Episode 3.3, "His Last Vow"

[Zain]

Efficient, I grant you that. But is that such a positive character trait? To be an efficient murderer?

To me, that is equal to a hostile attitude towards life. Everybody can kill. But to be efficient about it... Nobody that values life can be a cold fish about it.

[T.o.b.y]

Efficient, I grant you that. But is that such a positive character trait? To be an efficient murderer?

 

Nope, probably not.

 

Though I must say, I completely agree with the decision to kill Charles Augustus Magnussen (and believe me, I am a pacifist in real life, but this fiction and Magnussen is simply and completely vile and dangerous and there is no other way to stop him from doing what he does). And I must also say, if you're going to kill him, then Mary's way would have been better for everybody involved. She'd have gone back to John all lovely and smiling and he'd never been the wiser and would have continued to be happy with this wonderful woman he found. No heartbreak, nobody goes to prison, nobody is exiled. Magnussen is still dead and gone. Same outcome, much less of a price to pay.

 

And it is kind of arrogant of Sherlock to stop Mary from committing the very crime he will later commit himself, isn't it. It's like telling her, if you do it, it's wrong, but if I do, I'm a hero. Which would be a very Sherlockish attitude, come to think of it, and only make me like him more. Oh dear.

 

[Arcadia]

...Oh dear.

I know what you mean. This show does something to our brains!

[Zain]

 

 

 

Though I must say, I completely agree with the decision to kill Charles Augustus Magnussen (and believe me, I am a pacifist in real life, but this fiction and Magnussen is simply and completely vile and dangerous and there is no other way to stop him from doing what he does). And I must also say, if you're going to kill him, then Mary's way would have been better for everybody involved. She'd have gone back to John all lovely and smiling and he'd never been the wiser and would have continued to be happy with this wonderful woman he found. No heartbreak, nobody goes to prison, nobody is exiled. Magnussen is still dead and gone. Same outcome, much less of a price to pay.

 

And it is kind of arrogant of Sherlock to stop Mary from committing the very crime he will later commit himself, isn't it. It's like telling her, if you do it, it's wrong, but if I do, I'm a hero. Which would be a very Sherlockish attitude, come to think of it, and only make me like him more. Oh dear.

 

 

 

 

I know that some people agree with the decision to kill Magnussen. I do not. You say he is vile. Yes. You say he is dangerous. I am not so sure about that.

He definitely is doing wrong things, too, but he does not make up things to hurt people. He says he could, but we know that he is not using fake stories against people. He digs up their dirty secrets from whereever they may have hidden them. I do not consider him dangerous because those people endangered themselves when they decided to hide their immoral secrets away. They risk that their secrets can be used against them. I do not say they deserve to be blackmailed or anything. But they accepted the odds that their dirty secrets may be revealed, and of course things get even more dangerous when you first try to hide from the deserved consequences of your own actions. If I commit hit-and-run, I risk that someone saw me. If that person blackmails me, shame on that person, but I am certainly no innocent victim. I risked that, especially when I ran away and hid from the police. I cannot just moan that I deserve better. The way I behaved, I do not deserve any better.

 

Magnussen is not putting more danger on people than they put on themselves in the first place. He may hold that over them, and that is immoral, but he is not the decisive factor. Not the danger itself.

 

Mary tries to hide from the consequences of her actions. Out of cowardice, she assaults a defenseless man. To me, that certainly cannot be justified in any way.

 

Besides, if we begin to judge which death is justified and which is not, where will we stop?

 

I stand by my opinion. Magnussen's murder was immoral and wrong. It is only right that Sherlock suffers repercussions, even if he did it out of less abominable reasons than Mary. He, however, at least knows it was wrong. Mary lacks any feeling of guilt. She neither feels guilty for shooting Sherlock, nor for lying to John, nor for ambushing a defenseless person or killing those people in the past. Nor does she seem to feel guilty for endangering her child, by the way. Mary runs from the consequences of her actions. Like a child. Even Sherlock is more of an adult and faces the consequences of his actions without complaints.

 

Concerning the second part, it is an interesting thing, yes. But I wonder if Sherlock truly is committing murder because he thinks he is allowed to play god and executioner. To me, it seems like he murders Magnussen because he is desperate and cannot think of any other solution. When Mycroft arrives, Sherlock is running out of time. A stressful situation which pressures him to make a decision. Snap judgement. I doubt he thinks of himself as a hero at the end of HLV. He certainly does not complain about being "treated wrongly" like Mary did. He is aware of the fact that he took a life, an action that deserves punishment.

[Slithytove]

I agree that CAM, despite being a slimy character, doesn't deserve to be murdered. If we were going to start killing people just because they uncovered people's secrets and had the power to expose them, there would not be a journalist who was safe. Admittedly, CAM supposedly used his knowledge as leverage, though it was never very clear what this leverage got for him, but I wouldn't be surprised if most real life media moguls do exactly the same. For instance, the singer Charlotte Church said that, when she sang at Rupert Murdoch's wedding, she was told that she could choose either to be paid a fee or to have a guarantee that his newspapers wouldn't print negative stories about her. If true, that's pretty bad but I don't think she would be justified in shooting him!

 

I don't see Sherlock's killing of CAM as either a pre-meditated act or a grand gesture - "Look at me, I'm a hero.". Of course, Moftiss will no doubt prove me wrong in S4' but I see it as a last-ditch solution to protect Mary and thus protect John - a desperate act driven by hopelessness and rage. Sherlock isn't cool and collected after the murder - as Mary would have been, judging by the way she covered up her shooting of Sherlock - he is distressed and tearful. A human response, I would say, to taking a life, even if you did detest the victim. Unlike Mary, he accepts that there are consequences for what he has done.

