Thoughts on His Last Vow and Season 4
Feel free to ignore this. It isn't fan fiction. (Though I do have 3 I'm so close to done with, which will hopefully show up here soon.) I wrote this right after His Last Vow aired. It got stuck in my head and I poked it around a bit. I found it tonight and I dusted it off a bit. I've seen that other people have similar ideas, so I'm pretty sure this isn't unique. (Though I might have nattered much longer than they did. It is VERY long.)
Why am I posting it? I don't know, really. Maybe to see if it even makes sense?
Anyway, just my thoughts. If you make it through this, thank you. :)
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I’m just going to walk through this to get it out of my head. (The symbols and numbers lead to footnotes. Apologies that there are so many. My brain rambles.)
Let’s start at the beginning of HLV. In the first few scenes, we see John and Sherlock at their best, acting very in character. (John with his “I’m a doctor, I know how to sprain people” and “I’m just used to a better class of criminal.” And Sherlock with his dramatic, “I’m undercover.” “No, you’re not.” “Well, I’m not now!” And “People were talking, none of them me. I must have filtered.”) The interaction between them was typical and even John’s reaction to Mycroft was very first series. (I adored “I hope I won’t have to threaten you as well.” “Well, I think we’d both find that embarrassing.” It was so very much, “If you asked Sherlock, his arch enemy. He does love to be dramatic.” “Well, thank God you’re above all that.” And “You don’t seem very afraid.” “You don’t seem very frightening.” from ASiP.)
While we see Sherlock flirting with Janine, he is still very much in character. Just like in ASiP, where when he discovered that the pink lady’s daughter was stillborn, his comment was, “That was ages ago. Why would she still be upset? Not good?” “Bit not good.”, when he asks Janine to marry him, we get, “Did you just get engaged to break into an office?” “As long as there are people, there’s a weak spot.” And we get the whole conversation about how he’s going to break up with Janine. All the way up until Sherlock gets shot, John and Sherlock, and even Mary are very spot on in character. (At the beginning when Mary is saying, “I’m pregnant, you can’t go.” we get the Mary who goes on cases with them and told them both to “run” each other.)
Then Sherlock gets shot and we are pulled into his mind palace with him. Then he is in hospital and begins to try to understand what happened with Mary.
With this, we also get a John who can keep up with Sherlock in that he’s left clues by Sherlock (the chair moved back and the perfume.) He asks, “why does Sherlock think I’m moving back in?” looks at the perfume, and suddenly he’s putting it together with his earlier question, “who could Sherlock be protecting?”(@) John is not stupid. He never was. From seeing where the pink lady’s phone was on the GPS, he was able to understand where Sherlock went and how much trouble he was in. In this moment, we get that John, putting together the clues and really understanding who Sherlock was protecting and moreover, who shot him. He was so caught up in this that when Mrs. Hudson was telling him Sherlock was calling, he didn’t even look at her or take the phone.
Now, here is where everything in the episode changes. The characters act oddly and contradict themselves. So, what happened? What changed? Here is what I think.
We know that, while we didn’t see it, John did actually take that phone call from Sherlock. He had to have or he wouldn’t have been sitting in the dark pretending to be Sherlock when Mary got there. So, he took the call and went to the houses to meet Sherlock. In order for them to execute that plan, they had to have talked. I noticed that when the lights came on and Mary turned to look at John, he was angry, he was, in fact, furious, but he was NOT surprised. Look at his face. He understands what she is, he knows she tried to kill his best friend, she lied to him, he looks like he wants to kill her, but he is not shocked or surprised. So, Sherlock has talked to him and filled him in. We don’t know how long they talked, we don’t know what they talked about. My thoughts? Sherlock not only filled John in on Mary’s past, but he told her who she really is and they put together a plan.
We know Sherlock thinks John isn’t the best actor, but I think when we see John being SO dramatic in 221, (“why is it always my fault?!” as he’s kicking things.) we are seeing John in actor mode. Yes, he is angry at being used, but when we’ve seen John angry before, we’ve seen that the angrier he gets, the more he pulls into himself. He gets focused and quiet and deadly. When he found out Sherlock wasn’t dead, he couldn’t talk. He whispered, he gritted the words out. He was truly angry. Here, he is lashing out, he’s flailing and yelling. Different? Why? Because, yes, he’s upset, but he is sticking to the plan. And he’s also had time to absorb the information and start to deal with it. He gets his wife lied to him, he knows who she really is, and now they have a plan to move forward.
