mild-lunacy:wsswatson:Another three episodes. Another series finished. Another set of surprises. Ano

mild-lunacy:wsswatson:Another three episodes. Another series finished. Another set of surprises. Another cliffhanger.As is to be expected, fans have been going wild, theories have been spreading like wildfire, and conversation is roaring.I have a few theories of my own, and after a few rewatches, I’m ready to lay them all out. I’m going to try to lay them out chronologically so that you can consider them as and when you rewatch the episode, but some jumping about will be necessary.So, here we go:Read MoreI’m super-excited about this ‘cause it explains many things; as I’ve said in my preliminary post on Mary, I don’t do theories, but I like Mary as Moran. However, I don’t care if she’s Moran or not, really. I don’t like the idea of Mary-as-total-villain; I think it’d be a bit boring. That said, several corollary thoughts are important enough that if you read no other meta I’ve written on Sherlock Series 3, read this. THIS IS MY MOTHERLODE, I’m pretty sure. I want feedback. Someone tell me I’m right! haha. Or wrong. That’s fine too. (*grumbles*) Anyway, if you care about my Johnlock or Sherlock meta, please read on. This is the first (and maybe only) time I actually think I’ve come up with something truly startling (at least to me), and clever. Ohhh, the cleverness of me. I’ve never before written a meta where I made myself sooo happy (naturally, it would’ve been impossible without the meta I’m responding to). Behold! My logical thinking, let me show you it.Ahem. I’m sure that there’s something fishy about how (relatively) easily John forgave her for shooting Sherlock, yes, when he’d chinned the Superintendent for being overly annoying to Sherlock. John’s Sherlock’s tireless guard-dog. You hurt Sherlock over John’s dead body. However: as John said during the confrontation between the three of them at Baker Street, in the end, he always does it “your way”. So it makes sense to extend ‘Sherlock’s way’ beyond simply that one confrontation. If Sherlock told him to wait and watch, John would wait and watch. My favorite thing about this is the idea that it resolves one of the thorniest whys of HLV: why did Sherlock prioritize the truth in telling John about Mary by setting up the show at the ‘empty house’ with him, and yet… all that effort (disguising John, escaping the hospital early, setting up the place), all (all!) to basically get Mary to relax and John to trust her. It was ‘surgery’, remember. If it was just about telling John Mary shot him (but it’s okay), he didn’t need to go through all that effort and preparation. The preparation is only necessary to fool someone, to create some plot-related effect. A facade. Otherwise, John would’ve just trusted Sherlock no matter what he said, even at the bedside, really. John didn’t need to have Mary demonstrate the shooting, etc, just to reconcile the two of them and get Mary to give her ‘case’ to Sherlock. That couldn’t be for John’s sake, so it had to have been for Mary’s sake.The idea that he was in cahoots with John in fooling Mary that he’s forgiven her makes me even more pleased, ‘cause it continues the trend of him involving John (learning from his mistakes!) and because he had to have involved John to have him sitting on that chair. They must have had a Conversation about all this, where they set it up, and we never saw this conversation. I can only imagine meaningful words were indeed exchanged. Questioning the bit at Sherlock’s parents’ house… it seems suspicious that indeed, John said he’d rehearsed these words and he might still get angry. Does John seem the type to rehearse that kind of confrontation/reconciliation? Also, John looks a bit off. He doesn’t smile warmly when he hugs Mary at Sherlock’s parents’ house; he smiles like Sherlock, on and off, after saying “it’s good enough for me” (their bargain). The smile is a bit forced; John almost never smiles this way.Then he actually hugs her, and his face is kinda unemotional, then grim.There are multiple explanations for this, of course. John is just not very emotional, even as Mary’s breaking down, and it’s not really typical for John. In fact, it’s when she starts crying (apparently genuinely) as he hugs her, that he then says he’s ‘very pissed off’. It’s not that he’s going to be pissed off now and then; it’s that it’ll “come out“ now and then. That is, he’s always pissed off.I was wrong, I think, in comparing this sentiment to how he felt about Sherlock after his Return. John has a temper, and he showed it to Sherlock— but while John represses it sometimes, he doesn’t actually hide it; if John was actually always secretly furious, it’d look like it. But no, John really forgave Sherlock in the train car; he even laughed a tiny bit when he called him a ‘cock’ (he ‘always knew’!). John wouldn’t hold a grudge if he still loved Mary like he loves Sherlock (which he claimed was equivalent earlier). He’d remain bitter and grow distrustful, but actively pissed off long-term with Sherlock? No.If indeed he never meant to forgive her, and he’s still boiling with furious rage that she dared hurt Sherlock (and… ask yourself if the John you know would be… you know he would be), then he’d have been pissed to hear her crying what he might imagine are undeserved or crocodile tears. I mean, that is