Question: did Eurus have a girl act as the girl in the plane or was it her with a changed voice? Is she able to do it so much that they were unable to recognise it???
My impression was that it was Eurus doing the voice Sherlock, John and Mycroft heard over the phone, and the girl we saw on the plane was just in Eurus’ mind. Eurus did different voices when she talked to John on the bus, and when she impersonated Faith and the therapist, so I think that’s something she’s got a talent for.
If you listen carefully, when Sherlock enters her room at the end, she’s using the little girl voice.
@garuda-dreams-of-rain I never noticed that! I’ll have to pay attention next time I rewatch. Good catch! 🙂
@mychakk I guess that’s your answer then… good question! 🙂
OK, @sagestreet, so you said you wanted pain? Anyone else wants pain? Anyone?
I wonder if, in TLD, Sherlock is slowly starting to get in touch with his own feelings?
If Culverton Smith is a John mirror, then this scene looks a lot like jealousy, hurt and resentment to me. Sherlock doesn’t quite recognize it in himself, though, that’s why he needs a mirror in his EMP; someone to project these feelings on.
He does regard John as a ’cereal killer’ – not a real serial killer, but a heart breaker, someone who goes from partner to partner, consuming them faster than a hurricane. And what he leaves after him is disaster.
So in this scene Sherlock gives John back his heart (=phone) and thanks him for the only hug he ever got from him (at John’s wedding reception – when it was already too late).
Because a painful post about this very scene was the next one in my drafts.:) I had originally planned to post it today. So, I’m just gonna put the content of that draft post underneath yours if that’s all right.
I absolutely agree that we have to read Culverton as a John!mirror here and that Sherlock is (in his mind) trying to express something he feels towards John by addressing Culverton. In fact, I have never read this scene in any other way.
There is one small detail, though, that I would like to add (and this is what my post was originally supposed to be all about). I think this scene gives us a little more than just that. It puts a particular twist on everything that’s happening and makes the morgue scene every gay man’s personal idea of hell.
Sherlock (as you’ve pointed out above) has John’s phone (heart!) in his hands. But I think it’s not just important to note that he talks about the hug as he holds said phone (heart); there’s more!
It is important to keep in mind what Sherlock DID with John’s Culverton’s phone (heart): Sherlock send a message to Faith!
In other words, Sherlock took John’s heart and connected it to faith. He basically gave John’s heart faith!
Since a lot of TLD (as is visible from the whole appearance of Faith with the walking stick and the gun) is about the first day Sherlock and John knew each other in ASiP, this has a particular meaning:
Sherlock (in his mind) is absolutely convinced that what he did on the very first day he met John was re-connect John to faith. Sherlock is 100% certain that he gave a (deeply depressed and repressed) John back some faith, ie, stopped him from being suicidal, gave him his friendship, made a lonely, stony-faced John smile and laugh again.
And here comes the kicker: In TLD, we now find out that Sherlock actually thinks that this message in Culverton’s phone to Faith (this faith he put into John’s heart in ASiP), this message to faith is going to solve everything. This connection to faith in the phone (heart) is the whole solution! Or so Sherlock believes…
I mean, don’t even get me started on how farcical that is on a mere textual (surface) level. It obviously makes no sense at all to read it textually. What was Faith even supposed to do in that morgue, in Sherlock’s opinion?
This is all about the subtextual level here: When they met in ASiP, Sherlock re-connected John’s heart to faith. And then he came to expect that faith appearing in John’s life would lead to John confessing to his ‘crime’ (aka love).
In TLD, Sherlock is deeply, deeply convinced that what he did by messaging Faith from Culverton’s phone will lead to Faith appearing and Culverton definitely, absolutely, surely, certainly, 100% confessing.
Sherlock seems to think that the faith he gave John’s heart back when they met should, at some point, lead to John confessing his feelings. TLD goes out of its way to tell us that Sherlock is really, really convinced that this is how it works!
But it doesn’t!