So, how is it that I think Sherlock and John went out of character? Let’s start with John. The established John is smart and snarky and a war hero. Yes, he trusts Sherlock and he will follow him into battle, but he can think for himself. He values honesty and loyalty and while he takes a bit of deception from Sherlock, he does it because he knows Sherlock is lying for John’s own good. Sherlock jumped from a building to save John’s life. Then he didn’t tell John about it. Why? Was it really because he thought John couldn’t keep a secret or was so bad an actor that he’d give the plan away? Or was it because he knew that if John knew, he’d follow Sherlock into battle and Sherlock needed John in London looking like the broken, grieving friend? And I suspect at some point, Sherlock explained that to John or really, would John have forgiven him so completely? (It feels like there were some missing scenes in TEH. John was going to talk out what happened when he was taken. Then he goes back when Sherlock’s parents are there. Then Sherlock pulls John into the case then scares the crap out of him in the subway. Then we go from John being angry at Sherlock for the bomb to the two of them being friendly in 221 while the press is outside. I can believe that John was caught up in helping Sherlock and he did miss him, but after the stunt on the tube car, he was still upset. Then we cut to 221 and he is happy and friendly. John does love Sherlock, but to forgive deception upon deception? If he really felt that Sherlock didn’t trust or care for him? No, John is co-dependant, but not a pushover. I really feel there had to be a moment after they got back where Sherlock explained it all, told John that he did very much trust him, but he had to do it the way he did. And John, being John, would have acknowledged that yes, if he had known, he would have tried to help, would have at least been looking at everyone suspiciously. So, yes, he does take a bit of dishonesty from Sherlock, but that’s because he understands it.) So, now John finds out that literally everything Mary said was a lie and he is upset, but then he turns around and says, “I didn’t look at your past and I know you lied and you tried to kill my best friend (2), but you said you’re sorry and I do love you, so it’s all good. Let’s hug.” Really?? I might believe that he could completely forgive her if he believed that she had left her old life behind and become someone good and had not told him because she thought she would lose him if he knew, but John isn’t stupid and he has to see that she didn’t leave that life behind. She still has her assassin clothes and her gun, she is still a perfect shot. This is not someone who has been out of the business for five years. She also has a memory stick with all the details of her past on it. If she really had left it behind, why have the stick at all? (1) And why was she hiding her past from him? Honestly, if you know John at all, you have to know if she went to him and said, “Honey, this is who I was, I’m not that person any more, I’m sorry and I love you very much.” that he would have been upset, but he’d have gotten over it. So, why does she act like if he knew, he’d leave? That isn’t in John Watson’s make-up. So, there must be a bigger secret than “Hey, I used to kill people for the CIA.”
So, if John is going to not ask about her past and just go on loving her, have a child with her, build a life with her, be her husband in every way and pretending she wasn’t a killer for hire who didn’t lie to him and try to kill his best friend, have we not really gone so far off the established character? But why do that if you kept him in character for the first part? It’s like they switched writers to someone who had never seen the show before. Even if they ran short on time, would they have sold out the characters like that? I don’t think so. Because the shift came at a critical juncture in the show where something significant happened that we didn’t see. We did not see the conversation at the empty houses. We have no idea what was said or how long they talked. But with that conversation, two established characters started acting oddly. Coincidence? Not with these writers, I think.
Now, on to how Sherlock changed. (After the numbers and symbols that match above.)
(@)Not sure if it was on purpose or not, but in the scene at Baker Street where John says Sherlock knew who shot him, he asks, “Protecting someone, then. But why would he care? He’s Sherlock; who would he bother protecting?” As he says that, you have in this room, framed in various ways, the three people Sherlock jumped off a building to save. It feels like it’s telling us that danger isn’t over yet, that the Moriarty threat is still there. But if Moriarty is still dead, then who would be the threat? Well, if you go by the books, Sebastian Moran, Moriarty’s second in command. And who was Sherlock protecting at least John from? Mary. Ergo…
(1) Can we talk about this memory stick for a second? Okay, so Mary says that she was going to kill Magnussen to keep John from finding out about her past and to keep him from sending people after them. Then she’s carrying her past around on a memory stick? This is information she is willing to kill Sherlock over, but then she hands it to John? And why have it at all? If you have truly walked away from your past, you feel remorse, you are no longer that person and you never want to look back, why would you have a stick drive with the details of every person you killed? And carry it around with you? She was going to find Sherlock. And she had her gun, so she was prepared to finish the job of killing him. And yet, she has this drive with her? Oh, no, John can never, ever, under pain of death, find out about her past, but hey, here it all is on a jump drive she just happens to have on her? Why is it that I’m sensing a bit of misdirection on her part? (#)
(#) Here is where I’m going to bring up something that might be a clue or it could just be me reading more into it. The initials on the drive are A.G.R.A. She says these are her initials. Okay, but, they are also a reference from the actual book, The Sign of Four, (where Watson meets Mary Morstan, oddly enough). Chapter 11 is called, “The Great Agra Treasure.” It could be a random reference. It’s not like the writers haven’t done that before, but let’s look at what the book says about it.
The man, Jonathan Small, who talks about it, says, “It was an evil day for me when first I clapped eyes upon the merchant Achmet and had to do with the Agra treasure, which never brought anything but a curse yet upon the man who owned it.”
Holmes and Watson get the box and take it back to Mary, who is waiting at Baker Street. They don’t have a key, so they take a poker to it and break the lock. When they get it open, it’s empty. So, the Agra treasure amounted to nothing.
What do I get from that? I’m thinking, that whatever is on that drive is not the real story of Mary. It’s going to amount to nothing. (But, John didn’t look at it, you say, so why does it matter? Well, John said he didn’t read it. He never said Sherlock didn’t, did he?)
(2) Let’s look at her shooting Sherlock. He says to John that she didn’t try to kill him. But, we know that not only did she try, she succeeded. If she had been trying to incapacitate Sherlock, why wouldn’t she have just hit him and knocked him out like she did Magnussen? Magnussen was out for long enough that she escaped and John found Sherlock. (which Sherlock estimates was about 5 minutes.) So, if she was really not trying to kill him, why shoot him at all? (3) But okay, maybe she felt she didn’t have the angle or leverage to knock out Sherlock so she had to shoot him. Why not a shoulder wound or something that wouldn’t have caused so much damage? Sherlock says she could have shot him in the head, but didn’t, so she obviously wasn’t trying to kill him. But, she shot him in the chest, which nicked an artery and did liver damage. The bullet lodged in soft tissue and didn’t go all the way through. Why not? Because it was a light weight bullet. If you are going to shoot someone in the chest or heart, it’s a great bullet. But would it have gone through Sherlock’s skull, being as the bone of your forehead is thicker? If it was a heavy bullet with a high caliber, wouldn’t it have gone through into the mirror? Not to say that it wouldn’t have hurt or damaged him, but with the equipment she had, shooting him in the head wouldn’t have been fatal. So, shooting him in the chest *was* her kill shot.
