There are several threads that I’ve been pulling recently, but they all seem to want to snag on the same knot. I’m not certain that once they’ve unravelled we won’t just find more gaping holes instead of a finely woven tapestry, but since, we’ve nothing but time on our hands for the forseeable future, I thought, what the hell? So let’s see where this all goes and if any of it makes sense- or even matters once it’s all said and done. 🙂
*Full disclosure (though I don’t know how anyone in fandom can’t know this at this point because I’m pretty vocal about it): I’m an EMPer. I believe Mary shot Sherlock and that he hasn’t regained consciousness since and that S4 is merely the continuation of TAB- the Victorian personas in the modern age, since Sherlock clearly isn’t awake yet at the end of TAB.
Not sure how much of this will be EMP-based, but just wanted to give a head’s up, in case that isn’t your jam and you can just skip this post altogether.
Okay. Here we go!
Lady Carmichael
Did not kill Sir Edwin.
This is my first bone of contention that I see in fandom a lot. I see so many posts that take it as gospel that Lady Carmichael did, in fact, kill her husband. But, that just can’t be the case, because as Moriarty says-
The argument can be made that Sir Eustace and Lady Carmichael are the stand-ins for a whole list of different people within the show. At any given moment they can represent:
John and Sherlock
John and Mary
Lord and Lady Smallwood
Mrs Hudson and Frank Hudson
Talk about confusing, I know. It makes my head hurt, tbh.
There is one fact that is a certainty- Sir Eustace was killed. But, that it was at the hands of a group of women- which we are wrongly lead to believe was headed by Lady Carmichael- treated badly by the men in their lives, is more than I can accept. Yeah. there’s a few dudes I wouldn’t mind getting rid of, but I’m not going to join some group of conspirators in order to do it.
Sherlock had it right when he spoke to Lestrade-
Of course I solved it. It’s perfectly simple. The incident of the mysterious Mrs Ricoletti, the killer from beyond the grave has been widely reported int he popular press. Now people are disguising their own dull little murders as the work of a ghost to confuse the impossibly imbecilic Scotland Yard.
First instincts are usually correct, and Sherlock knows that.
The murder of Sir Eustace did not follow the usual MO of the ‘bride’, (the league of furies)–
Murdered in their own homes, rice on the floor, like at a wedding, and the word YOU written in blood on the wall
There was none of that when they found Sir Eustace-
Sir Eustace’s stab wound was a mirror image of Sherlock’s gun shot wound. Imagine that.
And, it wasn’t Lady Carmichael. Not only because Moriarty told us it wasn’t her, that it was ridiculous that it would be her (this is Sherlock’s mind telling him, so he knows he got it wrong) but also because, why would she go to Sherlock to prevent a murder she was going to commit?
(Just as Mary didn’t go to Sherlock for a murder she did plan to commit, hm.)
The Bride killed Sir Edwin (and Sherlock), it’s true. But she was not a member of a ‘league of furies’. There was nothing ‘honorable’ about what she did. Each time we see the Bride that isn’t Emilia Ricoletti, two very peculiar things happen-
We get the villain head tilt a la Mary, and their voice is disguised.
In the case of the Bride that warns Sir Eustace in the maze, if that were Janine or Molly, why disguise the voice? At this point, it’s almost certain that Emilia was dead and we are supposed to believe this is one of the women conspirator’s come to threaten (which was never mentioned as part of the other Bride murders, fyi) So, the voice didn’t matter because Sir Eustace wouldn’t have recognised it, but- we would have? And then, in the hallway, as Watson waits and is scared by the ghost bride*, the voice is once more disguised. Again, why? Watson certainly wouldn’t have recognised Molly or Janine’s voice. But, guess who’s voice he would have. Mary.
(*coming back to Watson here, later)
The bride stabbed Sir Eustace, just as Mary shot Sherlock.
Sherlock got it wrong. Moriarty told him, it’s his downfall, always. He wants everything to be clever. And that’s what he tried to do with this scenario. When he ‘found’ the “Miss me?” note attached to Sir Eustace’s dead body, that’s when his mind made the connection between Mary and Moriarty. What do we say about coincidence? But, his mind revolts and is tearing itself apart because he cannot accept this truth-
Thank you for this @monikakrasnorada – I was just thinking about Magnussen yesterday again, too… which always give me the creeps. Ewwww.