And that’s what makes that morgue scene so horrible. Faith isn’t who Sherlock thought she was and everything goes off the rails there. In other words, Sherlock is suddenly faced with the idea that HE NEVER EVEN MET FAITH, the faith that Culverton’s phone (John’s heart) messaged (connected with) was never real to begin with.
Sherlock is horrified to discover that what he always thought was true was actually never real: He never re-connected John’s heart with faith, and now John refuses to confess.
What makes the morgue scene so very, very poignant is that Sherlock never doubts the fact that Culverton is a killer! I.e. Sherlock still KNOWS that John has feelings for him! But he is horrified to discover that Culverton will never confess to it. Sherlock is horrified at the prospect that John will rather live in repression than confess to what is completely obvious to Sherlock.
And Sherlock blames himself for that.
Sherlock thinks he got the whole faith thing wrong. He thinks there never was any faith. He never gave John’s heart faith. He never gave John anything. What Sherlock is doubting here is not John’s feelings (Sherlock still knows that Culverton is a killer). No! What Sherlock doubts here is the fact that he ever did anything to help John. Sherlock (in his own mind) is telling himself here that what he thought helped John as they met (curing his limp, becoming his friend, giving him laughter, warmth and friendship) never, in fact, existed!
Sherlock is faced with a dark gaping abyss: The idea that all the things he thought he gave John were never real to begin with. That John’s heart never connected to faith. That Sherlock fucked up on a gigantic level and John never got anything out of their friendship. And it’s all Sherlock’s fault.
And because John never got anything out of their relationship, John will now never confess to his ‘crime’ (love). Sherlock knows everything, everything about what John feels for him, but because ‘faith’ wasn’t real to begin with, Sherlock now knows John will never confess. They will live on the way they do now forever, in a perpetual hell, where John never confesses to loving Sherlock because John never felt trust and optimism to begin with. Because Sherlock (or so Sherlock tells himself) never gave John any of this.
The idea that you continue to live side by side with the man you love and that this man even loves you back, but will never ever confess to it, this idea is every gay man’s idea of hell.
And that’s what the morgue scene is about.
I mean, it’s slightly different in my personal life: But if you told me that my boyfriend never left his wife and four kids because he still loved her, that would be painful, yes, but ultimately I would be okay with that. Because, you know, in the end, what counts is that he’s happy and all that. So, if he stayed with her and the kids because he was in love, I would at some point be able to accept that and move on.
But the idea that he would have stayed with her and the kids DESPITE clearly being in love with me. That would be hell!
If I knew 100% that he loved me, but would never confess to that because nothing about my friendship, trust and loyalty was ever real to him, if I knew that he loved me forever and ever and would remain in love with me throughout his life, but would never ever admit to that, that would be my idea of hell: To have to see someone you love suffer for the rest of his life, unable to confess to you, even though you KNOW for certain what he feels, that is the stuff nightmares are made of.
And that is what this nightmare of Sherlock’s is all about.
What makes this scene so poignant is not that Sherlock thinks John doesn’t love him. Sherlock still knows Culverton is a killer. Sherlock KNOWS for a fact that John loves him. But he is suddenly faced with the fact that John will never admit to that and will keep living a lie. All because Sherlock himself fucked up over the course of their friendship.
No, nonononono, @sagestreet. Stop this. I don’t want to think about this because this is where my mind goes with all of this-
The thing about Smith is that he isn’t a serial killer.
Sherlock just decides that he is, right there, in the street, when he ‘sees’ him. Sherlock saw what he wanted to see in order to ‘save John Watson’.
So, doesn’t it stand to reason that what Sherlock saw about John to begin with, wasn’t real either? Is this not TPLoSH all over again? Sherlock’s one-sided love, unrequited and unreciprocated. Because Faith never was in Sherlock’s flat. It was Sherlock’s own sentiment that was there, blinding him, filling him with chips hope. It could’ have been anyone that saved John in that moment. It didn’t have to be Sherlock.