Now, I refuse to believe that Sherlock, who studies gunshot wounds for a living, wouldn’t know that her shot was meant to kill him. It actually did. The only reason he is alive is that he came back to protect John from Mary. The words of the Moriarty in his mind palace: John Watson is definitely in danger. From Magnussen? Not likely. Without Sherlock Holmes, the chain from Mary to Mycroft is broken and threatening her gets Magnussen nothing. I suppose if he wanted to use Mary as an assassin, he could threaten to send people from her past after John, but really, he hires people to do that, so why would he need her? No, her value was the pressure he could put on John, which put pressure on Sherlock, which got him Mycroft. If Sherlock was dead, would Mycroft care about John? Not likely. So, how was John in danger? If Mary was a reformed CIA assassin, how would she be a danger to John? She loves him, so she’s not likely to kill him or hurt him, so where is the danger? No, Sherlock by this point knows Mary is not a nice person and much more than she pretends to be. And he didn’t trust her so much that he left the hospital while still horribly injured to get to John and protect him. (If he had been trying to talk to Mary and offer her help, why didn’t he just talk to her at the hospital?)
Sherlock says she wasn’t shooting to kill, but he knew he was dying. Every “expert” in his mind palace was telling him he was dying. Molly: What is going to kill you first? Mycroft: What was behind you when you were murdered? Even Sherlock himself when he was talking to Redbeard: They are putting me down too. In no way was Sherlock thinking she had not tried to kill him. So, why would he change his stance on this?
I also refuse to buy that John, who is not only a doctor, but an army doctor, wouldn’t see that this was no harmless shot. It cut the artery to his heart. She was NOT trying to just temporarily get him out of the way. And John would know this. And yet, when Sherlock says she saved his life, John jumps on board and forgives her. Would he really or is this part of the bigger plan? (I know it took a few months, but if it was an act, taking that long would make it seem much more believable than, 24 hours later saying, “Oh, yes, I forgive and love you!” now wouldn’t it?)
(3) I’ll also point out here that Sherlock is saying he’ll help her. “Whatever he has on you, I can help.” He’s obviously willing to keep her secret. So, there was the option of knocking out Magnussen and getting out of the building, to meet up with Sherlock later and get his help. Sherlock could have told John that he came in to find Magnussen out cold and John would have never known Mary was there. And then she meets Sherlock later and says, “Hey, I used to kill people, but I’m over that now. I love John and don’t want to lose him.” If anyone could understand that and help, Sherlock would. This is what she would have done if her story was legitimate. Shooting the one person who could help her, John’s best friend? That is NOT what she would do if she really was who she says she is.
Okay, moving on, how do I see that Sherlock has gone off character? The Sherlock we get is snarky and anti-social. He is rude and while he loves John, he doesn’t try to be nice to anyone else or fit in. He doesn’t feel bad about hurting or using people who aren’t John. He doesn’t trust people and has the ability to know about a person from how they act and look. He liked Mary, but I think it was not only because John liked her, but because her personality was an act designed to make him like her. At the beginning of this episode, we get him threatening his brother and saying things like, this case is “too big and dangerous for any sane individual to get involved in.” “Are you trying to put me off?” “God no. I’m trying to recruit you.” Very Sherlock. He deeply thinks and he plans. Then Mary surprises him and shoots him. After the odd trip through the mind palace, where he only survives to save John, he is still in character. He doesn’t call John and say, “Hey, your wife shot me.” He eases John into it, leaving him clues so he can get there on his own. Then he calls John to the empty houses.
When Mary gets there, that’s when it starts to go odd. After he’s had time to talk to John, figure out exactly who they are dealing with, and form a plan. This is the point that Sherlock, who knew he was going to die, and did die, says, “Over a distance of 6 feet, you failed to make a kill shot. Enough to hospitalise me, not enough to kill me. That wasn’t a miss; that was surgery.” She did NOT fail to make a kill shot. She killed Sherlock. So, why say she didn’t? Then at Baker street, she asks why he’d help her. Sherlock says because she saved his life. He says she could have shot him in the head, but didn’t, just one well aimed shot to incapacitate him. He then says she called the ambulance. But, we have no proof of this. And, while I’m not British, here in the States, if I called 911 and reported a shooting, requesting an ambulance and one was already on the way, they would inform me of that. Especially if I was the one trying to keep the victim alive. They would inform me that someone else had called, one was already in route, here is the estimated ETA, keep calm. (My cousin is a 911 operator in Arizona and she tells me this is what they do. If you know help is already in route, you are likely to keep your head.) So, if Mary had called 999, it’s likely that when John called, they would have told him someone had already called that in. (Also, if she really was worried someone could connect her there and by extension, John, would she have called 999? Phone calls are recorded and they GPS your mobile.)
Then, after the paramedics get there, he turns to John and tells him, Magnussen is all that matters and to trust Mary because she saved Sherlock’s life. Okay, we know she didn’t. Sherlock is not this stupid, so why is he telling John this stuff? I think the fact that he says it in front of Mary is important to note. (I also feel like that last part, where the paramedics are taking Sherlock away and he grabs onto John, telling him to trust Mary, was Sherlock reminding John to stay on plan, not just leave her, and especially, don’t take revenge.)
So, we get a Sherlock who is willing to overlook Mary shooting him and go on about how she’s a good person because she saved him and they can trust her. When he distrusted her so much that he came back from the dead and then climbed out a window while still injured to protect John from her. Hmm. Mixed messages indeed.
And then, Sherlock is willing to trade Mycroft’s laptop to protect Mary. When has Sherlock ever been that altruistic? I don’t think he wanted Mary’s file to destroy it and protect her. He wanted to look at it and see what Magnussen had that Mary hadn’t told them. But, if he trusted her, why would he need to do that? And he *did* shoot Magnussen to protect her and John. ($) Or did he? I buy that he did it for John, but Mary? Still not getting that.