 

As for Sherlock showing off re. breaking into CAM's office.....Well, yes, we know he is a show off. He admits that he is. However, I think the question of how Mary got in and out is very weak plotting. "You left the way you came.". What way? Practically dressed as a ninja, she somehow got into a high-security building full of people, got close enough to Janine and the guard to knock them out without arousing their suspicions, and escaped similarly unnoticed. How? Sherlock doesn't say, presumably because the writers could not work out the answer.

[Zain]

Or it's part of s4. I always considered it rather odd that Mary's best friend is Magnussen's secretary.

It's one thing for Sherlock to get close to Janine because she's his secretary. Another that he already knows her because she is Mary's friend.

I suppose Mary milked Janine for information. Do we know how long they have been friends for? To me, it seems like Mary became acquainted with Janine as a precaution, for a time she would need to get close to Magnussen.

 

Magnussen could have sent Janine to befriend Mary, too, but I am not too sure about that. He already had dirt on her, and he must have known that any such connection would be a liability as soon as he expressed his "interest" in Mary's past to Mary's face. Janine is a way "in." It is not especially practical. And, if Janine was aware of such a plot, she certainly would have been a bit more suspicious of Sherlock's advances.

[Slithytove]

It can't be a coincidence that Janine is Mary's friend, close enough to be her chief bridesmaid. Therefore, either Mary targeted Janine - as implied in the Baker Street scene - or vice versa. If Janine did deliberately befriend Mary, on CAM's behalf, it was a risky procedure. As soon as Mary knew the name of Janine's employer, she would realise she was a spy. ( What would be the odds against his PA coincidentally befriending her?). Mary is intelligent and, due to the nature of her past, must be wary of people she allows close to her, so could Janine have concealed her job for very long? And how much information could she have found out about Mary anyway? Sherlock didn't deduce her secret until he walked straight into it, and he's the world's only consulting detective!

 

And when Mary did find out.....? We know she is utterly ruthless, even with her supposed friends. She shot Sherlock without hesitation, and would presumably have done the same to her bridesmaid if she discovered she was working for the enemy. Mary had no intention of going to prison and no qualms about killing anyone who could put her there, so Janine would surely become another of those who "ought to be killed" if she was spying for CAM.

 

On top of that, the whole Janine/Sherlock story becomes very complex if she is CAM's catspaw. Why would she get into a relationship with the one man who might discover her secret? Why would she let him into the office? And I still can't work out why she let Mary get close enough to whack her over the head - surely she wasn't so overcome by Sherlock's proposal that she didn't notice that Mary was in the office, dressed like a member of the SAS?

 

It seems simpler to me that Mary found out the identity of CAM's PA and befriended her, as Sherlock did, for her own purposes. Presumably Mary was playing the long game, if there was enough time to get so close to Janine that she was not surprised to be asked to be chief bridesmaid.

[T.o.b.y]

Grrr, why do I pop in here before work? So many interesting things to pick up on and zero minutes left to do so...

 

By all means stand by your opinion that it was wrong to kill Magnussen, even though he is fictional and evil, and I do not mean to sound sarcastic here. It's a very admirable attitude and if more writers would adopt it, we'd have a lot less lazy plots.

 

As for Magnussen using only "real" dirty secrets and his victims being at fault themselves for having such, well... my fingers are itching but... later.

[Arcadia]

While T.o.b.y.'s at work, I'll lie awake in the middle of the night and try to think of a sensible response .....

.....

.....

.....

Nope, I got nuthin'.

 

So I'll change the subject a tad ... I notice in the poll above this episode is VERY highly rated. What is it about HLV that we love, folks?

 

I'll go first: It plays me like a, er, violin. So many feels!! Laughter one minute, tears the next. Yeah, I know I'm being manipulated; let them have their way with me and logic be damned! I'll just have a good cry over .... wait, what just happened, again? (Shut up, Brain, this is Heart's moment....)

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

Okay.....I'll take a shot even though I'm not very good at it  but anyway here goes nothing.

 

  We do know that CAM was not only slimy and evil, he was also a liar. He, somehow, led people to believe that he kept all his information in hard copy files in physical vaults under Appledore and that in certain cases he could be reasoned with. When confronted he disavows all this and claims that there were no real files, no vaults, that every last bit of information was stored in his own mind. Which of these stories is the truth and which one the lie.

 

  Because if there was indeed no vaults and physical files then there is no way that anyone could make a deal with CAM. If everything we saw in CAM's vaults were indeed a version of his "mind vault" unlike Sherlock, CAM deleted nothing. Children's toys and the like were still in evidence. Sherlock's "mind palace" was positively sterile in comparison.

 

  He tells John Watson that he does not have to prove that any thing printed up in his news reports are in any way the truth. All kinds of people go in for the conspiracy theories and love gossip. They don't care is it's true. The popularity of tabloid papers and gossip columns attest to this fact.

 

 And even facts and the truth can be manipulated. The most believable lie is the one that contains just a hint of the truth.

[sfmpco]

Okay.....I'll take a shot even though I'm not very good at it  but anyway here goes nothing.

 

  We do know that CAM was not only slimy and evil, he was also a liar. He, somehow, led people to believe that he kept all his information in hard copy files in physical vaults under Appledore and that in certain cases he could be reasoned with. When confronted he disavows all this and claims that there were no real files, no vaults, that every last bit of information was stored in his own mind. Which of these stories is the truth and which one the lie.

