Episode 3.3, "His Last Vow"

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

 It seems Sherlock was a very isolated and lonely child. The family thinking him slow to the point of being idiotic.....if Redbeard was his only true friend and confidant.....then his lose would be deeply felt and grieved over. Mycroft taunted him about it. This also causes deep emotional scaring. Sherlock is in deep pain and the family has no sympathy. No compassion and Sherlock has no one to turn to. Everything gets internalized.

 

 I think Sherlock would have been shocked when Magnussen mentions Redbeard because this was a deeply personal and private knowledge. How would it come that this man, that Sherlock loathes and hates so deeply would have that kind of information? Only one source.....Mycroft.

 

 And why would Mycroft be sharing such things with Magnussen.

[Carol the Dabbler]

Wonder if he told Moriarty too? 

 

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

No idea. Sometimes I could throttle Mycroft and have no regrets.

[Arcadia]

Poor Mycroft! In all fairness, there might have been other people who knew about Redbeard; parents, teachers, household staff.... But I agree, much more fun to blame Mycroft!

[Zain]

You think he had that information from Mycroft? I really cannot see that. Sure, my "head canon" version of Mycroft is rather dark and twisted at times, but utterly devoted to his brother in a way that is more obsession than one would consider healthy.

After TRF, I doubt they would present us with this kind of solution. "Oh, it was Mycroft who blabbed." No. That would be horribly cheap. As Arcadia stated, there are lots of people in one's life to press for information. Magnussen is a master of putting sources to the best of uses, to pick up what is "useful" and what he may discard. I really do not want to know what people could get to know about me just by talking to people I barely know, like old class mates in elementary school, or former teachers, or heck, neighbours. Then there's the odd information to be found about you on the internet. If you dig long enough, you can find something on anybody. Be it from digital or human sources. Even if you do not post your picture for the world to see on a social network site, you leave traces about yourself as soon as you communicate. Just think of what the advertisement companies do. They profile you, tailor advertisement to you. Sometimes hilariously incorrectly, but let's not forget, they use machines. If a human did it... it would most likely be far more accurate. It would take longer, though.

 

[sfmpco]

I don't know that Sherlock was slow - just slow to Mycroft to whom everyone is a goldfish.  Although even Mary said at Leinster Gardens, "you were very slow."  So he may have felt slow compared to Mycroft but I think he fought back to prove himself.  Clearly they played a lot of table games when growing up as well as deduction games.  And somewhere was Redbeard.  I think he may have been Sherlock's dog.  For a reason we don't know yet, Redbeard was put down which is indeed a deep old wound in Sherlock.  Redbeard calmed him as a child and that's why he goes to him in the mind palace after being shot, but the reunion is short.  

 

 Molly says, "How dare you throw away the beautiful gifts you were born with..." so that implies that he's always had the gifts, but with all gifts, they must be shaped and focused and worked at.  Except savants just have an innate ability, and he is more savant-like in his ability to not just make deductions but to put things the pieces together (although John says, "you never have been a puzzle solver").  Sherlock tells Moriarty that he hates riddles, so that's not his strong suit.  

 

But changing subject... the MIND PALACE.  When we are first introduced to it in Baskervilles, he has to stop everything to go to his mind palace and trying to work things out.  That may take a while.  In TEH after visiting Shilcott, he stands at the top of the inner staircase and goes to his mind palace trying to work out the details of the train problem.  His body freezes while his brain goes into overtime.  In TSOT the mind palace stuff seems to come quicker to him as he searches for solutions during his best man speech.  Then in HLV, we have a whole long sequence of mind palace workings within the three seconds before he hits the floor after being shot.  So my point is, his ability to work the mind palace seems to be speeding up.

[Carol the Dabbler]

Molly says, "How dare you throw away the beautiful gifts you were born with..." so that implies that he's always had the gifts, but with all gifts, they must be shaped and focused and worked at.  Except savants just have an innate ability, and he is more savant-like in his ability to not just make deductions but to put things the pieces together (although John says, "you never have been a puzzle solver").  Sherlock tells Moriarty that he hates riddles, so that's not his strong suit.

 

Sherlock often comes up with answers so quickly that maybe he doesn't actually "solve" the puzzle or the riddle -- maybe he somehow just "sees" or "knows" the solution -- which, right, would be more like a savant -- or it could be called a flash of inspiration.

 

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

To me Mycroft is the most obvious choice...

 

                  1) He is in contact with CAM....using him...on occasion...he is a necessary evil.

 

                  2) It is Mycroft who taunted Sherlock on his closeness and devotion to the dog and apparently how hard Sherlock takes 

                                                                                  Redbeard's death.

