Back in
EMP land, Sherlock is dying and Eurus needs to land the plane if she wants to
survive. And while she is rightfully worried and John about to drown, Sherlock
is pulling out of his ass a stupid solution for Eurus’ song. That’s when we
start saying that ‘Eurus’ really had time to lose to grave these tombstones in
order to fit that song.
But,
really, the correct answer is ‘Eurus created that song in a way to explain the
wrong dates’. The song isn’t a puzzle, it’s the solution needed because the
graves are the puzzle that fascinated Sherlock as a child.
A fake
gravestone where Nemo Holmes was ‘buried’. But really, Nemo was no one.
Or
nobody. There was no body.
You
can’t really face your own grave, can you? Unless you have a TARDIS, all you
can do is have a gravestone with your name on it and no date of death. You’re
still not dead so the dates will be necessarily wrong.
Basically,
if you want to survive, you need to figure out the contradiction your
gravestone is telling you. Show the inconsistencies and reveal it as a fake.
Here
starts the puzzle. Now that the inconsistencies are laid bare, you need to find
how that can tell you how to survive.
SHERLOCK:
The wrong dates, she used the wrong dates on the gravestones as the key to the
cipher and the cipher was the song.
Here,
Stupid Sherlock strikes again.
The reverse is what happened.
Do you
know what an Ottendorf code is? You have a set of numbers and they refers to a
word of a page of a very specific book. We are facing a book cipher, not
dissimilar to an Ottendorf.
The cipher is the graveyard, the key is the song.
The
graves represent the number of the stanza and the numbers the words used in said
stanza in ascending order. If you start with a number like 28 and then use 1,
that just means you need to use the last stanza above (word 28).
Grave 1
(Stanza 1): 134-1719 -> 1 3 4 17 19
I AM LOST HELP ME
Here we
can’t do 13 because we have 4 after, nor 34, so 1 3 4, now we are in the two
digits 17 and 19
Grave 2
(Stanza 2): 28.9.1520 -> 28 9 15 20 BROTHER SAVE MY LIFE
We could
have 2, 8, 9, 15 and 20 but then you get NOT SHADE SAVE MY LIFE, so 28 it is.
Grave 3
(Stanza 3): 1818 24 26 -> 1 8 18 24 26 BEFORE MY DOOM I AM
No
choice is there? You can use the last like of the last stanza but that’s is so
no 18. 1 8 and 18
Grave 4
(Stanza 4): Nemo Holmes: 1617-1822 32 -> 16 17 18 22 32 MY SOUL SEEK MY ROOM
If it’s
1, 6 and 17, It’s WITHOUT BEFORE SOUL, so 16 and the rest follows
You’ll notice that there is a part of the final message missing, so there is a grave missing.
GRAVE
4.0.0: LOST WITHOUT YOUR LOVE SAVE
So grave 4.0.0 should be : 28 1 2 3 8 in any combination.
What can
we have then?
2/8/1238?
28/12/38? 2812 age 38? Age 28 1238? 2812-38? 28.1.238?
The
grave stones aren’t real, the numbers are wrong, but at minimum they give for a
second an illusion of reality. Yes, there are two centuries of difference, but
you won’t have many graves stones starting
in the 29th century. Also we can’t start with the age of the
dead Holmes, this comes only at the end.
You can
have 2/8/1238, or even something like 28/12/38 or 28/1/238 but there is another
option I want to point out.
2/8/12,
Age 38.
Here
lies Mr. Holmes, born on the 6th of January 1974 who died the 2nd
of August 2012 at 38.
I admit,
I’m not using John’s blog to estimate Sherlock’s “deathday” because, mainly,
Watson was always shit at keeping track of dates.
But we need another Holmes grave, one that is
the fakest fake to have ever faked the word. Also, it’s the only things that makes sense. Why wouldn’t they show the
final grave needed if the numbers used were so pointless?
They
gave us a solution that is missing a fifth of the answer, and not the least
important because this is where we get the answer ‘LOST WITHOUT YOUR LOVE SAVE’.
So, the
secret behind Sherlock’s grave, the one thing that turned his own grave into a
pure architectural joke and not a genuine thing, the one thing that made sure that Sherlock is still alive is Love.