 

  Because if there was indeed no vaults and physical files then there is no way that anyone could make a deal with CAM. If everything we saw in CAM's vaults were indeed a version of his "mind vault" unlike Sherlock, CAM deleted nothing. Children's toys and the like were still in evidence. Sherlock's "mind palace" was positively sterile in comparison.

 

  He tells John Watson that he does not have to prove that any thing printed up in his news reports are in any way the truth. All kinds of people go in for the conspiracy theories and love gossip. They don't care is it's true. The popularity of tabloid papers and gossip columns attest to this fact.

 

 And even facts and the truth can be manipulated. The most believable lie is the one that contains just a hint of the truth.

 

And as if to prove CAM's point, Janine sells all sorts of lies about her time with Holmes and his sexual prowess, which captured the headlines of three tabloids.   

[sfmpco]

I should also add, that although CAM had an extensive mind palace, the fact that he had files on Mary meant that he saw files/information SOMEWHERE in the first place.  So the background on Mary didn't die with CAM.  It's just that CAM was the biggest threat to her and lots of others.  That's why Sherlock shot him.  

 

And seeing Sherlock as a young boy after he shot CAM - do you think that's how Mycroft was seeing him - as little brother in trouble - or how Sherlock was feeling about himself?

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

Exactly, and it is clear from Sherlock's reaction that not one reporter from any of those papers came around to get his side of the story. They took what Janine said and ran with it regardless of what Mr. Sherlock Holmes might have to say about it all.

 

  I'm kind of two minds about that. One the one hand, I think it is mostly in Mycroft's eyes that Sherlock is still that younger brother that he loves and wants to look out after.  And yes, when Sherlock is shot he does seem to see that young boy when being called stupid by Mycroft. But then I know that even grown people can be transported back, at least emotionally, when confronted by a angry or verbally abusive person, to those times in their childhood when they were abused, picked on.

 

   So I'm not sure if Sherlock actually sees himself as that child but just feels like it when being confronted by an angry older brother.

 

  He's been facing adult situations for a long time. Been in very dangerous situations so he's not an innocent by any stretch.

[sfmpco]

It can't be a coincidence that Janine is Mary's friend, close enough to be her chief bridesmaid. Therefore, either Mary targeted Janine - as implied in the Baker Street scene - or vice versa. If Janine did deliberately befriend Mary, on CAM's behalf, it was a risky procedure. As soon as Mary knew the name of Janine's employer, she would realise she was a spy. ( What would be the odds against his PA coincidentally befriending her?). Mary is intelligent and, due to the nature of her past, must be wary of people she allows close to her, so could Janine have concealed her job for very long? And how much information could she have found out about Mary anyway? Sherlock didn't deduce her secret until he walked straight into it, and he's the world's only consulting detective!

 

And when Mary did find out.....? We know she is utterly ruthless, even with her supposed friends. She shot Sherlock without hesitation, and would presumably have done the same to her bridesmaid if she discovered she was working for the enemy. Mary had no intention of going to prison and no qualms about killing anyone who could put her there, so Janine would surely become another of those who "ought to be killed" if she was spying for CAM.

 

On top of that, the whole Janine/Sherlock story becomes very complex if she is CAM's catspaw. Why would she get into a relationship with the one man who might discover her secret? Why would she let him into the office? And I still can't work out why she let Mary get close enough to whack her over the head - surely she wasn't so overcome by Sherlock's proposal that she didn't notice that Mary was in the office, dressed like a member of the SAS?

 

It seems simpler to me that Mary found out the identity of CAM's PA and befriended her, as Sherlock did, for her own purposes. Presumably Mary was playing the long game, if there was enough time to get so close to Janine that she was not surprised to be asked to be chief bridesmaid.

 

CAM apparently had something on Janine as well, because told John he did the eye flicking thing on her also.  He was a bully in the truest sense of the word.

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

He also boasted to John that he could do that to whole nations.

[sfmpco]

Yes, but the fact that he said he had done it to Janine implies that he came after her AFTER the office break in.  Before that she was a trusted PA.  And CAM is using that information to possibly try to induce a pressure point on Sherlock.  It does give Sherlock another reason to hate him.

[T.o.b.y]

Soooo... this calls for finally mastering multiquote.

 

 

 

He definitely is doing wrong things, too, but he does not make up things to hurt people. He says he could, but we know that he is not using fake stories against people. He digs up their dirty secrets from whereever they may have hidden them. I do not consider him dangerous because those people endangered themselves when they decided to hide their immoral secrets away. They risk that their secrets can be used against them. I do not say they deserve to be blackmailed or anything. But they accepted the odds that their dirty secrets may be revealed, and of course things get even more dangerous when you first try to hide from the deserved consequences of your own actions. If I commit hit-and-run, I risk that someone saw me. If that person blackmails me, shame on that person, but I am certainly no innocent victim. I risked that, especially when I ran away and hid from the police. I cannot just moan that I deserve better. The way I behaved, I do not deserve any better.

 

Magnussen is not putting more danger on people than they put on themselves in the first place. He may hold that over them, and that is immoral, but he is not the decisive factor. Not the danger itself.

 

Okay. Here we touch upon something I feel very strongly about, so forgive me in advance if I should become a bit verbally heated. Please keep in mind that I respect your opinion, otherwise I'd never pay you "the compliment of rational opposition", to use one of my favorite Austen quotes.