($) If he wasn’t trying to protect Mary, why shoot Magnussen? Well, if they are about to get in a war, you don’t want Magnussen constantly trying to use you and John to get to Mycroft and sending people to kill you. I think Magnussen was a bad man and a very dangerous loose end. I think Sherlock killed him to stop him from making their lives harder, because if I’m right, their lives are about to get very dangerous, very quickly.
I’ll also point out that John put together what happened from Sherlock’s clues. He doesn’t seem surprised when Mary confesses. Sherlock likely filled him in on at least the basics, but then, Sherlock acts like he’s giving John new information. “She didn’t try to kill me, just incapacitate me.” and John acts like he’s not heard this before. “But she was the one who shot you.” So, why would Sherlock tell John that Mary was the one who shot him when they are alone, but not then be like, “but she wasn’t trying to kill me, so we need to help her.” if that was really what happened. But, if John knew who she was and there was a bigger plan, then this likely isn’t so much new info as two men going through a script.
Again, I stress that Sherlock’s personality shift came at the same point in the story when John’s did. After they had a conversation we didn’t see in the empty houses. What do I get from this? That the character changes are deliberate. I am also likely inferring something here, but, in the book, The Empty House, Holmes and Watson use the empty house to trap, not just a killer, but Moriarty’s right hand man, Sebastian Moran. Here, Sherlock and John use the empty houses to trap a killer. Am I making too big a jump to say that I think they are paralleling the book in trapping Moriarty’s right hand (wo)man? I do have my reasons. I mean really, what are the chances that John is going to meet a nurse who used to be a CIA assassin just by fate? But, if it was her job to watch him, well, what better way to do so than from his side? It just seems to me that with all the nurses in London, the chances that the one he picks, the one who pretends to be exactly what he wants, is a random assassin? Not likely.
And I find it odd the way Mary acted when Sherlock came back from the dead. She acted like she had no idea who he was, but anyone who knew John knew what Sherlock looked like. Really, his little eyebrow pencil mustache made it so he was unrecognizable? Sherlock was all over the papers, and John has to have pictures and video of them. We *know* there is the one Greg gave him from Many Happy Returns. She really had no clue what Sherlock looked like?
And then she jumped through hoops to convince John to make up with him. Why? This man obviously hurt John, lied to him, dragged his emotions through the mud. But she determines to get them to be best friends again. For John or to better keep an eye on things? She has him as her wedding planner, keeps stressing to John to reassure Sherlock nothing is going to change, accompanies them on cases. Now, as a fangirl, I’d love to do that and really, when I write myself into the stories, I’m that girl, but for someone who knows how deeply John was hurt by all this, why push them to make up?
So, if she is actually Moriarty’s right hand person, why not just arrest her? (I would think killing her would be out of the question. She’s carrying John’s child and he did have an emotional attachment to her.) Why make this elaborate plan and have John pretend to forgive her? Why didn’t he just have Mycroft or Lestrade waiting at the empty houses to take her into custody? If she knew they knew, how do you think she would react? Well, as an assassin, she’s likely to lash out, killing Sherlock and John. Or, maybe she’ll run. She’s a criminal, so I think she might be able to go to ground for quite a while. And then pop up, deadly and silent and cause all sorts of problems. She’s also the person who can pull Moriarty’s network back together. So, she now becomes a force to be reckoned with, leading a quiet criminal army. And if they do let her contact her people, well, they not only get her, they get her whole enterprise, Moriarty’s whole enterprise. (If they did arrest her, she could likely still control things from inside, as Moriarty did, and they’d have to constantly worry about assassins.) Of course, she’s too clever to contact her people, isn’t she? But, wait…now that Moriarty might be alive, or someone is trying to convince people he is, she’ll have to get in touch with people to see what the heck is going on. Do I smell a master plan here? If she thinks they trust her, that Sherlock believes she is reformed and John still loves her, her guard will go down and she’ll chance contacting her network for something as big as this. And, brilliantly enough, Sherlock and Mycroft have a man on the inside. He lives with this suspect and really, is the most trustworthy guy they know.
So, if I’m right, Mycroft engineered that Moriarty-o-gram as a way to force Mary to react. And season four is going to give us one heck of a battle as they try to out maneuver John’s scary soon to be ex-wife. (Her face when she hears Moriarty is back is rather telling. She looks a bit rattled as she says to John, “you said he was dead.” Which could be because John told her Moriarty was a bad man, but really, the public at large had no idea what a psycho that man was, so I can’t see her being afraid. Unless, she knows, really knows, he is dead, because she worked for him.)
Not bad, really. They get Moriarty’s second in command and his whole network, while keeping John and Sherlock safe from her. And really, it would be so easy for Mycroft to pull that off. (I think it has the added benefit of getting Sherlock out of exile for killing Magnussen, which, I think was not part of the original plan. I think they were supposed to go to Appledore, get Mary’s file, confirm if she was Moran, and get Magnussen arrested, possibly deported. If they had the files and proof Mary was Moran, then they could arrest her, so everything up to this point was stalling. But, on finding that this man could send killers after John, which could disrupt their master plan, and that he really had no hard information, Sherlock made a last minute call to get the threat out of the way. With Magnussen gone, there is no one to send people after John. John looked freaked, as did Mycroft, so I think it was an adlib by Sherlock. One that was going to be so much harder to clean up as it was done in front of people. But with Moriarty back, England needs Sherlock Holmes and Mary is going to have to do something to contact her people.)