By solving these fake deaths, Sherlock found the answer to save the plane before it crashes and creates a far more genuine grave.
SHERLOCK: Help me, brother, save my life, before my doom. I am lost without your love, save my soul, seek my room.
Without Sherlock’s love, Eurus won’t be able to find her way home, back to London and the ground.
Twice already Sherlock tricked death in two finale, twice love is what gave Sherlok the means to survive. He just needs to do it again.
Love conquers all, even death.
Mofftiss can suck it because the Sherlock fandom is so much smarter and cleverer than they could ever hope to be. This is amazing, @impossibleleaf!!!!! I don’t know how you did it, but this is just fascinating! Figuring this out like this renews my faith that we aren’t just a collection of deluded little misfits. That what we are seeing, deciphering, decoding IS real and true. Because, honestly, how could it not be at this point??
They gave us a solution that is missing a fifth of the answer, and not the least important because this is where we get the answer ‘LOST WITHOUT YOUR LOVE SAVE’.
Let’s just take a moment to think about that^^^^^ and what it potentially means.
I that am lost, oh who will find me? Deep down below the old beech tree Help succor me now the east winds blow Sixteen by six, brother, and under we go!
Be not afraid to walk in the shade Save one, save all, come try! My steps five by seven Life is closer to Heaven Look down, with dark gaze, from on high.
Before he was gone right back over my hill Who now will find him? Why, nobody will Doom shall I bring to him, I that am queen Lost forever, nine by nineteen.
Without your love he’ll be gone before Save pity for strangers, show love the door My soul seek the shade of my willow’s bloom Inside, brother mine Let Death make a room.
This is the full version of Eurus’ song. If you follow correctly, Grave 1=Stanza 1, Grave 2=Stanza 2 and Grave 3=Stanza 3.
But, I hope you realize that the missing grave is actually the fourth part of the solution, not the fifth.
It so goes like this:
Grave 1 -> Stanza 1 (I AM LOST HELP ME)
Grave 2 -> Stanza 2 (BROTHER SAVE MY LIFE)
Grave 3 -> Stanza 3 (BEFORE MY DOOM I AM)
Secret Grave -> Stanza 4 (LOST WITHOUT YOUR LOVE SAVE)
Grave 4 -> Stanza 4 (MY SOUL SEEK MY ROOM)
And for the five graves we need, Mofftiss decided to be lazy enough to recycle the fourth stanza.
It may be seen as overthinking and perhaps I’m wrong, but if you link the graves and the riddle with what is happening with the show’s seasons, you realize that the secret grave is actually between Season 3 and Season 4, or another version of the fourth grave.
So, if grave and stanza=1 season, we have two Seasons 4 (or 1 Season 4 and 1 Lost Special that happened before S4).
The extended chess metaphor which is so central to S4 is pretty interesting because we already know from TEH that chess actually represents a game of Operation between Mycroft and Sherlock, where Mycroft “can’t handle a broken heart” after Sherlock returns from Serbia to find John engaged to Mary.
It makes all the chess promo pics, which really have nothing to do with the actual textual content of Season Four, really intriguing because they feature Mycroft and Sherlock having this calculated battle of wits with John just sitting between them like he’s the one whose heart is central to the game — like if Sherlock’s heart ‘breaks’ so does John’s by proxy. He also looks a bit like a gamesmaster, or someone who’s mediating/watching it all unfold.
And then we have that final promo pic where Sherlock breaks the fourth wall and throws the chess pieces away like, ‘Screw this — I’m not playing anymore’ like he’s abandoning the idea Mycroft gave him that intelligence/planning/oneupmanship and repressing your emotions is the only way to protect people, and instead realising that to ‘win’ he has to take the risk that comes with embracing emotions.
This links into how chess is typically depicted in films as a metaphor for intelligence and strategy, but it also links in with ideas of preoccupation and being incredibly focused on ‘making the right move’ to the point of exclusion of all else.
