delight. She recognizes that Sherlock knows John, understands him completely, but John disagrees. Sherlock can’t possibly know how worthless John is; like Mary, Sherlock believes he is a good, moral man, and John knows that they’re both wrong. The voice in his head says: Sherlock may be a monster, but he’s my monster. 

The most dramatic indicator of how John feels about Sherlock is his confession and breakdown at the end of The Lying Detective. This is the first time John has been completely honest in this entire story. John hides his feelings constantly, he lies about them, even to himself. And in this scene he nearly does it again, he nearly walks away. Had he done so, I believe his relationship with Sherlock would have been essentially over. He would have grown more and more distant and dishonest until their connection was entirely lost. But out of love and faith, he finally, finally makes a different choice. He chooses to be brutally honest and vulnerable. He cries, but does not turn away. He lets Sherlock hold him. No one has or ever will be this close to John.

Sherlock does not put off rescuing John in The Final Problem. From the moment he realizes that John is in danger, all Sherlock does is try to save him. The problem is that the solution is Eurus. We know that he can’t rescue John without her intervention because he was unable to the first time; the puzzle is too complex for him, it will always be too complex for him. The mistake he made all his life was thinking that intelligence was the answer. When he was a boy he didn’t have the resources to do what he does now: he recognizes that it’s sentiment that will save John, not brainpower. He’s got sentiment in his tool belt now, and that’s because of John. John made him feel and taught him to be a loving and feeling person, and that’s what allows him to triumph over his much more brilliant sister in the end.

The Joys of Things Unseen

 (Sherlock meta by Ivy Blossom)

I really enjoyed Sherlock the moment I first saw it, and I enjoyed playing in its universe. But the moment I truly fell in love with it was A Scandal in Belgravia, not just for what we saw, but the things we didn’t see. I love all the scenes that are implied, or easily imagined, that fit so perfectly into the story that it seems to rely on them. You can frame the unseen things in a number of ways, and far be it from me to judge the best way to do so, but for me the unseen things are a gift to the discerning audience: it’s up to you what goes here, it says. Imagine what you will. And so, of course, I do.

Disclaimer: I realize this is unsatisfying and frustrating to some, and you’re more than welcome to those feelings. I understand them and respect them, but do not share them, perhaps because I enjoy these hidden places and closed doors. I like them to be mine to uncover over and over again. I am just a greedy fan writer who likes to keep filling in these critical gaps in different ways. Your mileage may vary. This is not a statement about what should or shouldn’t have happened in the story, I’m just not that sort of fan. We have what we have, and I am still very much enjoying burrowing into it.

There are two key places in the story that my mind keeps drifting to: the space immediately after The Lying Detective, and the what comes after John is rescued from the well and the final montage in The Final Problem.

Something changes fundamentally in Sherlock and John’s relationship at the end of The Lying Detective, and while it is left open to multiple interpretations, I am very comfortable with mine. To me, The Final Problem shows us two people who have always meant to slot into each other who finally have. They trust each other completely and function together perfectly. They no longer have any real tension between them. The things that had kept them from this level of closeness are gone. The story about building that closeness, or rejecting it, or pining for it, or denying it, is over; this part of the story simply relies on it as a fact, and so it is.

I saw The Final Problem as two people in a very new phase of a relationship. It’s too new to talk about, but too wonderful not to be brimming with. Their interaction at Mycroft’s house felt very much like this to me. The rest of the episode is too fast and furious to confirm or deny my hypothesis, except to say that they are in no way uncertain about each other, and that they are emotionally in each other’s pockets and reach for each other when they are in need. They are each other’s mainstays. They are family.

This is not the case when we leave them in The Lying Detective, not quite. John nearly walks away from Sherlock for good, twice. Something happens between The Lying Detective and The Final Problem to cement that relationship. I find it difficult not to imagine what that is, and how it happened. That is a door I enjoy prying open.

The second place I find myself lingering is after Sherlock discovers who he really is. One can only imagine that it would take Sherlock a bit of time to adjust to the knowledge that his entire personality and self-image has been constructed on top of a self-protective fantasy. Except that I think he already knows it; not the why or the how, not the horror of the specifics, but certainly he knows that he isn’t the man he pretend he is. That has been the theme of the entire series, after all, but he especially knows it just prior to The Final Problem, and John knows it, too. John knows why Sherlock destroys the coffin at Sherrinford. He knows that Sherlock is hurting, and he understands why. They do not have those kinds of secrets from each other anymore; John will not make the mistake of thinking that Sherlock “doesn’t feel things that way” again.

But understanding his own origin story must be a shattering experience for Sherlock. Another door I like to wedge open is the one where Sherlock goes home and processes this, and lets his vulnerable self out in the safety of John’s presence. That part of him will influence everything he does from that point on, and will make him kinder and more empathetic. But I can only imagine that the person who knows the vulnerable Sherlock completely will be John.