 

I totally disagree. Yes, Magnussen does apparently use their real "dark secrets" against people instead of just making something up. But in my opinion, that makes him all the more a classic villain. Isn't that what villains do? Draw out and feed on the evil in others? Like Moriarty used Sherlock's arrogance and knack of antagonizing people and making them feel inferior to bring about his downfall at the end of series 2. Of course, he also used Sherlock's few redeeming traits against him as well, turning them into seeming weaknesses. Magnussen does that, too. Let's look at the case of the Smallwoods. Lord Smallwood, it seems, had a love affair with a fifteen-year-old girl. At least he wrote her sexy love letters, we never learn how much of what he said in them was ever put into practice. According to his wife, he didn't know how young she was, though. And she wrote back and sent him pictures. Now, who exactly was at fault there? The girl, for lying / not disclosing the full truth about herself and leading him on? Hardly. Fifteen, hormones raging wild, didn't know any better. The man? But he didn't know she was a minor. Is a person required to do a full background check on anybody they fall in love with? Like, is it John's fault that he married an assassin?

 

So we have a complicated, unfortunate affair where neither of the parties can truly be said to have behaved completely well or ill. It happened long ago. And then comes Magnussen and digs it up and shoves it in the face of the man's wife, who is completely innocent, to blackmail her into committing a sin herself by not doing her job properly on the enquiry.

 

How is Magnussen justified in any of this? And how is it Lady Smallwood's fault that she loves her husband enough to care what happens to him, his career, his public image, their marriage? Can you really say it's the poor girl's fault all this is happening, only because she played a dangerous little game with a grown man when she was barely out of puberty? Or that it's the man's fault for having let himself be duped?

 

Nobody is faultless. Not a soul on earth has never made a wrong decision or been a coward or lied. You can build a case against anyone. Magnussen is not justified in what he does, especially since he's not trying to repair past wrongs or prevent future mistakes, he's simply being a bully and ruining people's lives for his own sadistic pleasure. That is vile.

 

 

       Admittedly, CAM supposedly used his knowledge as leverage, though it was never very clear what this leverage got for him

 

Good point. In the original, Milverton mostly did it for money; he asked ridiculous sums from his victims. Magnussen, I think, is simply being a jerk for the heck of it. Power seems to be his form of sex. He strikes me as the kind of man who pulled the legs off spiders when he was little.

 

I notice in the poll above this episode is VERY highly rated. What is it about HLV that we love, folks?

 

I loved having "Sherlock the sociopath" back. From the beginning in the drug den to the thing with Janine and the line about "human error" to shooting Magnussen at close range while yelling "Merry Christmas", there's the character I fell in love with and I was happy to see he wasn't so dead, after all.

 

Also, I have wanted them to do a version of "Charles Augustus Milverton" for so long and I am thrilled it finally happened. And there was the Mind Palace scene, I adored that. And we finally saw Sherlock on drugs, also something I've wanted since series 1.

 

Okay.....I'll take a shot even though I'm not very good at it  but anyway here goes nothing.

 

  We do know that CAM was not only slimy and evil, he was also a liar. He, somehow, led people to believe that he kept all his information in hard copy files in physical vaults under Appledore and that in certain cases he could be reasoned with. When confronted he disavows all this and claims that there were no real files, no vaults, that every last bit of information was stored in his own mind. Which of these stories is the truth and which one the lie.

 

  Because if there was indeed no vaults and physical files then there is no way that anyone could make a deal with CAM. If everything we saw in CAM's vaults were indeed a version of his "mind vault" unlike Sherlock, CAM deleted nothing. Children's toys and the like were still in evidence. Sherlock's "mind palace" was positively sterile in comparison.

 

  He tells John Watson that he does not have to prove that any thing printed up in his news reports are in any way the truth. All kinds of people go in for the conspiracy theories and love gossip. They don't care is it's true. The popularity of tabloid papers and gossip columns attest to this fact.

 

 And even facts and the truth can be manipulated. The most believable lie is the one that contains just a hint of the truth.

 

Yes, that's another aspect of Magnussen's perfidy. Not only does he drag up dirt, he also has the power and the will to distort it and make it look much worse than it is. So even truly innocent people would be in danger from him, because he could take anything about them that had a grain of truth in it and make it look like a scandal with all the consequences.

 

By the way, not all Magnussen's "pressure points" were sins. When looking at one man, he considered using information on him having a disabled daughter. And when he "scanned" Sherlock, he saw a load of information, but what he decided to go for was not drugs or all the laws I am sure Sherlock has broken in his day, but his affection for his best friend.

[Slithytove]

As a human being, CAM is clearly a failure - a manipulative little creep with a penchant for nasty mind games. As a blackmailer and/or media mogul, he seems a bit stupid to me. Why tell your victims you don't actually have any hard evidence of their misdemeanours? Why bother to dig up dirt on people if you truly believe that it is enough to be able to print stories, without evidence - wouldn't it be easier, in that case, to make them up?

 

However, just because you are a thoroughly unpleasant person, that doesn't mean people have the right to execute you because they don't like what you do. If CAM really was a blackmailer - and we don't know what he got out of people, if anything, as a result of his threats - he should have been prosecuted. Even Jim Moriarty, who had massive amounts of blood on his hands, would have been entitled to a fair trial rather than a summary execution. (As a lifelong opponent of capital punishment, I wouldn't support a state execution either, but a legal sentence after a fair trial is clearly different from arbitrary execution by an individual citizen.). Vigilante justice may seem satisfying but it is not only illegal, but also dangerous. Once you decide who "ought to be killed", where do you stop? And who has the right to make such decisions? Everyone who disapproves of someone else's actions? I would say that Sherlock's murder of CAM falls into the category of vigilante justice, because he felt he was killing a repugnant person for the greater good. If Mary had killed CAM, I think it would have been straightforward murder, as her sole motivation was to protect herself from punishment for her previous crimes.