There’s this really specific narrative trope that I’m only familiar with because I watch too much TV, which sticks out to me here. As I couldn’t find any single page for it on TV Tropes here’s the best summary I could manage:
“A character is stuck in a dreamscape/alternate reality of their own making, existing within their subconscious. Within this illusion their preoccupation with a strategy game such as chess/checkers, created by a character that acts as a facet of the protag’s mind, works as a metaphor for an inability to let go of not letting people in and depending on your intellect in combination with a fear of ‘losing’ and taking risks.
The climax of these bottle episodes occurs when the protagonist overcomes their inner struggle by realising that the only way to ‘win’ is not to play.
They then proceed to ‘break the rules’ in some way, whether it’s walking away from the game board, flipping it, dying/jumping off a building Inception-style, etc., and they then wake up in the real world having developed as a character.”
This trope has origins in the 1983 film WarGames where “the only winning move is not to play”.
The most obvious examples I can think of of this are from cheesy shows like Teen Wolf (3×22 – “De-Void”) or The Magicians (1×04 – “The World In the Walls”) where the writers really spell out the metaphor and the protagonists literally smash game boards to wake up.
Other examples of include Supernatural (2×20 – ”What Is and What Should Never Be” and 8×20 – “Pac-Man Fever”), Inception, and Doctor Who (5×07 – “Amy’s Choice” — which is a bit like 9×0 – “Last Christmas”).
Holy shit. So I’m rewatching TLD for the one billionth time focusing on the set and background significance, as you do, and I’m freaking out????
Basically in the scene where Sherlock has his meltdown on the bridge and then finds himself in the middle of the street, only to have Wiggins tell him he’s actually in 221b, we get the spinning around on the ceiling scene and the skull is just going nuts. So much happens at once that I didn’t think about it take by take, but now that I’m really going over it … I have some thoughts.
Here’s a basic breakdown:
When we first see Sherlock slam into the wall, the skull painting glows white.
Then we get a shot of Culverton Smith who I see as being the physical manifestation of Sherlock’s self-loathing and suicidal thoughts + a dark!John mirror, saying “kill” and slamming a big red button. And another one of him making a “w” with his hands, winning some sort of charity race.
Then, in the background you can literally hear hospital alarms start clanging and John voice saying Sherlock’s name.
And we get another shot of Culverton again shutting down a store on his show Business Killer with a “Sorry! We’re CLOSED” sign.
Then the soundtrack abruptly kicks with these really ominous, feverish strings of like, impending doom, and the skull has changed to a dark magenta/maroon-ish colour.
Then we get a shot of Culverton laughing and saying “anyone” and Molly’s voice echoing the “anyone” from the “he’d have anyone but you” scene.
So … Sherlock’s on the brink of death — and his self-loathing and suicidal thoughts are goading him into just letting go because John would literally have anyone but him. (Yikes™.)
It’s also quite interesting because Culverton doing this is similar to what Moriarty does to Sherlock in HLV, telling him that he just needs one more push because no one will bother him when he’s dead. “Off you pop.” (Which also happens to be what Culverton says while strangling Sherlock in hospital.) But the thing is, Moriarty also ends up being the one to say “John Watson is definitely in danger,” waking Sherlock up. Whereas Culverton really just wants Sherlock dead.
So … Maybe in the end Sherlock’s more of a threat to himself than Moriarty is. Just something to think about. I feel like TLD in general is Sherlock overcoming his suicidal thoughts that lead to his overdose in the first place — because even though Mycroft says that he estimates Sherlock would be dead in six months in Eastern Europe, obviously Sherlock knows Mycroft wouldn’t actually let him die. (”Your loss would break my heart” etc.,) Sherlock just doesn’t want to live anymore.
Back to the scene: Next shot we see, Sherlock’s standing on the ceiling again, but this time the skull is glowing bright white again.
While this is happening Sherlock begins to monologue about serial killers: “They’re always poor, and lonely, and strange — but those are only the ones we catch.” – “Who do we catch?” – “Serial killers. But if you were rich and powerful and necessary … What if you had the compulsion to kill and money? What then?”
A shot of Culverton in 221b:
And then the skull has changed literally within two shots back to being magenta/maroon as Sherlock collapses onto the couch, unconscious. End scene.
The way the skull is changing so rapidly in this scene … Surely there’s some sort of correlation between the darker skull painting and the lighter one. But I have no idea what it is. Possibly it represents how deep Sherlock is into his dream? Or whether information is drawing upon the past or completely fabricated?