I really have no idea where they plan to go with this, but I have to believe these writers, who pay so much attention to detail and who love Sherlock Holmes, wouldn’t be sloppy with HLV and that they have a plan for season 4. I very likely have read *far* too much into things, but in my head this fit. Thanks for making it through this opus. :)
Why am I posting it? I don't know, really. Maybe to see if it even makes sense?
Anyway, just my thoughts. If you make it through this, thank you. :)
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I’m just going to walk through this to get it out of my head. (The symbols and numbers lead to footnotes. Apologies that there are so many. My brain rambles.)
Let’s start at the beginning of HLV. In the first few scenes, we see John and Sherlock at their best, acting very in character. (John with his “I’m a doctor, I know how to sprain people” and “I’m just used to a better class of criminal.” And Sherlock with his dramatic, “I’m undercover.” “No, you’re not.” “Well, I’m not now!” And “People were talking, none of them me. I must have filtered.”) The interaction between them was typical and even John’s reaction to Mycroft was very first series. (I adored “I hope I won’t have to threaten you as well.” “Well, I think we’d both find that embarrassing.” It was so very much, “If you asked Sherlock, his arch enemy. He does love to be dramatic.” “Well, thank God you’re above all that.” And “You don’t seem very afraid.” “You don’t seem very frightening.” from ASiP.)
While we see Sherlock flirting with Janine, he is still very much in character. Just like in ASiP, where when he discovered that the pink lady’s daughter was stillborn, his comment was, “That was ages ago. Why would she still be upset? Not good?” “Bit not good.”, when he asks Janine to marry him, we get, “Did you just get engaged to break into an office?” “As long as there are people, there’s a weak spot.” And we get the whole conversation about how he’s going to break up with Janine. All the way up until Sherlock gets shot, John and Sherlock, and even Mary are very spot on in character. (At the beginning when Mary is saying, “I’m pregnant, you can’t go.” we get the Mary who goes on cases with them and told them both to “run” each other.)
Then Sherlock gets shot and we are pulled into his mind palace with him. Then he is in hospital and begins to try to understand what happened with Mary.
With this, we also get a John who can keep up with Sherlock in that he’s left clues by Sherlock (the chair moved back and the perfume.) He asks, “why does Sherlock think I’m moving back in?” looks at the perfume, and suddenly he’s putting it together with his earlier question, “who could Sherlock be protecting?”(@) John is not stupid. He never was. From seeing where the pink lady’s phone was on the GPS, he was able to understand where Sherlock went and how much trouble he was in. In this moment, we get that John, putting together the clues and really understanding who Sherlock was protecting and moreover, who shot him. He was so caught up in this that when Mrs. Hudson was telling him Sherlock was calling, he didn’t even look at her or take the phone.
Now, here is where everything in the episode changes. The characters act oddly and contradict themselves. So, what happened? What changed? Here is what I think.
We know that, while we didn’t see it, John did actually take that phone call from Sherlock. He had to have or he wouldn’t have been sitting in the dark pretending to be Sherlock when Mary got there. So, he took the call and went to the houses to meet Sherlock. In order for them to execute that plan, they had to have talked. I noticed that when the lights came on and Mary turned to look at John, he was angry, he was, in fact, furious, but he was NOT surprised. Look at his face. He understands what she is, he knows she tried to kill his best friend, she lied to him, he looks like he wants to kill her, but he is not shocked or surprised. So, Sherlock has talked to him and filled him in. We don’t know how long they talked, we don’t know what they talked about. My thoughts? Sherlock not only filled John in on Mary’s past, but he told her who she really is and they put together a plan.
We know Sherlock thinks John isn’t the best actor, but I think when we see John being SO dramatic in 221, (“why is it always my fault?!” as he’s kicking things.) we are seeing John in actor mode. Yes, he is angry at being used, but when we’ve seen John angry before, we’ve seen that the angrier he gets, the more he pulls into himself. He gets focused and quiet and deadly. When he found out Sherlock wasn’t dead, he couldn’t talk. He whispered, he gritted the words out. He was truly angry. Here, he is lashing out, he’s flailing and yelling. Different? Why? Because, yes, he’s upset, but he is sticking to the plan. And he’s also had time to absorb the information and start to deal with it. He gets his wife lied to him, he knows who she really is, and now they have a plan to move forward.
So, how is it that I think Sherlock and John went out of character? Let’s start with John. The established John is smart and snarky and a war hero. Yes, he trusts Sherlock and he will follow him into battle, but he can think for himself. He values honesty and loyalty and while he takes a bit of deception from Sherlock, he does it because he knows Sherlock is lying for John’s own good. Sherlock jumped from a building to save John’s life. Then he didn’t tell John about it. Why? Was it really because he thought John couldn’t keep a secret or was so bad an actor that he’d give the plan away? Or was it because he knew that if John knew, he’d follow Sherlock into battle and Sherlock needed John in London looking like the broken, grieving friend? And I suspect at some point, Sherlock explained that to John or really, would John have forgiven him so completely? (It feels like there were some missing scenes in TEH. John was going to talk out what happened when he was taken. Then he goes back when Sherlock’s parents are there. Then Sherlock pulls John into the case then scares the crap out of him in the subway. Then we go from John being angry at Sherlock for the bomb to the two of them being friendly in 221 while the press is outside. I can believe that John was caught up in helping Sherlock and he did miss him, but after the stunt on the tube car, he was still upset. Then we cut to 221 and he is happy and friendly. John does love Sherlock, but to forgive deception upon deception? If he really felt that Sherlock didn’t trust or care for him? No, John is co-dependant, but not a pushover. I really feel there had to be a moment after they got back where Sherlock explained it all, told John that he did very much trust him, but he had to do it the way he did. And John, being John, would have acknowledged that yes, if he had known, he would have tried to help, would have at least been looking at everyone suspiciously. So, yes, he does take a bit of dishonesty from Sherlock, but that’s because he understands it.) So, now John finds out that literally everything Mary said was a lie and he is upset, but then he turns around and says, “I didn’t look at your past and I know you lied and you tried to kill my best friend (2), but you said you’re sorry and I do love you, so it’s all good. Let’s hug.” Really?? I might believe that he could completely forgive her if he believed that she had left her old life behind and become someone good and had not told him because she thought she would lose him if he knew, but John isn’t stupid and he has to see that she didn’t leave that life behind. She still has her assassin clothes and her gun, she is still a perfect shot. This is not someone who has been out of the business for five years. She also has a memory stick with all the details of her past on it. If she really had left it behind, why have the stick at all? (1) And why was she hiding her past from him? Honestly, if you know John at all, you have to know if she went to him and said, “Honey, this is who I was, I’m not that person any more, I’m sorry and I love you very much.” that he would have been upset, but he’d have gotten over it. So, why does she act like if he knew, he’d leave? That isn’t in John Watson’s make-up. So, there must be a bigger secret than “Hey, I used to kill people for the CIA.”