"You’ll find another."

 (Sherlock meta by Ivy Blossom)

["Nothng more than a distraction, a little scrap of ordinariness for you to impress, to dazzle with your cleverness. You'll find another."]

This lie, identified specifically as a lie, is the greatest statement about what John is to Sherlock. Not a distraction, but the person who finally allows Sherlock to find purpose and focus. While John may appear to be ordinary, we know that he is not; he is entirely singular, the only person who could fit perfectly into the hole in Sherlock’s heart and life and let him heal.

Believing that impressing and dazzling John with his cleverness is enough was Sherlock’s single greatest mistake. He misread his role in John’s life as merely entertainment, something that could vanish and miraculously, dazzlingly reappear without consequence. But John isn’t dazzled by Sherlock. John admires him, respects him, trusts him, and would gladly sacrifice himself to keep Sherlock in the world, because he believes without question that Sherlock deserves all of the faith John has placed in him. John believes that Sherlock has the ability to make the world a better place, and that the most important thing he can do is to sure that he does. John is far beyond dazzled by Sherlock; John loves him and believes in him with his whole heart.

Sherlock will never find another John. There is only one.

The Purpose of Minor Characters 

(Sherlock meta by Ivy Blossom and blameitontheillustrator) 

Ivy Blossom:

There are two things any minor/supporting character has to do: they either through some means cause regression or growth in the protagonist, or they are or create or clear away an obstacle that advances the plot. Often they do both of these things.

This is the case for any minor character. If they don’t do these things, the story does not require them, and they should be axed.

There is a lot of criticism in media about the lot of female characters. There aren’t enough female protagonists, which is a problem and that is something we should keep complaining about. Since most protagonists are men, that leaves most of the women in fiction as minor or supporting characters, which means they are always either a catalyst for main (male) character development, or they are present to advance the plot, or both.

There is nothing inherently wrong with useful minor characters. The part that’s wrong is institutional, that women are so often only minor characters, and therefore usually supporting a man’s story. But that’s not a fault in any particular story, that’s the fault of the story-making industry. We need more female protagonists, and we need them now. 

What we should demand for all supporting women in fiction is that they have their own, human and coherent motives for the things they do to advance the plot. They must have their own character and their own lives that intersect with the protagonists, and they must do things for reasons that make sense for them in light of their character and context.

Minor female characters can, in no particular order: suffer, sacrifice themselves, die, live, cause murder and mayhem, make dinner, throw dinner at the progtagonist, etc. There is no wrong action they can take, or no wrong action taken against them, as long as what they do, and what happens to them, is clearly part of a larger coherent arc of their own. Their stories have to make sense.

That said, there’s no reason why minor female characters shouldn’t be as complicated any another. Female characters can be contradictory, confused, sometimes wrong, sometimes awkward, as long as they are still living a coherent and explicable life of their own. They can love the wrong people, forgive the wrong people, try to become something they aren’t. They can be strong, they can be weak, they can be too tired to notice what’s going on around them. They can make bad decisions that benefit the protagonist, as long as someone thought through why she would do something like that and restricts her actions to things that are in keeping with her character and her circumstances. It doesn’t have to be a good reason, but someone has to think about what the reason is.

Asking for minor female characters that neither help transform the protagonist nor influence the plot is asking for female characters who will get cut from the script at the first opportunity. If the only good woman in fiction isn’t there at all, we have a whole other problem.

blameitontheillustrator:

I agree wholeheartedly, but if this is regarding Sherlock, then I think it misses the point. The criticism that I’ve seen the most is precisely regarding the lack of internal coherence regarding the female characters, especially Mary. Mary is unequivocally portrayed as a villain in His Last Vow. Not only does she shoot the protagonist, but she threatens him again as soon as he wakes up. She claims that she has done things that would make her John Watson fall out of love with her. But in TST, all that is gone. It’s left unexplored. Apparently, the worst thing on Mary’s resume is her failure to rescue British hostages. This story does not make sense. Not in light of the character, not in light of the context.

Of course Mary’s role was always to further the plot and the protagonists’ development. But they made her a villain, and then chickened out.

Ivy Blossom:

You say Mary is unequivocally portrayed as a villain in His Last Vow. “Unequivocally” suggests that there is no point in the story where that perspective is questioned or debated, and yet there is a lengthy and important scene in His Last Vow where Sherlock tells John, and us, that she can be trusted, and explains his reasoning. He is unsurprisingly right in his assessment of a criminal, and we become, like Donovan or Anderson, his incredulous audience. And it turns out that John feels the same way we do, that Sherlock must be wrong, that his explanation is unconvincing and cannot be true, that a person like Mary cannot have shot Sherlock and be worthy of our trust at the same time. Doing bad things while trying to be a good person is John’s struggle in this series as well, and Mary is a dramatic example of it.