We know from Billy the skull that the skulls in 221b act as Sherlock mirrors, so it’s likely that the painting is linked to his state somehow. This along with the fact that when Sherlock goes to commit suicide in Culverton’s hospital the skull painting is pitch black, which is probably the biggest tell represents him being in danger.
First a few background notes: I have not been following EMP theory. I read 2 posts before s4 aired and it just wasn’t hitting home for me. I discussed this with two of the primary EMP bloggers, and respectfully agreed to disagree. I just didn’t read anything more on the idea after that, I avoided EMP posts. I found it all unsettling. Then s4 occurred, and on Jan 20th rambling around in the theory that TST was Sherlock’s perception of real time events, I decided that I would revisit EMP but as an independent study. To really look at it and see if I reached the same conclusions on it’s validity as others, even though I was very skeptical about the premise. I kept a draft of all my ideas, and two months of arguing with myself ensued. But I am at the stage where I need to post my progress. So here it all is with the chains of thought I experienced and explanations of how I reached certain conclusions.
First it was the sharks that got me. They hammered those sharks into our heads prior to s4. The whole Rachel’s-crew-tee-shirt-thing, the shark graffiti, and the Mark and Amanda tweets, all appeared rather ‘lame’ after watching TST. All our pre s4 speculation fizzled out and we were left with the only real thread being s3 and the most obvious clue to sharks with it’s clear depiction and reference to CAM. He’s identified as the shark. In TST we see water haunting Sherlock, but not JUST water, it’s illuminated water, it’s tank water. Shark tank water. And Sherlock, by the end of the episode, ends up in a building with shark tanks.
Oh and look at his clothes:
He’s in a white shirt which is the same shirt as he was wearing when he broke into CAM Towers and got shot: CAM’s office – shark tank – aquarium. Could they be one and the same but in a dream reference of Sherlock’s subconscious. Yes. They could and it would be a very good one at that.
So then my mind takes me to that magic bullet and the ladies firing the gun, one in CAM/Shark Tower and one in the aquarium:
Two women with secret identities, both mistaken for Lady Smallwood. Sherlock thought Mary was Lady Smallwood in CAM/Shark Towers, Sherlock and Mycroft think Lady Smallwood was the leak that led to the AGRA debacle when it was actually Vivianne Norbury. Mirror events. Then we have Mary jumping in to take the bullet for Sherlock. Mary SUBSTITUTING herself for Sherlock. Wonder when she began to be a substitute herself for Sherlock? Oh yes, when John thought Sherlock was dead, when John was the grieving widower, devastated and very angry. An anger that balloons out of all proportion in Sherlock’s mind as it’s John directing anger at him for killing himself and disappearing for two years. He accepts John’s beating in atonement in TEH but in his mind it is far more violent, graphic and sadly justified by Sherlock, as we learn in TLD. But it’s Sherlock beating himself up. In essence Sherlock did kill John’s spouse, he made John believe that he had killed himself. And Sherlock knows John is not over that event:
Sherlock underestimates John’s grief, he sees only the anger phase, displayed on his return, but he didn’t consider the deep depression, the many regrets, and John’s inability to ever recover fully. Mary’s letter during her hiatus is everything Sherlock wanted to say and didn’t. Mary’s journey in TST looking for AJ is Sherlock’s hiatus twisted down to involve an ending where John is with him on that journey. That suicide mission to Eastern Europe Sherlock was being sent on? Well he’s already been on it and died on his return. Mycroft brought him home into heartbreak. His life, as Sherlock knew it, and the hopes he had for his future were dashed, and Sherlock’s heart broke.