 

                  3) Neighbors and teachers may know that the Holmes's have a family dog, but would they know how close Sherlock's relation to   the  dog was? Would they know how deeply Redbeard's death would affect Sherlock?  John spoke to Irene about how   taken her death. Moody, not eating, writing sad music....but then that was Sherlock.

 

                  4) The elder Holmes's did seem social....but would they talk about what went one in the family home. In most it's what happens at

                        home stays in the home. Sherlock tells Mrs. Hudson that she is welcome to talk to Mummy...but she understands very little. Yes children

                        often feel that parents tend to be rather dim. But maybe to Mummy, Sherlock's attachment to Redbeard just did seem all

                         that important.

 

                5) This isn't the kind of thing a child shares over the computer....especially if he's not a social networker. A blog on criminal happenings...yes.....how much Redbeard was his confident his only and best friend....probably not. That would be to personal...to special.

 

[jesskayding]

 

 

So whose vision of the young Sherlock at the end was it? Was it how Mycroft was seeing Sherlock or how Sherlock was seeing himself. I am now going for the latter. I think it is Sherlock seeing himself, scared and vulnerable and in need of help from his big brother to rescue him. This makes it especially heart-wrenching.

You know...... I don't know.,

[sfmpco]

no, it's definitely how Sherlock sees himself as ALL the other times there is a young Sherlock, it is HIS point of view.

[Zain]

To me Mycroft is the most obvious choice...

 

                  1) He is in contact with CAM....using him...on occasion...he is a necessary evil.

 

                  2) It is Mycroft who taunted Sherlock on his closeness and devotion to the dog and apparently how hard Sherlock takes 

                                                                                  Redbeard's death.

 

                  3) Neighbors and teachers may know that the Holmes's have a family dog, but would they know how close Sherlock's relation to   the  dog was? Would they know how deeply Redbeard's death would affect Sherlock?  John spoke to Irene about how   taken her death. Moody, not eating, writing sad music....but then that was Sherlock.

 

                  4) The elder Holmes's did seem social....but would they talk about what went one in the family home. In most it's what happens at

                        home stays in the home. Sherlock tells Mrs. Hudson that she is welcome to talk to Mummy...but she understands very little. Yes children

                        often feel that parents tend to be rather dim. But maybe to Mummy, Sherlock's attachment to Redbeard just did seem all

                         that important.

 

                5) This isn't the kind of thing a child shares over the computer....especially if he's not a social networker. A blog on criminal happenings...yes.....how much Redbeard was his confident his only and best friend....probably not. That would be to personal...to special.

 

Well, of course you are entitled to your interpretation. All I am saying is that you can get to know a lot about a person without even having to contact those close to them. Just one person who says "Oh, he had a dog.", and another saying "Well, he became more quiet for a time. Did not show off as much as before." And another saying "Oh, the dog had to be put down. It attacked another person." And so on.

And my comment on one's traces on the internet was not meant to mean that I think Sherlock shared this with another person, it rather was a universal statement. We leave traces whenever we communicate. So did Sherlock in his past. People may not be willing to talk to a stranger about another person for hours, but they may give away small details. And a lot of small details from lots of people gets you a rather good picture of someone.

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

I know that humans leave their footprints all over this planet, in one way or another, but we are talking about CAM.....who is not interested in the mundane. A child has a pet, it dies....the child mourns. Very every day....very dull.  No, there is something deeper CAM would need....some kind of pressure point....a deep link.

 

 People outside the family would know the surface stuff.....but it would take someone close to Sherlock, someone who knew how deeply Redbeard mattered and how his death affected Sherlock to spark CAM's interest and need to know. It had to be something of a weapon that he could use....just like he did in 221b. Mycroft is the only one who would know that.

 

  Yes, Mummy and Daddy Holmes might have been aware....but neither of them showed up as pressure points. Not even mentioned.

[Arcadia]

I don't understand how CAM could use Redbeard as "pressure" on Sherlock anyway. What's he gonna do, threaten to kill the dog again? Say something mean about him and make Sherlock cry? Doesn't make sense to me, any more than the morphine being a "pressure point" -- as CAM himself pointed out, Sherlock wouldn't care if people thought he was on morphine anyway.

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

Neither do I really. But apparently Mofftiss had something in mind. Mycroft uses it in "SOtT" and CAM again in "HLV" and both get quite the reaction from Sherlock.

 

 Some have posted comments saying that it seemed to be some kind of code word as Mycroft used it.  If it was....then again....how would CAM come to know how it would affect Sherlock....because his use of "Redbeard" seemed to be every bit as deliberate as Mycroft's had been.