I liked that a lot about Mary’s arc. I expected her to be a villain as well, but they turned the tables on us in a way I find very pleasing. She is a villain by trade, she absolutely is, but she wants to be different, she wants to be a different person, the person John thought she was. She tries but often fails.

I’m very surprised that you feel that Mary’s past is left unexplored in TST. Mary’s past is the subject of TST. Not her entire past, only a snippet of it. But we don’t get any character’s complete past history, let alone a supporting character’s. Why do you think what we see in TST is the worst thing Mary’s done? They never suggest that. It’s fairly easy to imagine that there was much more in her past that brought her to the point of having the skills she has and the clients she had. I don’t get the sense that it’s the worst thing she’s done; It’s just the one that comes back to bite her in the end. A secretary. Not the worst thing, the most overlooked and mundane thing, really.

Another thing that is not “all gone” in TST: Mary was right. Knowing about Mary’s past does cause John’s heart to waver. He used to like Mary. She predicts that her real self would break John and make him not love her anymore, and she is proven pretty much right in TST. I wouldn’t say that he stops loving her completely, but he’s certainly heading down a pretty dark path in that regard. Do you think that marriage would have survived?

Mary does indeed shoot the protagonist in HLV; and she threatens him afterwards, twice. She doesn’t stop doing that sort of thing in TST. When she feels threatened, she lashes out and does terrible things. She knocks Sherlock out to get the usb drive and to keep him from following her, which is at least a step up from shooting him, but still. That shows us a lot about the side of herself that she’s trying to bury. Mary has some very bad instincts that she’s not great at controlling.

I don’t think it’s chickening out to not make her villain. I think her story mirrors John’s and Sherlock’s in an interesting way. They are all constructions of their past experiences and decisions, they all do things they aren’t proud of, but their better selves can shine through all of these failures and foibles, and it’s worth it to keep trying.

This story makes sense to me, though I can see it does not to you. Obviously these things are subjective. I have my own criticisms of this series (conveniently finding DVDs not just once, but twice, for instance), but Mary’s story arc is not one of them.

Is there a “seeming desperation to sanctify Mary” in this story?

 (Sherlock meta by Ivy Blossom as a resopnse to this post by archipelagoarchaea)

Is there a “seeming desperation to sanctify Mary” in this story? Mary is very explicitly no saint. She repeatedly does things that we and John find unforgivable. She does it in S3, and she does it a few more times in S4. If they’d wanted her sanctified, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t have written her chloroforming Sherlock and running off on John and Rosie.

You say that Mary’s flaws are “treated like cute little quirks”. Mary’s flaws result in you disliking and distrusting her, and also result in John disliking and distrusting her. John feels what you feel. That’s a consequence, and it’s not a small one. It doesn’t look unintentional to me.

Do you think Mary emotionally manipulates John into wanting to be a hero? John wants to be a hero from the moment we meet him. Mary didn’t invent that version of John, John did. Mary is the mother of John’s child and has just died thinking better of him than she should have, and given that he’d been quietly cheating on her, I’m not sure what you expect John to think. “She thought I was better than I am” seems about on point.

It’s true Mary’s sacrificial death isn’t a redemption, and that’s a really good point. One selfless act doesn’t fix all the things she did or turn her into someone else, but it does complicate who John thought she was capable of being. Mary is always trying to be “out of character”. Her instincts tend to be bad, but she’s committed to trying to make good choices. Mary is not entirely one or the other, and she leaves the story partway through her own redemption, leaving John with a lot of guilt and questions that will never be answered.

You say “If Mary were so important, so great at showing John and Sherlock how to understand each other, their relationship would have been better after she was introduced, not worse. That’s basic logic.” Story complications (which is what every non-protagonist character in a story is) should not resolve the main story line. Mary is not there to improve the relationship between John and Sherlock. She’s there to threaten it in some way, create a situation that modifies the status quo, and then push them to another level. That is every minor character’s job, and specifically Mary’s.

Mary is the catalyst that pushes John back to Sherlock in the first place, and then the force that nearly separates them forever. The experience of life-changing loss and grief forces John to display the full range of who he is, and to see that Sherlock is capable of understanding all of him and accepting him. Mary’s death, more so than necessarily Mary herself, brings them back into alignment, and closer and more honest than they had ever been.

I don’t know why you want Mary to be the “truly caring [and] insightful” one. It sounds to me like you’re wishing that Mary was the one who deserved John’s love and devotion, not Sherlock. As you say, Mary was wrong about what John was capable of; John gives up and abandons Sherlock when he was in danger, though Mary thought he would never give up. Mary is wrong about how heroic John can be, but Sherlock predicts where John is likely to give up and counts on it. Sherlock does not judge John for that failure. What does that tell you? Who’s the truly caring and insightful one by the end of this story? Who’s the one who actually knows who John is and loves him for it? Who’s the sanctified hero?

You say: the story needs to show, not tell. So what does all this show?