Sorry, I can’t stop thinking about this, @sagestreet. But, what then does it mean that Smith couldn’t stop confessing? Once he was caught- in the act- as Lestrade is keen on saying. Is this what is going to happen? What will need to happen? John will have to be caught red-handed, in the act of- what? In order to confess to Sherlock his ‘true’ feelings??
I don’t think it’s anything as complicated as this. It’s really all rather simple when you think about it.
The show has just done what it has done 1.000 times before: It split one character in two. Because in this episode we get more than just dark!John (Culverton); we get John!John too.
The episode is telling us that Sherlock is horrified to realise that Faith (ie, all the two of them had between them) was maybe not real. Not just that…that it might never have existed in the first place. (A very dark thought, indeed.) If that were truly the case, then Culverton (ie, John) would never ‘confess’ (his love!). And we already know this confession is symbolic. The thing that can’t be unsaid once you say it to your very best friend, the thing that Sherlock imagines as something monstrous and horrible is actually nothing of the kind (there never was a monster!); it’s a love confession. In the morgue scene Sherlock is confronted with the fear that, if there never was any faith connecting them, then John might (might!) never confess.
So, Sherlock has to choose a different route! A different way to ‘extract’ the confession, so to speak.:)
Sherlock has to make sure that it comes to a struggle between dark!John and John!John. Hopefully John!John will win the upper hand in that fight. (A fight that, by the way, will be brought on by Sherlock laying it all out to the John!mirror that is Culverton by telling him, “I want you to kill me”…so basically, Sherlock has to TELL John that he really wants John to love him. Nothing else will do. John won’t ‘confess’ of his own volition.) Then the struggle between John!John and dark!John will ensue, but if everything works out, John will save not just himself, but Sherlock too. He will save himself by saving Sherlock in the process. If it works out, John!John will win the fight, and dark!John, no matter how hard he fights it, will let ‘it’ slip somehow. And then John (as a whole) will be able to ‘confess’. And then (and this is the lesson No. 1 for us obsessed Sherlockians!), once John has confessed, he will never stop confessing to Sherlock how much he loves him! He will just go on and on and on confessing. That’s the part where we should all cheer!:)
In a show that has metaphors like being-stabbed-in-the-back-by-someone=falling in love…or a-ruthless-vindictive-killer-like-Jonathan-Small-who’s-obsessed-with-killing-Sholto=a metaphor for John’s love for Sherlock, in a show like this, we really shouldn’t be surprised that Culverton (no matter how disgusting and ugly he is) is a metaphor for John’s darkest, best hidden side, of the side of John that sorta, kinda wants to confess, but is also scared of not being able to take it back once it’s out there.
This show has shown us cold-blooded, violent, horrible murder as a metaphor for falling in love. So why wouldn’t it use someone like Culverton to convey this message about John’s inner struggle?
And seeing as this all happens in Sherlock’s mind: It’s Sherlock who is playing around with these concepts, trying to work out how John ‘ticks’. And the good part is: He works out that once John will confess, he won’t be able to stop confessing over and over and over again. Sherlock just has to get him to that point.
And to work this out Sherlock has split John into two characters (a mirror and John himself). It’s pretty much the same thing Sherlock does to himself when he splits himself into Euros and himself to understand himself better. He does that all the time with characters. After all, he even splits his own doubts about ever being able to ‘leave’ his coma into two characters (into the ambassador and her husband or whoever that man is in the Tbilissi hostage scenes).
Yes, it’s all very dark. TLD is a very dark episode. But we knew that, right?
And the great thing is there is hope at the end of the episode. And that’s why, when Sherlock and John discuss Culverton being unable to stop confessing at the end of TLD, the whole discussion so quickly veers into a discussion of ‘Irene Adler’ (Sherlock’s libido) and into hugging and stuff. Because John’s mirror being unable to stop himself from confessing over and over and over again is actually directly linked to what Sherlock’s libido will be doing with John once Sherlock gets that confession out of him, and to hugging, too…well, Sherlock needed a hug, right?;)
If someone’s gonna tell me that there is a better reading of TLD, I won’t believe in it.
