| Sofia |

~Cydonia~

Thanks for the thread. I can't believe it's over tonight.

Addiction

So nervous. 2 hours to go

bigbangsheldon

I loved this epsiode.


LET ME CRY AT THE ENDDING

Swamy

I'm still shocked
Molly slapping Sherlock like he actually betrayed her by using drugs and his accusing her of being like that because she broke up with Tom
Janine half naked and slipping into the shower with Sherlock (I was grimacing so much I fear my face will never go back to normal)
Mrs Hudson using marjuana
Mary shooting Sherlock
The other Holmes brother
Your past is your problem, your future is my privilege
The loss of you would break my heart
Sherlock in exile
Moriarty back I screamed so much I scared the hell out of my mom

All this in one hour and half. Were they high too?
I'll be back to really review the episode once my brain starts functioning again.

LostInTheSun

MORIARTY MORIARTY MORIARTY that's all I care about atm tbh!
Going to re-watch the episode but omg MORIARTY.

bigbangsheldon

[staying alive plays on repeat]

northboundtrain

I might have more to say once I rewatch the episode, but as with the last episode, I found it to be better than TEH but still a mixed bag.

In short:

* I enjoyed most of the episode, up until the aftermath of the Mary reveal. (More on that below.)

* The sequence involving Sherlock's shooting, with visits from everyone in his mind palace, was just stunning. Definitely the highlight of the episode for me. I was on the edge of my seat. Wonderful writing, editing, and most of all acting from BC.

* I figured at the beginning of the season that if Mary did have secrets they would be waved away as "not that bad," and I was right. It's all been hand-waved away -- just something to make her a "bad ass," which isn't really a real character flaw. In fiction, these are usually called Mary Sue characters, and she seems like a perfect example of that. Which is really disappointing.

* This series started out as a show about two men who solved crimes together and embarked on adventures that occasionally put them in a position to kill or die for each other.

Sherlock is still there -- when he killed Magnussen tonight I had no doubt it was because he knew if he didn't that John would snap and do it himself sooner or later. So for the second season finale in a row, we saw Sherlock giving up his life to save John.

And that would be awesome if we knew John, in the same situation, would have done the same for Sherlock (as he would have in S1 and S2). But John's never going to be back on that level with him. John has a wife and daughter to think about. For Sherlock, John is #1 (as we saw again and again, and even heard from CAM). But for John, Sherlock will forever be, at best, #3.

And, hey, this would be fine if they wouldn't make Sherlock so dependent on John.

It's the unequal balance that makes me uncomfortable.

* Finally, I don't believe Moriarty is alive. I think that was thrown together for shock value, and I feel like it was unnecessary -- a better cliffhanger would have been Sherlock flying out of the country, believing that this time he won't be coming back. It's disappointing that, once again, an opportunity for great emotion was undermined with a trick. Why even put him out on the tarmac at all? Why waste that callback to the original stories? Especially since Sherlock and John's goodbye wasn't even particularly emotional or memorable...just a hand-shake. (Was John aware that Sherlock was going to his death? If he was aware, it didn't seem like he cared.)

* To end on a positive note, I adored the shot of Mycroft "seeing" the younger version of Sherlock at CAM's.

wickedrum

oh yes!!!! Back to the quality I'd expect from Sherlock! And that he forgave Mary and killed for John, unexpected cherry on the cake!

IceKat055

This pretty much sums up the entire episode for me!

LostInTheSun

I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean here by "not that bad"? Her secrets ARE that bad, and even worse. Now, John decided not to care, but I really don't think Mary has been made into a generic badass Mary Sue. It's actually a relief to have a female character on this show who isn't either a lovesick fangirl or a mother figure. Mary and her past are a breath of fresh air to me.

ElizaSparrow

I haven't seen the episode yet, but I'm kind of disappointed that the "big reveal" might be that Moriarty is alive since Mofatt & Gatiss kept saying that he was DEAD... I'm not sure if they're doing this to please the fans, or if they were just making fun of us all along, hoping we would accept that he's dead for him to have a better return?

Also, it makes it look like Anderson's theory about both of them faking their deaths together is real, isn't it?

I don't see any woman who would suit that description now... I guess the second part is about Ms Hudson. I feel like each woman on that show is very unique and I love them all.

northboundtrain

No worries. What I meant by "not that bad" is that it doesn't matter to Sherlock and John (as you pointed out) -- and, since it doesn't matter to the show's two protagonists, it's presumably not supposed to matter to us. John was pissed off for a few months, and Sherlock was apparently never angry at all because he's now crediting Mary with saving his life. Which itself makes no sense to me because we saw him flat-line, we saw him dying. The only reason he's alive is because the locked up Moriarty in his mind palace gloated that John was in danger. Without that perfect line of dialogue (something Mary couldn't have known would happen), he'd be dead right now.

So Mary shoots Sherlock, nearly kills him, and then on top of that we find out that she's done things in her past so unspeakable that, if he knew the details, John would never forgive her. It feels like a bit of a cheat that 1. we never do hear those details (presumably to keep from dirtying her up too much in the eyes of the audience), and 2. Mary faces no consequences beyond a few months of John giving her the silent treatment -- which we didn't get to see because it all happened off-screen. Now Mary gets exactly what she wanted -- what she shot Sherlock to get -- a happy life with John and their child.

Maybe she'll face consequences of some kind next season, but I'm doubting it. I think the whole reason behind making Mary an assassin was an attempt at making her an "equal" for Sherlock and John as some kind of "good person who does bad things for good reasons" department. Now that that's in her backstory, I have little confidence that it'll be treated as anything more than an excuse for jokes about how adorably perfect Mary is for John because he's a danger junkie who likes psychos (nevermind that the show's been telling/showing us for three seasons that Sherlock is not a psycho).

northboundtrain

I would be very, very surprised if he's actually alive. All that happened at the end was that picture of him and a recording of his voice played on all of the television screens in London. If he were alive, I think we actually would have seen the physical Moriarty somewhere. That we didn't, to me, signals that someone is merely using his image to get to Sherlock.

ElizaSparrow

Yeah, I guess a copycat/someone using Moriarty's image would be great! I'm just hoping it's not Moriarty himself, because I would find it disappointing. I mean, it wouldn't really be believable that both him & Sherlock survived and I think there are other great Sherlock antagonists in the books that could be adressed too