one stone-faced look, regardless. Mary says she ‘knows’, she accepts, but she doesn’t know. The fact is, Mary swallows it too easily. She *wants* to believe it, just as she *wanted* to believe that John goes for the sociopath type as Sherlock said. But the fact is, John doesn’t.The fact is, self-esteem issues aside, Sherlock must at least be clever enough to realize John doesn’t love him because he’s a sociopath. This was what was pissing me off before about that scene, ‘cause it’s so incongruous. Taken at face value, it’d mean Sherlock actually just doesn’t know John, refuses to listen to John, and talks right over John (after John gets upset and tells him to shut up, Sherlock ignores him utterly). An awful precedent to set if genuine. But no. It suddenly makes sense why Sherlock would need to control this confrontation, why he’d railroad John, if the conversation had to go exactly according to plan. He had to control it, and utilize John’s natural reactions to manipulate Mary.This would imply that Sherlock knows John as well as might be expected from the closest person to him (and Mary doesn’t). That the flippant way he said that stuff about being a sociopath who uses cases instead of drugs— throwing about their best friend status in his next breath— was meant to deflect attention from the fact that he knows this is bullshit. He could count on John becoming genuinely angry, ensuring the scene reads 100% genuine, but in fact Sherlock trusts John, and knows he loves him. Sherlock knows John loves him for who he is; that’s the fuel making his self-sacrifice even make sense, really! Right before Sherlock got motivated to come back to life, Moriarty said, “John will cry buckets and buckets.” He knows John is the one who loves him most. It’s right there! Otherwise, if Sherlock didn’t believe it after all, why the hell did the whole wedding speech thing even get set in motion!Dude. I’ve been listening to people talk about how Sherlock has super-low self-esteem and believes John can’t love him and/or doesn’t love him enough, and it’s all well and good, because yes, he does have  low self-esteem about himself. That’s not false. The scene where he says the East Wind plucks the unworthy from the earth (in reference to Mycroft’s views) is surely based on his actual feelings of inferiority (to Mycroft!). But this is obscuring the fact that 1) Sherlock knows John; 2) John Watson keeps him right; 3) the whole point of the wedding speech and the long speechless ‘best friend’ moment and the subsequent self-sacrifice and all of it would actually be pointless if Sherlock didn’t ‘really really’ believe John. Yes, of course he’s still sad John left (especially before Mary shot him). But Sherlock can be sad and still believe in his John. (This is the problem with insisting on a romantic reading, btw; this confidence makes more sense if you ignore the romance angle where you just *have* to have Sherlock be literally heartbroken in a romantic sense after the waltz scene).The fact that this double-play is exactly Moffat’s style is icing on the cake. The fact that, I repeat, SHERLOCK KNOWS JOHN LOVES HIM and that whole conversation was a lie is enough to make me 100% satisfied.Fuck all. In conclusion, therefore, THEY KNOW THEY LOVE EACH OTHER. BAM. (Yes, I’m very pleased with myself, why do you ask?) Dude. DUDE. This affects every theory about the show’s arc, many of which insist that Series 4 has to be about how John ‘realizes’ he loves Sherlock, and they communicate, etc. And, well, uhhh… he already knows?To hell with the angst. That degree of angst was never in-character for a show that is basically a comedic mystery-drama. The oppressive mood of omg-Sherlock-is-hopeless and John being stuck in a marriage with his best friend’s would-be killer is way too gloomy, really. Soooo it didn’t happen. Doesn’t that sound like Moffat to you? Yes, indeed. This is officially my favorite of theories.I just have to have this on my blog. Now. Because whether or not its the reading of the episode that will turn out to be true (I still have my doubts because moffat), I love it. I love it and believe this is the way the episode should have played out more overtly. Also, while it doesn’t have to be read romantically, it CAN be, which makes me happy. I don’t like the idea of hopeless, heartbroken, despairing sherlock because he believes John doesn’t or can’t love him. I much prefer an end of TSoT sherlock who is sad because he knows John loves him but instead chose a kind of heteronormativity that the baby deduction made real to him. A sherlock who is kicking himself with regret for his actions surrounding the fall because he realizes too late that if he hadn’t done what he did, he and John would still be together BECAUSE JOHN LOVES HIM. I love this reading of the ‘empty house’ plan as all being about sherlock’s new decision to trust John and be his partner instead of keeping him out of the loop; and love the way of reading subsequent scenes as not undoing that. Basically, I think the line between romantic love and deep and profound love is very, very thin. Sherlock’s love for John is deep and its pretty much exclusive so to me that reads as romantic. And I don’t need sherlock to be crying buckets and buckets after the wedding in order for that to still be true. -- source link

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