Nothing makes more sense.
“I want you to kill (= love) me” is Sherlock’s first step to John. And then John literally won’t be able to stop confessing his feelings towards Sherlock! Can you imagine it? And “Irene” is here, like, do you understand what is gonna finally happen?
By the way, @sagestreet, I love how you formulated your thought that John is split into his dark and ordinary parts, precisely the same way Sherlock’s personality is split into Eurus and himself.
I almost never stopped seeing S4 from Sherlock’s perspective, but all these discussions are the last evidence for me. S5 looks very promising.
Thank you, @sagestreet , for restoring the dark and gloomy Halloween feeling that was first intended with this post. Because things were becoming a bit too soft here, don’t you think? It’s dark and rainy outside, and the wind is cold. We need more pain and angst! >:)
And ofcourse I am a mind reader who could foresee that you were going to expand on the same topic. I correctly anticipated your response to scenarios I had devised; can’t everyone do that? 😛 And may this post, with all its wonderful additions and pieces of analysis, be a testimony that we have indeed learned to read Mofftiss. Pain, angst and horror. But also a hopeful note at the end, right?
Your analysis is intriguing and brilliant (as usual). If Culverton is Dark!John, then I do agree that Sherlock is going through hell. If that’s how it’s going to be I imagine Sherlock thinks Dark!John better just keep his heart phone for himself. But, as it turns out, his confession was impending. And, by going through hell, the way you describe it @sagestreet, Sherlock has figured out how to coax it out from real John now. The only problem is that he needs to wake up first.
One thing that occurs to me is that not only Dark!John, but also John!John did start to confess at the end of TLD. Here’s his confession (under the cut):
Remember the Skull Hell™ ft. Mr. Glowing Skull that’s been giving at least part of us nightmares since January and sparkled a whole bunch of different metas? IIRC it was said that artist who made the original painting raised it’s renting price and crew couldn’t afford to use in anymore because budget for the season was oh so small.
Wait what? Who’s that in the top right corner, why does he look so familiar? But the rent… I must be mistaken. So I went to #Sherlocked tag, and found another photo:
I feel I have to warn you about the fact that Tumblr app is gonna turn some words into emojis, wether you want it to or not.
Because there is no topic that can’t be better communicated with emojis.
Just when you think this app can’t get any worse….
(I became am alpha tester so I could tell them when the app is not working again and therefore I got this ‘feature’ early…)
what the fuck even is this site
This makes no sense whatsoever, what is wrong with the people running this site?
This is called emojify and you can turn it off in settings! Psa for anyone writing long chunks of text that’s supposed to be informative or just really any text based writing in general on tumblr.
At the cocktail party our group talked to Steven Moffat and apparently
he is writing a play at the moment! He has no idea if it will ever see
the light of day, but he’d never written a play before so decided to
before him n Mark start properly writing Dracula to hone his writing a
bit and just to give it a go. Sue said she’d read the first half and
said it was good and really enjoyed it, but Steven of course played that
down by saying ‘she’s my wife! Of course she has to say it’s good! !’
The crazy thing is that this would make so much sense in the context of what they did in S4.
I’m trying to imagine how badly Moffat would want to out-subtext Jeremy Paul’s The Secret of Sherlock Holmes, and… it’s a lot.
@devoursjohnlock yeah we were talking about that with @waitedforgarridebs! Imagine Ben channeling Jeremy. And this is a perfect thing for them to do in this moment of the narrative. The possibilities for that plot! And the sheer chance to witness the johnlock dynamic live onstage would be A LOT.
@marcespot Seriously, so many possibilities! If they decided to do this, I bet it would be in the style of Paul’s one-off: deep, deep subtext, a parallel recap of events. It might answer all of our timeline questions. And, as always, 99% of the audience would remain completely unaware of what they just watched.
@marcespot@devoursjohnlock it would be such a logical reason for why the end Montage of TFP was the actual set crew creating a stage from scratch in front of all of us.
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