The post Mary shooting Sherlock scenes in HLV now take on a sad twist, as they are in Sherlock’s mind. He imagines that he reveals to John the truth about the person who shot him, and John is furious at Mary, rejects her and relegates her to client. It’s probably not far from the truth of real events. He says a goodbye to Janine and assigns his dream retirement cottage to her, in an offering of repentance. He’ll revisit this theme in his Victorian MP in TAB. But I digress. Back to my chain of thought, as I need to leave the rest of HLV and TAB out of this for now. I came to the conclusion that Sherlock isn’t still on that plane, he’s not in the hospital. Sherlock is still on the floor in CAM’s office. And they PLANTED a trigger in that scene to tell us. The plant moved.This is all on repeat. Everything is being replayed. Twisted and convoluted, and nothing is new. Rest under cut:
I’m in a happy daze after reading this. I intensely agree with so many details here it’s ridiculous. I too started out a major sceptic (the best place to start, really). I love that you pin point Sherlock lying on the floor in CAM tower as the point that EMP began, because I’m leaning more this way recently (rather than, say, Sherlock dreaming while in hospital after he’s shot). There’s a draft decaying in my drafts folder that takes the dream theory and mingles it with @impatient14′s space-time continuum theory. Like you say – Sherlock is still right there on the floor, so while dream symbolism and imagery is used and while dialogue hints at it being a literal dream, or a coma drug induced hallucination or whatever, I suspect that what is actually happening is that time is standing still – we are frozen in a single moment. And to move that moment you’ve pin pointed just 3 seconds earlier, my newest fave idea is that Mary’s fake-ass death scene featured a big clue – the slo-mo bullet. I think we are frozen in time as the bullet sails through the air out of Mary’s gun towards Sherlock (and the slo-mo effect is quite accurate because my time research tells me that theoretically time could never be stopped, but it could be slowed right down).
The reason I think the bullet is in the air, is because well…then he still has a chance to live. And it’s symbolic of the importance of choice – something that can go two ways – the bullet buries in his chest and kills him….or it doesn’t. It represents how a decision effects all of the future. S4 is symbolic of “all of the future”, which also includes “all of the future of Sherlock Holmes”, because S4 shows how the love story is recognized but ignored and the no-homo ending of TFP represents the heteronormative future of the character….UNLESS. Unless a different choice is made in a single moment which will change the course of the future. And the poignancy of “the course of the future” wouldn’t be there without us actually having watched it play out. But really, the “future” of S4 is really the past. The old version of Holmes and Watson, the one we’ve seen before (the wheel turns…).
The significance of Vivian Norbury getting that role in T6T ties back into CAM tower and the idea of a choice that effects the whole rest of your future, and which is to do with over-confidence. Sherlock got cocky with deducing Vivian and got shot for it. In HLV, Sherlock was cocky with Mary, thinking he could so easily talk her down (”No, Mrs Watson, you won’t”), and he got shot for it. “Norbury” is really about how he handled that moment of confrontation with Mary in CAM tower, and how it changed the future (it got him killed, and because #sherlocklives means #johnwatson lives, it kills John too). I keep trying to imagine how over-the-top the EMP reveal could be, and a return to Mary firing the gun seems to be dramatic enough for Moftiss. I’m only spewing this idea on to your lovely post because I haven’t written it anywhere else yet, and because you also recognized the possibility of a frozen-in-time type of scenario where we return to a moment in that room in CAM tower. I might possibly spew more ideas onto another reblog, lol. Because I really love the way you’ve explained EMP here.
[Sorry not done: Molly tells us that Sherlock has 3 seconds of consciousness left to figure out how to live. The answer, they deduce, is forwards or backwards. Backwards into the past, where the love story needed to stay hidden, or forwards into the future where it does not. Sherlock fell backwards, and look where he ended up. I wrote something after T6T aired that predicted that the EMP reveal would involve Sherlock falling forwards instead of backwards….something to do with the mirror shattering….anyway it was a nice idea]
Here’s my big write-up on what I think is going on if EMP theory (extended mind palace theory) is correct. I’m not totally sold on it, but I’m even less sold on every other theory I’ve heard, so I’m going to just make the most solid case I can.
Feel free to raise objections, ask questions, contribute additional evidence, or point me toward metas you’ve already written on points I bring up. Please note that I really suck at keeping up with responses and such, though, so anyone who reads this should also trawl the notes.
If EMP theory is real it is integral to the Johnlock reveal, so they would not reveal it in a screening. Same goes for things like Mary being alive, Moriarty possibly being alive, Rosie never having been born; those are all contingent on EMP theory. Any fake version of TFP would have to keep Mary and Moriarty dead, Rosie alive, etc.