When Mary says "Who you really are doesn't matter"

 (Sherlock meta by Ivy Blossom)

Q: [...] How do you read Mary's presiding over the last minutes of The Final Problem in that context, saying that who Sherlock and John 'really' are doesn't matter and only their adventures do...?

A: This is how I read the sort of unfortunately-worded “it doesn’t matter who you really are” line:

The theme of Sherlock as an entire four series arc is that Sherlock both is and isn’t what he says he is. He isn’t a sociopath, but he is a brilliant consulting detective who solves crimes for fun. Sherlock’s actual self, the one he himself didn’t entirely understand until the end, is not what the legend suggests that he is, but that doesn’t matter. Sherlock is actually a loving and sweet man, deeply and probably permanently traumatized by the events of his childhood. His greatness isn’t impaired by the fact that he’s the product of tragedy, that his desire to solve puzzles and crimes is a psychological wound that he picks at and worries endlessly, or that he can see through others but couldn’t see into himself. That’s not something he’s going to show off to the world, and not really something he wants people to know. That’s private, and that’s okay. He’s allowed his privacy. His greatness and his legend isn’t impaired by the fact that it’s a little bit fake. Because it’s fake in a way that is still actually true.

And we learned in this series that the same is true for John. He too isn’t what he appears to be. He’s a war hero, a moral compass, the angel on Sherlock’s shoulder, but he is capable of great cruelty, betrayal, and violence. Like Sherlock, John is permanently broken. To Sherlock, he is a conductor of light, the person who leads him to do the right thing. John is capable of profoundly failing on the moral front, but again, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t detract from what he’s capable of. He still is what he is, he conducts light all the same. In spite of the failures that demonstrate how much John is as much of a fake as Sherlock is, it’s him who transforms Sherlock into a good man he is capable of being, and it’s John who brings him peace. Even mired in the depths of his faults, John makes Sherlock better.

I’m not bothered by Mary narrating this, personally. Here’s what: a final narration can’t be John, and it can’t be Sherlock. It’s about them, not about just Sherlock, and that needs to be one step removed. It can’t be a conversation between them, either. I feel like we got the last of the frank conversations between Sherlock and John in The Lying Detective, and every other intimate conversation they have is going to be behind closed doors.

Someone had to narrate it. It’s an echo of Mycroft’s narration of what might become of them at the end of A Study in Pink. I suppose it could have been Mycroft again at the end. Mary threw herself into a bullet; I guess that final narration helps explain why she did that, why John being with Sherlock was so important. It’s because the legend is the two of them in a scruffy flat, ready to help the desperate, the unloved, the persecuted, now and always. She saw that, and she helps them to see that. And so they are.

John's talk with Sherlock in The Lying Detective

 (Sherlock meta by Ivy Blossom)

Q: You've said that John's marriage is 'heading down a pretty dark path' and disintegrating in TST, and sometimes he's probably even hated her. So firstly, was his talk with Sherlock in TLD actually meant to suggest he wishes he could've saved the marriage and genuinely wants Sherlock to be in a relationship with someone else?

A: John’s talk with Sherlock was about John’s own failures. It’s odd to me to look at it as “wishing he could’ve saved the marriage”, because John’s not exactly talking about his marriage. He’s talking about how he failed to be the person he hoped he would be, the one everyone assumes he is. I mean, he wishes he had been a faithful, trusting and loving husband, is that “saving the marriage”? I suppose it is. He hadn’t ended his marriage though. John knew what he was doing to Mary and hated himself for it.

At this point John won’t ever know what would have happened if Mary hadn’t died. Would he have confessed his sins, been more honest, found his way back to loving her, saved his marriage? Perhaps he believes that he would have continued to betray and hurt her instead. That must be how he sees himself; he has grown terrible and cannot recover. With Mary dead, it seems he doesn’t have a chance to.

Does John genuinely want Sherlock to be in a relationship with someone else? In that moment, yes. He certainly does.

At a couple of points in The Lying Detective, John turns his back on his life with Sherlock; he says goodbye when he leaves the cane in Sherlock’s hospital room, and I’m 100% sure that was meant to be a final goodbye. When John is waiting with Sherlock in 221b for Molly to arrive, he nearly leaves 20 minutes early. Those 20 minutes, I think, are pretty critical. They represent a major life decision: either he’s in Sherlock’s life with both feet, or he’s essentially out. He tries to leave early, he tries to bail entirely. He’s resigning from the role of Sherlock’s one true companion for a second time in the episode.

John doesn’t leave Sherlock because he doesn’t love him or doesn’t want to go on adventures with him. He does it because he’s painfully aware of what a terrible partner and companion he actually is. John’s seeming rejection of Sherlock are expressions his own self-loathing and self-punishment.

When John tells Sherlock to find someone who makes him want to be better, he is, as we well know, describing his own impact on Sherlock’s life. But John has lost faith in his ability to be that person. So he wants Sherlock to find himself someone who is actually good enough.