 

Do we really believe that CAM could have effectively gained leverage over people without hard evidence? Clearly he has some evidence, e.g. the Smallwood letters, and also says he sometimes sends for things when necessary. So he does have some sort of vault, somewhere.....Presumably he has people who provide information about those who have secrets, and presumably these people are capable of acquiring evidence ( in fact, are these people journalists?), so why wouldn't he keep it? Is he an idiot? I don't know about the law elsewhere but in the UK he risks prosecution for libel if he prints defamatory statements without evidence to back them up. Certainly newspapers will sail very close to the edge, printing all sorts of nonsense about people and usually getting away with it, but they can be taken to court if the subject of these stories challenges them. For instance, the comedian Russell Brand recently won undisclosed damages against a newspaper which falsely alleged he had cheated on his wife during their marriage. Very damaging allegations such as those made against Lord Smallwood or Mary Watson would have to be capable of being proved to be true, so CAM would definitely need Smallwood's letters and also concrete proof of Mary's crimes. (Also, to be fair, we've only got Lady Smallwood's word that her husband was misled about the girl's age - and, even if she was being honest, we don't know that her husband told her the truth.).

 

I don't have any liking or sympathy for CAM as a person, but that is what he was - a human being - and you can't execute people just because you are a CIA- trained assassin or a consulting detective. Or, rather, you can but you are not only breaking the law, you are breaking the moral code of civilised society. I think that Sherlock, unlike Mary, understands this because he is, at heart, the good man Lestrade hopes he will be. He does a terrible thing for a good reason - to protect his friend's happiness - but he knows it was terrible. That's why he weeps and why he accepts that he must be punished.

 

That's my take on it, anyway. No doubt it will all be disproved in the next series.....

[Zain]

This will, most likely, be very long. I apologize in advance.

 

 

Okay.....I'll take a shot even though I'm not very good at it  but anyway here goes nothing.

 

  We do know that CAM was not only slimy and evil, he was also a liar. He, somehow, led people to believe that he kept all his information in hard copy files in physical vaults under Appledore and that in certain cases he could be reasoned with. When confronted he disavows all this and claims that there were no real files, no vaults, that every last bit of information was stored in his own mind. Which of these stories is the truth and which one the lie.

 

  He tells John Watson that he does not have to prove that any thing printed up in his news reports are in any way the truth. All kinds of people go in for the conspiracy theories and love gossip. They don't care is it's true. The popularity of tabloid papers and gossip columns attest to this fact.

 

 And even facts and the truth can be manipulated. The most believable lie is the one that contains just a hint of the truth.

 

Okay. When did Magnussen state that he keeps hard copy files when he does not? Yes, he implies that he kept records. The details he is able to recall, e.g. from Lord Smallwood's letters add to that, as well as the "fake copies" he carries with him. But does that make him a liar? I do not think so. Omission is not lying by default. Let's say a police officer tells a suspect that they have video coverage of the crime scene, and they do, but the camera was not functioning properly. If you say the police officer lied by omission, then the suspect goes free even if he confessed to the crime. There's a difference between misleading someone and lying to someone.

 

I am not defending his character. I doubt there's anybody who truly liked his character... I am simply saying that 1. His death was not deserved, and 2. He was not the threat himself. He only acts as a conductor. By choice, yes, but that does not make him the cause of the "catastrophe."

You state "they do not care if it is true." Well, Magnussen seemed to care. He does not enjoy simply humiliating a person, otherwise he'd just print whatever he can think of. Instead, he keeps tabs on people to use the truth against them. I state again: The fact that he prints those truths is not a criminal act. If a reporter found out those facts, and printed them, it would not be a criminal act either. Because it is not slander. The despicable thing about Magnussen is that he holds the truth over his victims. Not that he finds out a person's dirty secret. But it is criminal of him to keep the information to himself instead of reporting it to the authorities.

 

 

 

 

And as if to prove CAM's point, Janine sells all sorts of lies about her time with Holmes and his sexual prowess, which captured the headlines of three tabloids.   

 

 

Yes, it proves what CAM says. That he could print everything he wanted. But he doesn't. And Janine goes to a rival of his. Because that rival prints those lies.

There's a certain half truth about it, and still Magnussen is not interested in it. He didn't pick up on it either, apparently. So how can that be proof that he is a liar? When he does not print lies or half-truths like Janine is spreading?

 

 

I should also add, that although CAM had an extensive mind palace, the fact that he had files on Mary meant that he saw files/information SOMEWHERE in the first place.  So the background on Mary didn't die with CAM.  It's just that CAM was the biggest threat to her and lots of others.  That's why Sherlock shot him.  

 

And seeing Sherlock as a young boy after he shot CAM - do you think that's how Mycroft was seeing him - as little brother in trouble - or how Sherlock was feeling about himself?

 

Oh, a hopeful thought. Thank you, yes, someone might still have the information on Mary.

 

I believe this time we saw Sherlock from Mycroft's perspective. In Sherlock's mind palace, we got to see that Sherlock thinks of himself as a child when in Mycroft's presence. When he runs towards Redbeard, Sherlock "grows" up. Mycroft remains an adult, Sherlock becomes a child. It implies that he feels like a child compared to his brother. Maybe because his brother does not see him as an adult and keeps treating him like a child.