Anyway.
There’s some yucky mirroring happening between Magnussen/Janine and Sherlock/John – both Magnussen and Sherlock are in the business of knowing things that others don’t (probably the reason for the duel-mp), while Janine and John are both the P.A. and likely provided “cover stories” at some point. But Janine, in a way, replaced John in HLV, as her “cover stories” in the papers for Sherlock would seem to imply a call-back to those of TRF.
Magnussen to Sherlock, I believe, is similar to Culverton-Smith-Jeff-Hope to John. “A deal with the devil,” Sherlock said of Magnussen in HLV. I’m still wondering what he meant precisely because canon-Holmes said this in The Six Napoleons:
“The Press, Watson, is a most valuable institution, if you only know how to use it.”
A story where Holmes smashed the Napoleon bust to retrieve the Black Pearl of the Borgias, while Sherlock shot Magnussen in the head to prevent Mary Watson’s secrets becoming public. John, Mycroft, and a SWAT team watched while Sherlock’s crime was caught on surveillance cameras; but when John shot Jeff Hope, no one saw it saved for Sherlock’s deduction (while Sherlock sort of helped with speeding up the process with a foot on Hope’s wound). In a twisted way, Hope and Magnussen are both… metaphorical suicides, and Mycroft Holmes happened to be present at both scenes of the crime as well. Which makes Culverton Smith a very interesting villain – his own confession killed his role as the “serial killer”; the more he talked to people, the more he killed “himself.” H. H. Holmes – I don’t think the name-drop and parallel is a coincidence – Sherlock Holmes, Mycroft Holmes, and John H. Watson somehow make one serial killer from the America? Is it simply paying homage to ACD’s pre-Sherlock Holmes story: The American’s Tale? Or, are we back to the original story of Jefferson Hope in A Study in Scarlet – a missing wedding ring and love forever lost?
Regardless, Mary sticks out like a sore thumb in the middle of it all; her identity seemed to solely dependant upon who she’s being associated with – we know plenty about the different roles she played, but we still have no idea who she is exactly. However, the fact that “the myth of Mary Watson” was killed by a bullet from Norbury’s gun is canon compliant, based on the subtext of The Adventure of the Yellow Face. But that’s only two facades down (Morstan and Watson)… I hate to say it, but we probably haven’t seen the last of the woman we know as Mary Watson just yet. Her Gabrielle Ashdown identity… I wonder if it’s to do with the Archangel Gabriel statue at the cemetery in TAB, because, Lady Carmichael.
Lady Carmichael, I think, is partially based on Lady Brackenstall in ACD’s The Adventure of the Abbey Grange (Lady Brackenstall, Lady Bracknell… I mean……), and in Sherlock, she’s being connected with Irene Adler, Moriarty, a modern day (gay) pilot, and later in TLD, as Sherlock himself in the morgue (Lady Brakenstall bears marks of physical abuse from her husband Sir Eustace Brakenstall). Carmichael – friend of Saint Michael the Archangel – depends on the role religion plays in one’s life, it could mean salvation or prosecution, which has been an underlying theme in Sherlock (many stories in ACD canon did as well, even though not overtly). Could that be the reason Mary narrates the end of TFP? As Archangel Gabriel, a messenger of God?
But! Since “Big G” is not limited to the organized religion variety…… how does that affect Janine/Mary combination? Janine was literally dancing with the elephant in the room during TSoT 👀 👀 👀
Sorry I rambled on and on (again)!! And as you know, I don’t usually dwell on the topic of mind palace/bungalow much (or brain-attic, as canon-Holmes calls it); because cinema is such a different medium from literature and with its omniscient camera pov, you can get away with a lot of ambiguity – hence, anything is possible. But whatever the differences I don’t think they prevent us from trying to unravel the same puzzle together? I hope you don’t mind that my comments usually fall outside of the emp framework!! 😉
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