But John is good enough. It doesn’t matter that he has the capacity to fail so spectacularly. It’s allowed. He is exactly what Sherlock needs, not in spite of, but with his flaws. He’s not the perfect moral compass and hero that he wants to be, and that everyone expects him to be, but it doesn’t matter. He still is what he is; Sherlock’s perfect partner.

John doesn’t leave 20 minutes early. Instead, he stays with Sherlock well past that. And as we see in The Final Problem, John is back in his role, not just as a trusted companion, but as family. And he has happily accepted that.

Eurus and John 

 (Sherlock meta by Ivy Blossom)

One of my lingering questions about S4 is about Eurus’ texting affair with John. Why did she do it? We aren’t given any answers, so we can only extrapolate.

What we know is that Eurus has been gearing up to meet Sherlock for quite some time. We also know that she has a history of getting rid of whoever is closest to Sherlock. It would make sense for John to become Eurus’ new target. Is he?

What did Eurus intend to happen when she gave John her number? Was she aiming for a texting-only relationship that could be conducted from Sherrinford as easily as from a bus stop in London? Or did John just fail to entirely take the bait?

Eurus is trying to seduce John, and from the sounds of it, sex with Eurus is violent and ends in death. If John had given in, would Eurus have killed him and given Sherlock a rhyme to help him find his remains? Or would she just have put him in that same well (as she finally does in The Final Problem?)

Or did Eurus intend for John’s text-only cheating to destroy him from the inside out, slowly erroding his sense of self-worth, until he’s convinced that he can’t be Sherlock’s trusted companion anymore? Is John’s pain in The Lying Detective the adult version of leaving a boy to die in a well, forcing Sherlock pull out all the stops to try and save him? That seems like a stretch, but Eurus has demonstrably set stranger events into action before, and that is in fact what happens.

It certainly lets John off the hook for his bad behaviour. Does John’s actions trouble him so badly because it actually is out of character and against his nature, but he couldn’t stop himself for reasons he doesn’t understand? The story gives us information from which we can surmise that this could easily have happened, but the story doesn’t confirm it. John’s relationship with Mary was in trouble, so his behaviour can be reasonably, if distastefully, explained in an alternate way. But the circle is never squared, and a finger is never directly pointed Eurus’ way for this, so it’s hard to say definitively.

Two puzzle pionts regarding John in TST and TLD explained

 (Sherlock meta by Ivy Blossom)

Q: Hi Ivy, I don't mean to treat you like a magic 8-ball, but you *have* magically explained a lot of things that hadn't quite come together so fluidly for me about TFP, so I want to present you with my two puzzle points about TST, instead. OK, so point 1 is why do you think Sherlock told John Mary's the better partner, whether that's technically correct or not. And point 2, how do you read John's growly wail and blaming/rejecting Sherlock to the point of thinking he's monstrous after Mary's death?

Ivy Blossom:

I’ll break this into pieces.

Why do you think Sherlock told John Mary’s the better partner? 

Sherlock is teasing John when he says Mary’s a better companion. That is some classic British affection Sherlock is demonstrating, generally known as “taking the piss.” You’ll notice in that scene that at no point does Mary actually think Sherlock means that they should leave John behind. They are teasing him.

John is the most important person in both Mary’s and Sherlock’s lives, hands down, no question. He is the man they both love. They are in the potentially awkward position of having to share John’s time, commitment, and affection. Suggesting they could just take off together without him is kind of wry commentary on the truth of this situation. Because they absolutely wouldn’t.

How do you read John’s growly wail and blaming/rejecting Sherlock to the point of thinking he’s monstrous after Mary’s death? 

I think John’s growly wail is a raw expression of wordless horror, shock, grief, and despair. He is beyond thinking, words, or hope in that moment.

John is at an all-time low when Mary dies. He is unhappy and behaving in ways he is deeply ashamed of when she absolutely out-heroes and out-nobles him. John has always been ready to die for Sherlock, but Mary did it for him. He had been betraying her, probably hating her at times, giving up on her. Now he will have to carry his guilt for the rest of his life. He is devastated, freshly grieving, and full of self-loathing. On top of that, this grief has pulled open his once-healed wounds from his soulmate’s suicide.

It’s not really a surprise to me that he takes it out on Sherlock.

John is a guy who believes that Sherlock can do anything, and is capable of miracles. Two years after Sherlock’s death, John is still asking him to not be dead. The faith John has in Sherlock cannot be underestimated. So when Sherlock promises that he will protect Mary, John absolutely believes that he can, all the time, and from anything. It isn’t fair to blame Sherlock for her death, as it was Mary’s choice to do what she did, but in his grief and guilt, there’s some logic in his reaction. A superhero, his superhero, has inexplicably failed him.