 

At the end of HLV, we get to see Sherlock in child-form after Mycroft gets a close-up from the camera. To me, that seems to imply that this is his perspective, especially because we at first see child-Sherlock from Mycroft's direction, then the camera shifts to behind child-Sherlock, but not directly behind him, which would indicate that we are in the character's perspective. So it's more of an overview camera position, the camera "pulls back" to reveal the context of the scene:  That way we get to see the helicoptor for causality, it explains the tears that follow in the next shot. The audience is kept in that position when the camera switches to a close-up of child-Sherlock's face and the tears. Even then, the camera has a left angle, indicating audience, not introspection (a confrontational close-up would be better for introspection, I think. But my knowledge of camera work is far from adequate). Basically, I think that the camera viewpoint could indicate that it is Mycroft's perspective. But like anything else, this is very much up for debate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I totally disagree. Yes, Magnussen does apparently use their real "dark secrets" against people instead of just making something up. But in my opinion, that makes him all the more a classic villain. Isn't that what villains do? Draw out and feed on the evil in others? Like Moriarty used Sherlock's arrogance and knack of antagonizing people and making them feel inferior to bring about his downfall at the end of series 2. Of course, he also used Sherlock's few redeeming traits against him as well, turning them into seeming weaknesses. Magnussen does that, too. Let's look at the case of the Smallwoods. Lord Smallwood, it seems, had a love affair with a fifteen-year-old girl. At least he wrote her sexy love letters, we never learn how much of what he said in them was ever put into practice. According to his wife, he didn't know how young she was, though. And she wrote back and sent him pictures. Now, who exactly was at fault there? The girl, for lying / not disclosing the full truth about herself and leading him on? Hardly. Fifteen, hormones raging wild, didn't know any better. The man? But he didn't know she was a minor. Is a person required to do a full background check on anybody they fall in love with? Like, is it John's fault that he married an assassin?

 

So we have a complicated, unfortunate affair where neither of the parties can truly be said to have behaved completely well or ill. It happened long ago. And then comes Magnussen and digs it up and shoves it in the face of the man's wife, who is completely innocent, to blackmail her into committing a sin herself by not doing her job properly on the enquiry.

 

How is Magnussen justified in any of this? And how is it Lady Smallwood's fault that she loves her husband enough to care what happens to him, his career, his public image, their marriage? Can you really say it's the poor girl's fault all this is happening, only because she played a dangerous little game with a grown man when she was barely out of puberty? Or that it's the man's fault for having let himself be duped?

 

Nobody is faultless. Not a soul on earth has never made a wrong decision or been a coward or lied. You can build a case against anyone. Magnussen is not justified in what he does, especially since he's not trying to repair past wrongs or prevent future mistakes, he's simply being a bully and ruining people's lives for his own sadistic pleasure. That is vile.

 

[...]

 

By the way, not all Magnussen's "pressure points" were sins. When looking at one man, he considered using information on him having a disabled daughter. And when he "scanned" Sherlock, he saw a load of information, but what he decided to go for was not drugs or all the laws I am sure Sherlock has broken in his day, but his affection for his best friend.

 

A lot to reply to, so please bear with me. And of course, I respect your opinion, too

I agree with you in one particular argument: Magnussen is a villain. His actions are deplorable. But, and here, I disagree with you: It is not the act of collecting dirty secrets, but the act of holding them over a person.

With Lord Smallwood, I'd like to point out one very essential question: Where does a much older man meet a 15 year old girl in such a context that leads to sexually charged letters? Lady Smallwood claims he did not know, and he did not see, and anyway, he is innocent of anything. Yes, girls can look older than they are. But it seems like he does not have much to defend himself with. The girl apparently would not make a case against him, but why would the Smallwoods not refuse to play Magnussen's game if the girl could confirm this "innocent" nature of the affair?

The fact that Magnussen can hold a few letters over Lord Smallwood with such force indicates that no, it was not such an innocent mistake. Would it have harmed his reputation? Yes. But I doubt that is the reason why Lord Smallwood killed himself. He had nothing to defend himself with. That's my conclusion. Doesn't change that Magnussen had no right to hold it over Lord Smallwood. But they way the "story" is told does not indicate that he was this innocent. Would it not have been much more efficient to get Sherlock to find that girl and convince her to help them go public with the truth before lies could be printed? Instead, Lady Smallwood wants the letters to disappear. The allegedly innocent truth. If it is this innocent, why is it essential to make it disappear?

 

And no, not at all. It is not John's fault that he married an assassin. But he is responsible for the way he deals with it. 

 

Magnussen isn't justified. Again, we agree on the basic "theory." I never claimed he was. Lady Smallwood is, to a degree, responsible. To the same as John at the end. She knows about her husband's dirty secret, and she agreed to keep mum about it. That's a decision. A person is always responsible for one's own decisions. If my brother stole a car, and told me about it, I am responsible, too. Because I know about it. If I stick up for him and do not report him, but then the police catches him, I am liable for aiding him. Because I am responsible for my own action, or in this case, inaction. Does that mean Lady Smallwood deserves to be blackmailed? Of course not. That's Magnussen's vile action, he holds it over those people. If he simply printed the story, then yes, Lady Smallwood had it coming, so to speak. Just because you were not involved in the act does not mean you are automatically not liable for it.

 

Again, yes, Magnussen is a sadist. He is not justified in his behavior. But, and here I disagree: He does not, as you stated, ruin those people's lives. They did that themselves with their actions, and their actions following their actions. Even if Lord Smallwood really was as innocent in the matter as his wife stated, he hid this affair. He did not visit the girl's parents and apologize and explain. That is a decision he is liable for.

As you said, everybody makes mistakes. But the way you deal with them is important. Hiding your mistakes to avoid deserved consequences, that is highly immoral, too.