[Zain]

I suppose Redbeard is connected to something else, maybe Sherlock was traumatized by losing him and stopped speaking, or hid himself away. Dogs usually are taken down, if they showed to be a threat or if they are sick. Redbeard could have attacked someone, which would merge Redbeard somewhat with Victor Trevor's dog, who bit Holmes in his youth (but with no consequences). Maybe Sherlock was responsible, maybe he had been playing with the dog and lost control. Just one of the possible ways it could be a very traumatizing event in his childhood. Or Redbeard attacked someone that was trying to hurt Sherlock, but it could not be proven that that person had bad intentions.

Maybe this was the beginning of his mind palace,and  of "deleting" things. Who knows.

 

 

[T.o.b.y]

I used to have this theory that little Sherlock did some kind of experiment on Redbeard and thus killed him by mistake (or made him so ill that he had to be put down). But then I read some interview somewhere (sorry, I've forgotten where and which one, exactly), during which Moffat (I think it was Moffat) said that when Redbeard was put down, Sherlock was told the common story about his pet having gone off to a beautiful place to live a happy life ever after and he was so naive that he actually believed that, something that Mycroft has never let him forget. So it seems to be mostly something poor Sherlock is very embarrassed about.

[T.o.b.y]

I just noticed something. The girl Lord Smallwood had an affair with was named Helen Katherine Driscoll, am I right? Incidentally, Katherine Driscoll is also the name of a student who has an affair with her professor in the novel "Stoner". Coincidence? Or is there maybe a greater significance behind that name than I am aware of?

[Caya]

I used to have this theory that little Sherlock did some kind of experiment on Redbeard and thus killed him by mistake (or made him so ill that he had to be put down).

 

[sfmpco]

Noticed last night that Moriarty says "Off you pop" twice - once in TRF when Sherlock first steps onto the roof ledge (hadn't caught it there) and the 2nd time in HLV in the mind palace sequence - both times telling him to go to his death.

[Arcadia]

Yeah, interesting choice of phrase, considering how he popped himself off.

[T.o.b.y]

...my "head canon" version of Mycroft is rather dark and twisted at times, but utterly devoted to his brother in a way that is more obsession than one would consider healthy...

 

I agree with you there. I think Mycroft is profoundly unhealthy in so many ways and his manner of caring about his little brother feels decidedly creepy to me. I think he's jealous of John, for example. Because, lets face it, John may be a "goldfish", but he's a hell of a lot better brother figure to Sherlock than Mycroft is...

 

Poor Sherlock. One does wonder where those seemingly nice parents of his were when the boys were growing up together. Somehow, that happy Holmes homestead in His Last Vow fails to convince me.

[Slithytove]

Isn't Redbeard, basically, a forerunner of John - in other words, someone Sherlock loved and lost?

 

That, presumably, was what Mycroft was implying when he spoke to Sherlock at the wedding. Sherlock loved the dog and his heart was broken when it was put down. Similarly, he loved John (platonically, at least) and was hurting because he was losing that love too.

 

As for the mind palace scene, it was pointed out in a meta on archiveofourown.org - sorry, can't remember the author - that the corridor Sherlock runs down in his mind palace is extremely similar to the one John runs down in ASiP, searching for Sherlock. In his mind palace, when he is dying, Sherlock desperately searches for John to save him but finds a previous lost love, i.e. his childhood pet. (And, I would guess, his only friend when growing up.).

 

I think Redbeard works as a symbol of Sherlock's love and trust for John, and his fear of losing him. Therefore it would make sense that CAM had noted the significance of the dog, as it would have been young Sherlock's pressure point in the same way that John is his adult pressure point. Losing Redbeard was, in a way, a rehearsal for the real thing, loving and trusting John and feeling the pain of loss - an emotion which Mycroft guards against, by keeping everyone at a distance. Can't imagine he had an adored dog when he was child....

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

Yup very nice parallels. Nicely drawn and makes all kinds of sense.

[jesskayding]

I know that humans leave their footprints all over this planet, in one way or another, but we are talking about CAM.....who is not interested in the mundane. A child has a pet, it dies....the child mourns. Very every day....very dull. No, there is something deeper CAM would need....some kind of pressure point....a deep link.

 

People outside the family would know the surface stuff.....but it would take someone close to Sherlock, someone who knew how deeply Redbeard mattered and how his death affected Sherlock to spark CAM's interest and need to know. It had to be something of a weapon that he could use....just like he did in 221b. Mycroft is the only one who would know that.

 

Yes, Mummy and Daddy Holmes might have been aware....but neither of them showed up as pressure points. Not even mentioned.

What amazes me is that Dr. Watson is still in the dark about Redbeard. Also I always thought it was so mean that Mycroft used Redbeard to make his point about Sherlock getting involved in the SO3

..

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

I knew it had something to do with Mycroft meaning that Sherlock shouldn't get involved. But Slithylove makes the point beautifully. Of course none of knew who are what Redbeard was in "SOtT".