I’m not going to excuse how John treats Sherlock. I think that’s sort of the point of it, really: John does inexcusable things. He has the capacity to make very bad choices and hurt the people he loves. Usually he can keep himself on the straight and narrow, and even be a moral compass to those who need one, but when John is bad, he is terrible. This may actually be why John is a moral compass. Because he knows exactly what it means to be pointed the wrong way.

The violence John enacts against Sherlock in The Lying Detective is hard to watch, but it is not out of character. John is a violent man who is drawn to violence. His best self would never fail to restrain himself, but he is not his best self in The Lying Detective. He is his worst self, and this is it. These are his demons.

I don’t think this side of John is a surprise to Sherlock. I think he knows what John at his worst is capable of, and how harshly he judges himself for it. There’s something lovely about that, in spite of all the ugliness in the episode. Because John feels put on a pedestal, having betrayed Mary and never getting the chance to tell her and endure the consequences, which he certainly deserves. Sherlock knows him inside and out, a fact John is confronted with over and over in The Lying Detective. Sherlock knows him completely, even this terrible and dark corner. John’s dark corners are, in the end, useful to Sherlock. John is a loaded gun, and Sherlock is very comfortable with that.

In the end, Sherlock understands and accepts that noble, heroic, moral John Watson has the capacity to lash out and destroy the people he loves best. And John comes to understand and accept that mean, cold, brilliant, sociopathic Sherlock Holmes is a damaged, lonely, terrified, and loving man. They are ambiguous, they are contradictory and in constant conflict on the inside. That’s what fuels them, it’s what makes them strive to be better, and what makes them the legends they are.

 "I got shot.”

 (Sherlock meta by Ivy Blossom)

It’s such a pleasure to read John’s facial expressions. I love what his face says, in response to Mike asking him what happened: isn’t it obvious? Look at me, what do you think happened, ffs? I’m walking with a cane and incredibly obvious limp, do you think I’ve come home to join the circus?

And he follows it up with that trademark tight John Watson smile, which expresses so many of John’s inexpressible emotions. John smiles like that when he’s angry, impatient, offended, uncomfortable, embarrassed, feeling threatened, about to get violent, etc. In this case it absolutely does not mean what he’s sort of attempting to pretend it means: I’m perfectly okay with you asking me about that, I have no problem discussing it, I’m awfully glad to have run into you, what a pleasant surprise!

 John’s irritation about Mike’s failure to make the simplest deductions to save John this embarrassing conversation is interesting. He’s primed to meet Sherlock, isn’t he.

Sherlock's violin and Euro's deduction: "Oh!"

 (Sherlock meta by Ivy Blossom)

Q: Just how do you relate the violin to Sherlock's lack of virginity or possible awareness of his own sexuality? I just couldn't findd the sexual part of it, thought it was more of an understanding and acceptance of how he would not leave her

A: When Sherlock first plays his own composition for Eurus, she interrupts him, surprised, and says: “Oh! Have you had sex?”

Either this is just a non sequitur, or listening to Sherlock play just a couple of notes gives her new information about him. The “Oh!” suggests it’s new information that has surprised her.

Eurus has spent a fair bit of time with Sherlock, and she is a Holmes, the Ur Holmes, in a way. She is able to deduce better than either of her brothers. She spends a night walking around London with Sherlock, and while he thinks he is keeping a suicidal Faith company on a “danger night”, in fact Eurus is discovering all kinds of things about him. She finds him to be sweet, and much nicer than she expects him to be. I can’t imagine there is much she doesn’t know about Sherlock at that point.

When Sherlock comes to Sherrinford and plays her violin, her first reaction is surprise. “Oh!” Not that he can play; she knows he can play. “Oh!” suggests she’s deduced something new. “Have you had sex?” suggests that she has deduced, somehow, that he has.

Sherlock, in keeping with the firm ambiguity of the entire series, neither confirms nor denies it.

Behind the cold and logic facade:

 crack Sherlock Holmes open just a little and you’ll find he’s a romantic.

 (Sherlock meta by Ivy Blossom)

E: Well, that's interesting.
S: What is?
E: The way you think
S: Superbly?
E: Sweetley.
S: I.m not sweet; I'm just high.

One of the things I love about this show, all four series’ of it, is the hints in it about what Sherlock would be like if he could get past all his hang ups and issues. He puts on such a great show of being a creature of pure reason. His life has been dedicated to becoming something he is not, and now his facade has now become his character. It’s true, but it’s a lie at the same time.

Here he is as the cold deduction machine everyone knows him to be, and he thinks he’s about to be complimented on his prodigious brain power (as usual), but what surprises Eurus-as-Faith isn’t his ability to deduce. It’s his sweetness. The nature he’s been burying all this time is the first thing that strikes her about her brother.

And no wonder she can’t help but see it, even though few others ever will; that’s something that is, among the Holmes children, unique to Sherlock, and entirely alien to her. She can see the deduction better than Sherlock can, but he brings something else to it. He brings his sweetness. The seed of it is there in him and always has been, though it’s invisible to almost everyone else.