 

Yes, his pressure points are a person's weakness. But he does not use those against the people, he uses those weaknesses to dig further until he finds something he can publish, like with Mycroft, he went for Mycroft's weakness, Sherlock, then he went for Sherlock's weakness, John, and John's weakness is Mary, and Mary is the last chain. Magnussen is not threatening John and Sherlock for the sake of it, he is using them like tools to get to Mycroft. He is not interested in slandering people. He is interested in seeing people stumble over their own mountains of accumulated dirt. Again, I do not despise the fact that he looks for immoral acts. But it is despicable that he enjoys it, and that he holds it over them instead of rightout publishing it. It is not about righting a wrong for Magnussen. And that's why he is a villain.

 

 

I respect your opinion but I fear I cannot relent in any point of my "morality discussion." Otherwise I'd endanger the integrity of my own principles of morality. With principles, it's always the same. Never make any exception, otherwise exceptions become the rule.

[Slithytove]

I agree that it is not the possession or revelation of the truth which is reprehensible, it is using the truth to gain an advantage which is wrong. If a journalist uncovers someone's ugly secret, it is not morally wrong to expose it. In fact, it is wrong to conceal it. However, if the journalist threatens to expose it, or promises to keep it hidden, to gain power over the person involved, then that's indefensible.

 

For instance, it's not wrong to expose Mary as a killer. In fact, it is illegal and immoral to cover up that truth. However, to use that knowledge to get power over John, and thus over Sherlock, and thus over Mycroft.....That's CAM's sin. But Zain is right, I believe, that the people with dark secrets to hide are responsible for their own actions. You cannot be threatened by revelations if you have nothing to reveal - particularly not by a man who apparently doesn't possess even fabricated evidence to hold against you! As far as we know, the secrets which CAM threatens to reveal are real. Mary was a killer. Lord Smallwood's position was morally dubious. Using their secrets as leverage was clearly wrong, but they would not have been in that situation if it was not for their own misbehaviour.

 

If CAM did not care about the truth of his allegations, as implied by his remark about not having to prove things because he only has to print them, there would be no need to go through the complex business of owning Mary to own John to own Sherlock to own Mycroft. Why not simply invent something damning about Mycroft himself and threaten to print it? Quicker, simpler and straight to the point.

[sfmpco]

Wow, some excellent discussion and points made above.  Bravo.  The fact that there IS this much discussion just shows what great writing is contained in those scripts.  The scripts do not have an ounce of fat on them.  They are lean and precise.

[Arcadia]

Might as well have my go at some of this ....
 

 

Admittedly, CAM supposedly used his knowledge as leverage, though it was never very clear what this leverage got for him

 
Good point. In the original, Milverton mostly did it for money; he asked ridiculous sums from his victims. Magnussen, I think, is simply being a jerk for the heck of it. Power seems to be his form of sex. He strikes me as the kind of man who pulled the legs off spiders when he was little.

 

 
There are some variations on this idea that somehow CAM was not seeking any material gain from his blackmail, but I disagree. It may not be precisely defined what CAM's leverage got him, but I think the opening sequence is an indication. He was attempting ... apparently successfully ... to influence the government for his own benefit. He wanted the kind of power and access that even his money couldn't buy. The person he was after wasn't Mary, John or Sherlock ... he was after Mycroft. The other three were meaningless pawns to him. His mistake.

 

... seeing Sherlock as a young boy after he shot CAM - do you think that's how Mycroft was seeing him - as little brother in trouble - or how Sherlock was feeling about himself?

I started to say I thought it was Mycroft's p.o.v., but now that I think about it a little more I can see how it could describe both brothers' view of their relationship. Mycroft sees a little brother screwing up (again), and Sherlock sees himself as a disappointment (again) to the ever-judging Mycroft, I would guess.
 
Sherlockandjohn had a theory that it represented their response to Sherlock's loss of innocence, as well, which is an interpretation I quite like. It's many, many pages back in this thread if you want to track it down.

 

Yes, but the fact that he said he had done it to Janine implies that he came after her AFTER the office break in.  Before that she was a trusted PA.  And CAM is using that information to possibly try to induce a pressure point on Sherlock.  It does give Sherlock another reason to hate him.

Wow, I never thought of that, I just assumed he had "pressured" her into working for him. But she seemed very light-hearted for someone in that situation. I like your interpretation, it makes more sense in some ways. Hmmmm. Surely he would've asked her how Sherlock got into the office in the first place ... which could have led to learning about her relationship to Mary and Sherlock. If he didn't already know. Hard to say, but I like your idea.

 

... just because you are a thoroughly unpleasant person, that doesn't mean people have the right to execute you ... Vigilante justice may seem satisfying but it is not only illegal, but also dangerous. Once you decide who "ought to be killed", where do you stop? And who has the right to make such decisions? ....

Exactly.

There's an implication afoot that Sherlock is somehow "justified" in his action because he did it to protect John. But John's life wasn't in danger. His happiness, maybe, but in "real life" that's not an accepted excuse for killing someone.

As I see it, Season 3 is a story meant to be understood with the heart, not the mind (or not just the mind). But the only way I can accept CAM's death as an "act of justice" is to remind myself this is a work of fiction, with slightly different rules coming into play whenever "real world" rules become inconvenient. But that throws me out of the story; I become a detached observer, I'm responding with the mind, I'm no longer "present" in the scene. And the story doesn't bear up very well to detached observation; it's not meant to. But they force you to. *sigh*
 

If Mary had killed CAM, I think it would have been straightforward murder, as her sole motivation was to protect herself from punishment for her previous crimes.