So, if John is going to not ask about her past and just go on loving her, have a child with her, build a life with her, be her husband in every way and pretending she wasn’t a killer for hire who didn’t lie to him and try to kill his best friend, have we not really gone so far off the established character? But why do that if you kept him in character for the first part? It’s like they switched writers to someone who had never seen the show before. Even if they ran short on time, would they have sold out the characters like that? I don’t think so. Because the shift came at a critical juncture in the show where something significant happened that we didn’t see. We did not see the conversation at the empty houses. We have no idea what was said or how long they talked. But with that conversation, two established characters started acting oddly. Coincidence? Not with these writers, I think.
Now, on to how Sherlock changed. (After the numbers and symbols that match above.)
(@)Not sure if it was on purpose or not, but in the scene at Baker Street where John says Sherlock knew who shot him, he asks, “Protecting someone, then. But why would he care? He’s Sherlock; who would he bother protecting?” As he says that, you have in this room, framed in various ways, the three people Sherlock jumped off a building to save. It feels like it’s telling us that danger isn’t over yet, that the Moriarty threat is still there. But if Moriarty is still dead, then who would be the threat? Well, if you go by the books, Sebastian Moran, Moriarty’s second in command. And who was Sherlock protecting at least John from? Mary. Ergo…
(1) Can we talk about this memory stick for a second? Okay, so Mary says that she was going to kill Magnussen to keep John from finding out about her past and to keep him from sending people after them. Then she’s carrying her past around on a memory stick? This is information she is willing to kill Sherlock over, but then she hands it to John? And why have it at all? If you have truly walked away from your past, you feel remorse, you are no longer that person and you never want to look back, why would you have a stick drive with the details of every person you killed? And carry it around with you? She was going to find Sherlock. And she had her gun, so she was prepared to finish the job of killing him. And yet, she has this drive with her? Oh, no, John can never, ever, under pain of death, find out about her past, but hey, here it all is on a jump drive she just happens to have on her? Why is it that I’m sensing a bit of misdirection on her part? (#)
(#) Here is where I’m going to bring up something that might be a clue or it could just be me reading more into it. The initials on the drive are A.G.R.A. She says these are her initials. Okay, but, they are also a reference from the actual book, The Sign of Four, (where Watson meets Mary Morstan, oddly enough). Chapter 11 is called, “The Great Agra Treasure.” It could be a random reference. It’s not like the writers haven’t done that before, but let’s look at what the book says about it.
The man, Jonathan Small, who talks about it, says, “It was an evil day for me when first I clapped eyes upon the merchant Achmet and had to do with the Agra treasure, which never brought anything but a curse yet upon the man who owned it.”
Holmes and Watson get the box and take it back to Mary, who is waiting at Baker Street. They don’t have a key, so they take a poker to it and break the lock. When they get it open, it’s empty. So, the Agra treasure amounted to nothing.
What do I get from that? I’m thinking, that whatever is on that drive is not the real story of Mary. It’s going to amount to nothing. (But, John didn’t look at it, you say, so why does it matter? Well, John said he didn’t read it. He never said Sherlock didn’t, did he?)
(2) Let’s look at her shooting Sherlock. He says to John that she didn’t try to kill him. But, we know that not only did she try, she succeeded. If she had been trying to incapacitate Sherlock, why wouldn’t she have just hit him and knocked him out like she did Magnussen? Magnussen was out for long enough that she escaped and John found Sherlock. (which Sherlock estimates was about 5 minutes.) So, if she was really not trying to kill him, why shoot him at all? (3) But okay, maybe she felt she didn’t have the angle or leverage to knock out Sherlock so she had to shoot him. Why not a shoulder wound or something that wouldn’t have caused so much damage? Sherlock says she could have shot him in the head, but didn’t, so she obviously wasn’t trying to kill him. But, she shot him in the chest, which nicked an artery and did liver damage. The bullet lodged in soft tissue and didn’t go all the way through. Why not? Because it was a light weight bullet. If you are going to shoot someone in the chest or heart, it’s a great bullet. But would it have gone through Sherlock’s skull, being as the bone of your forehead is thicker? If it was a heavy bullet with a high caliber, wouldn’t it have gone through into the mirror? Not to say that it wouldn’t have hurt or damaged him, but with the equipment she had, shooting him in the head wouldn’t have been fatal. So, shooting him in the chest *was* her kill shot.