Crack Sherlock Holmes open just a little and you’ll find he’s a romantic.

How did Euros know Sherlock had sex?

 (Sherlock meta by ivyblossom)

Q: Hi Ivy, that scene when Sherlock starts to play Irene's theme and Eurus concludes he's had sex.. How did she know? It really hurt me because it implied he had sex with Irene, in which I will never believe, but they made it look like he did

A: Hi, I really want to help you with this, but I don’t think my words do much good. I’ve been talking about this since series 2, but I still hear this question every 10 minutes, so I’m not sure going over this one more time is going to help.

You are welcome to read the events of the story in any way that resonates with you. You are welcome to take whatever cues you like that exist in the story to construct your answer for yourself.

This is my answer.

I do not see any evidence in the story that suggests that Sherlock has feelings for Irene. The only evidence there is is that John is worried that he does, which says more about where John is emotionally than where Sherlock is. John has no idea how Sherlock’s emotional life works at that point in the story. He thought Sherlock doesn’t feel things that way, which we now definitively know isn’t so. Even when John tells us Sherlock moping and sad about Irene’s death because he loved her, his only evidence for that is that Sherlock’s behaviour is exactly the same as it always is. John doubts his own observations about this, and so should we.

Irene means something to Sherlock, most definitely. She is a pivotal figure for him. He sees himself in her. He sees himself in some ways gone very wrong; unguided, unable to resist temptation from the wrong sides. Pushing the envelope too far. She is a sort of warning, but also a promise: Irene is a version of himself with a sexual appetite.

When Sherlock confronts Irene, he is alarmed and ignorant about sexuality, especially his own. The story goes out of its way to show us that and tell us that. The introduction of Irene is the point where he has to face that anxiety, face his own sexuality, and accept that it’s there and something worth knowing about. That’s what Irene does, it’s literally her job: to point out what it is people want. Sherlock didn’t know he wanted that. But he does now, and he can’t unknow it, it’s part of him now. She forces him to face a fundamental complication about himself.

Irene is the most blatant Sherlock mirror in the entire series. They have their actions literally mirror each other repeatedly. They even style her hair so that it looks like his. I don’t know how this could have been more blatant. Any time Irene appears or is referred to, the topic of conversation is Sherlock’s romantic status, not because he wants to sleep with Irene (he tells us himself that he doesn’t, and that it would be a bad idea, which is obviously, obviously true), but because she raises the spectre of his neglected and denied sexual and romantic needs.

With Irene they take form; they exist, and he can dismiss them, but he still has to admit that they’re there. She knows what he wants, and now so does he.

My reading of Irene is, I think, confirmed by the fact that Eurus recognizes the song he plays as an indicator of his sexuality. Not “you’re in love,” just “sex”. That’s what the song is, this part of himself. And it’s changed in The Final Problem in a way Eurus recognizes.

If you think it’s possible that Sherlock jetted out and hooked up with Irene for a night, you’re welcome to think that. She’s missing from the final montage, so it doesn’t appear that she’s a big part of his life if that’s the case. Just a one time thing? Sherlock is such a deeply emotional and romantic soul, which Eurus goes out of her way to tell us on her jaunt around London with him. Is he the casual hook-up sort of guy? I think there’s far more evidence that something happened between him and John.

Since the start of this story I’ve been saying I didn’t want them to hook up fast, because once they do, the story will be over. The tension between Sherlock and John drives a lot of what we love about this story. Once they resolve that tension, something important drops out of the story.

As far as I can tell, that tension is gone in this episode. Honestly I think that’s what people are most upset about. With that tension gone, the view is that the relationship isn’t being given any attention. But in truth, the relationship on screen is so certain and confident and unquestionable that it feels invisible. It’s not the relationship that’s gone, it’s the tension.

Sherlock and John shared a really important emotional moment at the end of The Lying Detective. They were honest in a way they have never been before. They were emotionally stripped and didn’t turn away from each other. They have turned a corner. The tension that has been driving their relationship is gone, and they are completely certain of each other and their place in each other’s lives. John is not running around concerned what people will think anymore. He knows where Sherlock’s head is at at any given moment. They trust each other, and thus are no longer looking inward. They are looking out, together, as a cohesive unit.

This corner they have taken doesn’t have to be a sexual corner, but they allude to Sherlock no longer being a virgin without giving us much else to go on. So to me this is the most obvious conclusion, because the whole episode is evidence of an important change between Sherlock and John. Why not that?