I don't think we can excuse Sherlock but condemn Mary. Her motivation (she said) was to protect John; same as Sherlock's. The willingness or unwillingness to accept the consequences of killing someone does not determine whether or not it IS murder. In any case, Mary didn't shoot CAM, and Sherlock's still alive, so she's in no danger of a murder charge (at least, not for those two).
 

...Do we really believe that CAM could have effectively gained leverage over people without hard evidence?......

In Mary's case, the threat was that CAM would tell her enemies where to find her. Her whereabouts was the leverage, not proof of her identity. In Lord Smallwood's case, it's harder to say; perhaps even a suggestion of impropriety was enough to damage his reputation more than he could bear. Someone else might have just taken his case to the public and challenged CAM to produce the evidence.

[T.o.b.y]

...the people with dark secrets to hide are responsible for their own actions. You cannot be threatened by revelations if you have nothing to reveal...

 

But everybody has something, more or less. Something "not quite good" or simply embarrassing that a man like Magnussen could use against them. I think it's a (dangerous) illusion to think we can keep ourselves safe by simply "having nothing to hide". You can't be human and go through life without anything ever being truly your fault.

 

By the way, the reason why I think Sherlock is ultimately justified in killing Magnussen is not revenge or "justice". I don't believe in revenge and I am certainly not in favor of any kind of death penalty, certainly not in real life and not really within the realms of fiction, either. In my eyes, though, what Sherlock did was prevent further harm, and that is the only issue that really matters when dealing with crimes, in my opinion. Magnussen did ruin people's lives. And he did threaten John's life: He said he would contact people whose loved ones Mary "hurt and killed." Killed. You think families or individuals seeking revenge would stop at murdering John? If Mary's victims weren't quite innocent themselves, then I very much doubt those who might grieve for them are likely to simply go to the police.

 

For me, shooting Magnussen is a perfectly rational decision. Sherlock might not have been quite cool and collected when he did so, but I doubt he acted against his reason. Magnussen's "vaults" were a threat to people's lives and happiness, and, since Magnussen dealt on a much larger scale than personal matters, a threat to the country as well. So they had to be destroyed. It turned out the vaults only existed in Magnussen's brain, so the only way to destroy them was to shoot him in the head.

 

I am not saying anybody should pin a medal on Sherlock for what he did or that the justice of the land should pardon or ignore him. Not even a fictional society should condone killing people, for whatever reason. But somebody had to take Magnussen down and Sherlock is a hero for being, once more, "prepared to burn" for a good cause.

 

 

Shit, late for work now...

 

 

[Slithytove]

Not going to attempt to use MultiQuote (old, still somewhat confused by mobile phones....), so I'll have to answer some of the points by name.

 

Arcadia, I don't excuse Sherlock. I don't think killing is ever justified unless there is a direct and immediate threat to someone else's life. I think Sherlock made the wrong decision, even though he did for a good reason, if we accept that he was trying to protect John. If he was protecting Mary from prison, that can't be justified. (We shouldn't forget that his original reason for going to Appledore was to get hold of the evidence which could result in Mary's imprisonment. CAM's threat to Mary's safety came later. The whole project was on morally shaky grounds from the start.). For instance, would it be ok for Lestrade to help a murderer to go free because she was his friend? I don't think so, and the same applies to Sherlock. However, I am willing to believe that Sherlock was motivated by his desire to protect John, who is clearly the most important person in his life.

 

The idea that Mary's motivation was the same - love for John - is pushing it a bit. Mary's motive was to save her own skin. I don't think that anyone could claim that, "My husband would be sad if he discovered I was a murderer, and went to prison for life, so I decided to kill the man who knew the truth" was a good moral argument. Well, you might be persuaded if you were in the Mafia, but otherwise.....

 

T.o.b.y, I respect your opinion but I have to say I strongly disagree. Your argument is basically, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.". That is a compassionate warning against judging each other's weaknesses, but it has limitations. For a start, if no-one cast the first stone, we would have no criminal justice system and the strong would prey mercilessly on the weak. And the fact that we have all done things we are not proud of does not mean that no-one should reveal or condemn another person's wrongdoing. We all have secrets but not all our secrets are equal. Infidelity is wrong and hurtful but it is not as bad as paedophilia. Stealing is very bad and illegal but not as bad as murder.

 

Of course, we all have faults. That does not mean that people who have hurt others in very serious ways - who have maimed or killed or sexually abused others, as that is the type of crime CAM is threatening to reveal - should be allowed to hide their offences or just write them off and start new lives. As Zain pointed out, CAM would not be wrong to ruin Mary's life by revealing the truth. She had ruined it herself by choosing to be a killer. Nor would it be wrong to question Lord Smallwood's relationship with a child. CAM's wrongdoing lay in trying to use the information for his own advantage. I'm not convinced that he deserved to die for that.

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

 

Why not simply invent something damning about Mycroft himself and threaten to print it? Quicker, simpler and straight to the point.

 

   Maybe CAM didn't dare to go that far?  Mycroft admitted to be protecting CAM, of using him.  If CAM was telling the truth of having whole governments under his thumb he was going to need that protection. 

 

 It seems that CAM and Mycroft were playing a waiting game. Hoping to find a way to rid each one of the other and it almost ended when Sherlock stepped in placing himself in the middle, giving CAM the upper hand. CAM finally had the leverage he needed to discredit Sherlock get him thrown in prison for treason which would have destroyed Mycroft's reputation and end his power as "The British Government".

 

  CAM might have been free of Mycroft but he would also be at the mercy of any government who was to learn that CAM no longer enjoyed Mycroft's influence.