Now, I refuse to believe that Sherlock, who studies gunshot wounds for a living, wouldn’t know that her shot was meant to kill him. It actually did. The only reason he is alive is that he came back to protect John from Mary. The words of the Moriarty in his mind palace: John Watson is definitely in danger. From Magnussen? Not likely. Without Sherlock Holmes, the chain from Mary to Mycroft is broken and threatening her gets Magnussen nothing. I suppose if he wanted to use Mary as an assassin, he could threaten to send people from her past after John, but really, he hires people to do that, so why would he need her? No, her value was the pressure he could put on John, which put pressure on Sherlock, which got him Mycroft. If Sherlock was dead, would Mycroft care about John? Not likely. So, how was John in danger? If Mary was a reformed CIA assassin, how would she be a danger to John? She loves him, so she’s not likely to kill him or hurt him, so where is the danger? No, Sherlock by this point knows Mary is not a nice person and much more than she pretends to be. And he didn’t trust her so much that he left the hospital while still horribly injured to get to John and protect him. (If he had been trying to talk to Mary and offer her help, why didn’t he just talk to her at the hospital?)
Sherlock says she wasn’t shooting to kill, but he knew he was dying. Every “expert” in his mind palace was telling him he was dying. Molly: What is going to kill you first? Mycroft: What was behind you when you were murdered? Even Sherlock himself when he was talking to Redbeard: They are putting me down too. In no way was Sherlock thinking she had not tried to kill him. So, why would he change his stance on this?
I also refuse to buy that John, who is not only a doctor, but an army doctor, wouldn’t see that this was no harmless shot. It cut the artery to his heart. She was NOT trying to just temporarily get him out of the way. And John would know this. And yet, when Sherlock says she saved his life, John jumps on board and forgives her. Would he really or is this part of the bigger plan? (I know it took a few months, but if it was an act, taking that long would make it seem much more believable than, 24 hours later saying, “Oh, yes, I forgive and love you!” now wouldn’t it?)
(3) I’ll also point out here that Sherlock is saying he’ll help her. “Whatever he has on you, I can help.” He’s obviously willing to keep her secret. So, there was the option of knocking out Magnussen and getting out of the building, to meet up with Sherlock later and get his help. Sherlock could have told John that he came in to find Magnussen out cold and John would have never known Mary was there. And then she meets Sherlock later and says, “Hey, I used to kill people, but I’m over that now. I love John and don’t want to lose him.” If anyone could understand that and help, Sherlock would. This is what she would have done if her story was legitimate. Shooting the one person who could help her, John’s best friend? That is NOT what she would do if she really was who she says she is.
Okay, moving on, how do I see that Sherlock has gone off character? The Sherlock we get is snarky and anti-social. He is rude and while he loves John, he doesn’t try to be nice to anyone else or fit in. He doesn’t feel bad about hurting or using people who aren’t John. He doesn’t trust people and has the ability to know about a person from how they act and look. He liked Mary, but I think it was not only because John liked her, but because her personality was an act designed to make him like her. At the beginning of this episode, we get him threatening his brother and saying things like, this case is “too big and dangerous for any sane individual to get involved in.” “Are you trying to put me off?” “God no. I’m trying to recruit you.” Very Sherlock. He deeply thinks and he plans. Then Mary surprises him and shoots him. After the odd trip through the mind palace, where he only survives to save John, he is still in character. He doesn’t call John and say, “Hey, your wife shot me.” He eases John into it, leaving him clues so he can get there on his own. Then he calls John to the empty houses.
When Mary gets there, that’s when it starts to go odd. After he’s had time to talk to John, figure out exactly who they are dealing with, and form a plan. This is the point that Sherlock, who knew he was going to die, and did die, says, “Over a distance of 6 feet, you failed to make a kill shot. Enough to hospitalise me, not enough to kill me. That wasn’t a miss; that was surgery.” She did NOT fail to make a kill shot. She killed Sherlock. So, why say she didn’t? Then at Baker street, she asks why he’d help her. Sherlock says because she saved his life. He says she could have shot him in the head, but didn’t, just one well aimed shot to incapacitate him. He then says she called the ambulance. But, we have no proof of this. And, while I’m not British, here in the States, if I called 911 and reported a shooting, requesting an ambulance and one was already on the way, they would inform me of that. Especially if I was the one trying to keep the victim alive. They would inform me that someone else had called, one was already in route, here is the estimated ETA, keep calm. (My cousin is a 911 operator in Arizona and she tells me this is what they do. If you know help is already in route, you are likely to keep your head.) So, if Mary had called 999, it’s likely that when John called, they would have told him someone had already called that in. (Also, if she really was worried someone could connect her there and by extension, John, would she have called 999? Phone calls are recorded and they GPS your mobile.)
Then, after the paramedics get there, he turns to John and tells him, Magnussen is all that matters and to trust Mary because she saved Sherlock’s life. Okay, we know she didn’t. Sherlock is not this stupid, so why is he telling John this stuff? I think the fact that he says it in front of Mary is important to note. (I also feel like that last part, where the paramedics are taking Sherlock away and he grabs onto John, telling him to trust Mary, was Sherlock reminding John to stay on plan, not just leave her, and especially, don’t take revenge.)
So, we get a Sherlock who is willing to overlook Mary shooting him and go on about how she’s a good person because she saved him and they can trust her. When he distrusted her so much that he came back from the dead and then climbed out a window while still injured to protect John from her. Hmm. Mixed messages indeed.
And then, Sherlock is willing to trade Mycroft’s laptop to protect Mary. When has Sherlock ever been that altruistic? I don’t think he wanted Mary’s file to destroy it and protect her. He wanted to look at it and see what Magnussen had that Mary hadn’t told them. But, if he trusted her, why would he need to do that? And he *did* shoot Magnussen to protect her and John. ($) Or did he? I buy that he did it for John, but Mary? Still not getting that.