If it’s in the story, it’s in the story: 

meta commentary is only meta commentary 

 (By Ivy Blossom)

warmth-and-constancy:

“Romantic entanglement would complete you as a human being” Yeah, guys, when Moffat says Sherlock was never a love story, it’s literally bullshit, he is literally lying to you, because he also wrote this line. Whether they have – unbelievably – kicked that particular can another couple of years down the road, or whether the fourth episode rumor that they started themselves is true and there’s another installment waiting in the wings, they still told us that their main character is incomplete without romantic fulfillment. You are entitled to continue waiting for an explanation of this very obvious Chekhov’s gun situation if you are willing and able to do so, and it is not crazy for you to do so.

Ivy Blossom:

Agreed. Though I don’t think you need a fourth episode or even another series to safely assume the logical conclusion here. While I remain a fan of these writers, to be honest at this point I’m not that interested in their retroactive statements about what they intended to do. It’s already done, it’s in the story. This is what we have, this story, and this particular narrative gun.

Sherlock’s sexual and romantic needs have been on the table in this story for a long time now, from the beginning, and particularly in focus since A Scandal in Belgravia. We have been asked to pay attention to these questions, and there is a coherent narrative arc about them through the entire show. The final problem is, in fact, this question: is it so impossible for Sherlock to love and be loved? There is, to my mind, every indication that these issues are resolved in The Final Problem. Very likely not in a way that satisfies you, but I’d call them resolved nevertheless.

We’ve always said ignore the writers when they talk about this story because they lie. At this point, I’d say you should still ignore what they say, because the only thing a writer communicates about a story that actually matters or has any weight is the story itself. (Dear J.K.: you can’t retroactively out Dumbledore, either. It’s in the text, or it’s not!)

If it’s in the story, it’s in the story. They had their chance to say otherwise when they composed it; it’s out there now, and meta commentary is only meta commentary. They don’t have to like interpretations or confirm that anything in particular was intentional, it doesn’t matter. It’s there, it’s coherent, and it’s valid.

It’s yours.

What Purpose does Rosie Serve?

 (Sherlock meta by  ivyblossom)

The Final Problem left me wondering about this, and not having an immediate answer. Looking back on the entire narrative arc, what purpose does the baby serve? It can’t be random; any story development that significant has to have a reason.

Why a baby?

In The Sign of the Three, the baby’s purpose is to underscore Sherlock’s underdeveloped nature. He’s the baby in John’s life at that point, the one who needs all the attention and nurturing. He deduces that a baby is coming, which heralds his own departure from John’s life. At least, that’s how Sherlock frames it, and how he appears to see it at the time. The baby is a threat and a demand; it’s time to grow up, Sherlock.

Then we have His Last Vow. This is the first time we get hints that the Watson marriage isn’t all they expected it to be. John is getting restless. Is the coming baby part of the reason why? Is John rebelling against this impending responsibility?I’m not inclined to think so. To me, John’s restlessness is rooted in his frustration that he appears to be losing Sherlock. His dreams are not the terror of impending fatherhood, after all. They’re about Sherlock.

Once Mary’s nature is revealed, does the promise of this baby keep John from walking away from her altogether? She is very pregnant when John makes his decision to stick by her. I’m not sure about this.

Rosie’s christening, and who her godparents are, gives us an opportunity to see who is closest to John and Mary: Molly (that’s news, we always associate her with Sherlock, not John or Mary), Mrs Hudson (who we generally think of as more of a mother figure to Sherlock than to John) and Sherlock. None of Mary’s bridesmaids make an appearance, but I suppose that’s not a big surprise. John’s relationship with Molly has certainly changed, though we don’t see a lot of this on screen.

Infants are challenging for any marriage. Rosie gives us a chance to see a new tension in the Watson marriage, and makes John’s indiscretion that much worse. While Mary is tending to John’s daughter, he’s texting another woman. The worst!

Rosie is the reason why Mary and John don’t appear at the aquarium at the same time, allowing Mary to make a decision John might have chosen to make had he been there.

Does Rosie make Mary’s death more tragic? It certainly makes John’s grief that much worse in The Lying Detective. Rosie’s just lost her mother, John can’t cope with a new baby after Mary’s death, making him feel like even more of a failure. In that case, Rosie acts as a sort of moral imperative.

When the grenade lands in 221b in The Final Problem, Rosie is the reason why Sherlock wants John to make a phone call, even though Rosie can’t possibly understand anything he might say. It highlights something important: there is someone John loves outside of that room. Sherlock doesn’t want to make a phone call himself. (Not even to his parents? Apparently not.)

The last moments of The Final Problem show Sherlock being very loving and familiar with Rosie. It’s hard to see any other purpose to that other than the reality that, along with John, Mrs Hudson, and Molly, Sherlock is co-parenting this child. So Rosie’s last purpose is to underscore that Sherlock has made a loving, long-term commitment to Rosie and to John. And everyone seems pretty happy about it.

I thought the baby didn’t have much of a purpose in this story, but I was looking for one large purpose, a major point point, like her being kidnapped for threatened in some way. But there isn’t one big purpose for her. There are many little ones, many of which strengthen and underscore the elements of the story.