Search the Community

I came across this on one of my friend's journals on LJ (drinkingcocoa) and thought I would post it here for you to discuss as it is quite an interesting pov. This is the original post if you want to go to LJ and participate there. 1. Mycroft’s people could get the snipers to leave. So why did Sherlock still need John to believe he died? Somebody else was watching. Someone whose job for Moriarty, as in ACD canon, was to make sure Sherlock was dead and finish Sherlock off if he wasn’t. 2. That scene where Mary announces one mind-numbingly boring case after another to John. That’s not just about John Watson being bored. That’s about Mary. She became a part-time nurse as a cover for her more interesting job of getting to know John’s deepest emotions to make sure he was truly grieving and not getting messages from a secretly-alive Sherlock. 3. In TEH, when John says “one word” from Sherlock to say he was alive would have helped, Sherlock says he wanted to but couldn’t in case John was indiscreet and blew Sherlock’s cover. This scene takes place with Mary present. It didn’t have to. It could have taken place in the train car. 4. Mary dates John and falls in love with him. Sherlock is apparently really dead. Moriarty seems dead and his network is dying off. What’s to stop Mary from being happy in love? Nothing. Although it would kill John to learn that they got together because she was assigned to confirm Sherlock’s death and initially feigned interest in John for information, like Sherlock did with Janine. 5. This parallels Sherlock in the elevator telling John that Janine would break off the relationship if Sherlock said it was a ruse. 6. Mary sincerely loves John. When Sherlock returns and she says, “Do you have any idea what you’ve done to him?” she is being genuine. John’s grief has been her business, after all. She should know. 7. Mary has no emotional trouble shooting at Sherlock, since that was originally her job, to kill Sherlock if he didn’t die in Reichenbach. That could be another meaning of the mind-palace vision of Mary in her wedding dress, shooting at Sherlock. Not just the Johnlock reading but Sherlock’s image of who Mary has been to him since the beginning. 8. When CAM looks through Mary’s files and chuckles, it’s because he knows how John would feel if he learned why Mary met John in the first place. This is the information Sherlock kills CAM to protect. This is why the scene in CAM’s house is so tense: Sherlock realizes CAM is about to destroy John with this knowledge unless Sherlock stops it somehow. This is why we have the subplot with Lady Smallwood, who could not prevent CAM’s destructiveness, ending in the headline about Lord Smallwood’s suicide — it’s a hint about the effect CAM might have on John. This is why Sherlock tells John to let CAM keep flicking him; he knows what CAM might tell John if John resists. And this is what Sherlock meant when he told John to tell Mary that she is safe now: that he knows. It parallels Sherlock telling Major Sholto, “We would never do that to John Watson.” 9. When Mary panics at Moriarty’s screen appearance, it’s because a living Moriarty would come after her, probably via John, for failing to kill Sherlock. She’s going to need Sherlock as close as possible to help protect everything, if this happens. 10. This is why Series 3 raised the question of John wanting to know not how, but why — and never answered it. Sherlock couldn’t tell John there was someone watching to make sure John believed Sherlock was dead. And now he and Mary will have to protect John from Moriarty, or whoever’s behind Moriarty’s “return,” while negotiating how to tell or not tell him that to compound the lies each has already told John, they’ve been colluding not to tell him that Mary Moran is in John’s life because Moriarty put her there. Cue Series 4 credits.