($) If he wasn’t trying to protect Mary, why shoot Magnussen? Well, if they are about to get in a war, you don’t want Magnussen constantly trying to use you and John to get to Mycroft and sending people to kill you. I think Magnussen was a bad man and a very dangerous loose end. I think Sherlock killed him to stop him from making their lives harder, because if I’m right, their lives are about to get very dangerous, very quickly.
I’ll also point out that John put together what happened from Sherlock’s clues. He doesn’t seem surprised when Mary confesses. Sherlock likely filled him in on at least the basics, but then, Sherlock acts like he’s giving John new information. “She didn’t try to kill me, just incapacitate me.” and John acts like he’s not heard this before. “But she was the one who shot you.” So, why would Sherlock tell John that Mary was the one who shot him when they are alone, but not then be like, “but she wasn’t trying to kill me, so we need to help her.” if that was really what happened. But, if John knew who she was and there was a bigger plan, then this likely isn’t so much new info as two men going through a script.
Again, I stress that Sherlock’s personality shift came at the same point in the story when John’s did. After they had a conversation we didn’t see in the empty houses. What do I get from this? That the character changes are deliberate. I am also likely inferring something here, but, in the book, The Empty House, Holmes and Watson use the empty house to trap, not just a killer, but Moriarty’s right hand man, Sebastian Moran. Here, Sherlock and John use the empty houses to trap a killer. Am I making too big a jump to say that I think they are paralleling the book in trapping Moriarty’s right hand (wo)man? I do have my reasons. I mean really, what are the chances that John is going to meet a nurse who used to be a CIA assassin just by fate? But, if it was her job to watch him, well, what better way to do so than from his side? It just seems to me that with all the nurses in London, the chances that the one he picks, the one who pretends to be exactly what he wants, is a random assassin? Not likely.
And I find it odd the way Mary acted when Sherlock came back from the dead. She acted like she had no idea who he was, but anyone who knew John knew what Sherlock looked like. Really, his little eyebrow pencil mustache made it so he was unrecognizable? Sherlock was all over the papers, and John has to have pictures and video of them. We *know* there is the one Greg gave him from Many Happy Returns. She really had no clue what Sherlock looked like?
And then she jumped through hoops to convince John to make up with him. Why? This man obviously hurt John, lied to him, dragged his emotions through the mud. But she determines to get them to be best friends again. For John or to better keep an eye on things? She has him as her wedding planner, keeps stressing to John to reassure Sherlock nothing is going to change, accompanies them on cases. Now, as a fangirl, I’d love to do that and really, when I write myself into the stories, I’m that girl, but for someone who knows how deeply John was hurt by all this, why push them to make up?
So, if she is actually Moriarty’s right hand person, why not just arrest her? (I would think killing her would be out of the question. She’s carrying John’s child and he did have an emotional attachment to her.) Why make this elaborate plan and have John pretend to forgive her? Why didn’t he just have Mycroft or Lestrade waiting at the empty houses to take her into custody? If she knew they knew, how do you think she would react? Well, as an assassin, she’s likely to lash out, killing Sherlock and John. Or, maybe she’ll run. She’s a criminal, so I think she might be able to go to ground for quite a while. And then pop up, deadly and silent and cause all sorts of problems. She’s also the person who can pull Moriarty’s network back together. So, she now becomes a force to be reckoned with, leading a quiet criminal army. And if they do let her contact her people, well, they not only get her, they get her whole enterprise, Moriarty’s whole enterprise. (If they did arrest her, she could likely still control things from inside, as Moriarty did, and they’d have to constantly worry about assassins.) Of course, she’s too clever to contact her people, isn’t she? But, wait…now that Moriarty might be alive, or someone is trying to convince people he is, she’ll have to get in touch with people to see what the heck is going on. Do I smell a master plan here? If she thinks they trust her, that Sherlock believes she is reformed and John still loves her, her guard will go down and she’ll chance contacting her network for something as big as this. And, brilliantly enough, Sherlock and Mycroft have a man on the inside. He lives with this suspect and really, is the most trustworthy guy they know.
So, if I’m right, Mycroft engineered that Moriarty-o-gram as a way to force Mary to react. And season four is going to give us one heck of a battle as they try to out maneuver John’s scary soon to be ex-wife. (Her face when she hears Moriarty is back is rather telling. She looks a bit rattled as she says to John, “you said he was dead.” Which could be because John told her Moriarty was a bad man, but really, the public at large had no idea what a psycho that man was, so I can’t see her being afraid. Unless, she knows, really knows, he is dead, because she worked for him.)
Not bad, really. They get Moriarty’s second in command and his whole network, while keeping John and Sherlock safe from her. And really, it would be so easy for Mycroft to pull that off. (I think it has the added benefit of getting Sherlock out of exile for killing Magnussen, which, I think was not part of the original plan. I think they were supposed to go to Appledore, get Mary’s file, confirm if she was Moran, and get Magnussen arrested, possibly deported. If they had the files and proof Mary was Moran, then they could arrest her, so everything up to this point was stalling. But, on finding that this man could send killers after John, which could disrupt their master plan, and that he really had no hard information, Sherlock made a last minute call to get the threat out of the way. With Magnussen gone, there is no one to send people after John. John looked freaked, as did Mycroft, so I think it was an adlib by Sherlock. One that was going to be so much harder to clean up as it was done in front of people. But with Moriarty back, England needs Sherlock Holmes and Mary is going to have to do something to contact her people.)
I really have no idea where they plan to go with this, but I have to believe these writers, who pay so much attention to detail and who love Sherlock Holmes, wouldn’t be sloppy with HLV and that they have a plan for season 4. I very likely have read *far* too much into things, but in my head this fit. Thanks for making it through this opus. :)