I saw the Russian screener and it only makes me feel that EMP theory is more likely.
There was nothing in the version of TFP that was screened that explains any of the weirdness in T6T or TLD via any other competing theory. So you either have to believe that they’ll never explain it at all, or they’re going to reveal some explanation only when it officially airs on Sunday – in which case you may as well consider EMP theory.
If they’re not doing EMP theory, I feel they would have had to have filmed a lot more extra footage to explain things via a different theory, but who knows. The Russian screener contained a lot of scenes that would be great prior to an EMP reveal.
Table of Contents
Background on EMP Theory
Why Our Dads Would Totally Do EMP Even If You Wouldn’t
“Miss me?” is a mind palace invention, right? It appears for the first time at the end of HLV. I wonder if that’s a bleed through from the real world as well – from John, perhaps.
FANTASTIC THOUGHT!!!
Things kind of suck around here so while I am tinhatting for a fourth episode, I’m not really in the mood to write extensive meta. I’ll just get my thoughts down real quick. Everything flows from what I’ve written before so I don’t expect this bit to be compelling or make much sense if you didn’t read the rest of it.
If there’s a fourth episode, I still stand by everything I’ve said in this EMP meta. I think TFP works fairly well as an EMP episode up until Sherlock embraces Euros.
There’s lots of tells in the episode that Sherlock is unconscious and needs to wake up:
– the little girl from ASiB and the airplane scenario similar to ASiB, plus reusing the airplane concept from TAB, are cues from Sherlock’s subconscious telling him to wake up
– so is the use of Moriarty saying “welcome to the final problem” because Moriarty told Sherlock the final problem is “stayin’ alive”
– the insane drama of the whole thing
– the nonsense and plot holes are realistic for someone who has been drugged and dying for a while now
Furthermore, if I’m right the episode is about Sherlock healing and integrating a lost part of himself he imagined as Euros. Dunno if the resolution will keep the exact same Victor Trevor reveal, but because of that “if dog can’t swim, neighbor is the killer” thing from T6T, it seems more likely to me that the following happened:
Sherlock doesn’t have a secret sister. A neighbor killed Victor Trevor and it traumatized him. (I think he probably did tell himself he had a dog that got put down instead because the mirroring between Sherlock and Henry in THoB was pretty hammered in.) Sherlock seems to blame himself for deaths that aren’t his fault, like Mary’s, so that probably started with Victor Trevor. That’s why he gets freaked out by the thought of people dying on his watch and why he is obsessed with catching criminals. He has deep fears of intimacy because as the saying goes, it’s a “fearful thing to love what death can touch.”
Euros is like the part of Sherlock that tries to drive all emotion away but can’t. A big part of Sherlock realizes how that leads to nothing but being a sociopath and his brain is just proving it to him. He doesn’t want to be a sociopath, he doesn’t even want to be the one flying above everyone else. Deep down, Sherlock has always wanted someone to play with. His brain connects John to the last person who was willing to play with him: Victor Trevor.
In TAB, Moriarty told Sherlock it’s the landing that kills you, and Sherlock reiterated that to John. Meaning: falling in love doesn’t have to be terrible, it’s all about whether you land safely. Mycroft in TFP tried to convince Sherlock and John that the safest thing was to crash the plane, which is of course what Sherlock would imagine Mycroft would say, but Sherlock decides he’ll help Euros land it safely. Sherlock has overcome his issues and is ready to come back to life.
Immediately after Sherlock embraces Euros, he asks her to help him save John. This is because of the parallel to What Dreams May Come I’ve been repeating: John is suicidal because Sherlock won’t come out of his coma, and part of Sherlock knows that and is struggling to regain consciousness.
Sherlock imagines John is down a well and can only be saved by Sherlock coming to terms with his fear of intimacy; he literally tells John that figuring out what happened to Redbeard is *how* he will find John. John feeling suicidal is also why he imagines an “I love you” coffin whose description fits John, and why Sherlock’s brain flips out and bashes it to bits.
There’s other clues that Sherlock is stuck in his head, like Queen’s “I Want to Break Free.” It’s about a man who wants to come out of the closet because he’s fallen in love, and it works nicely as a parallel to Sherlock wanting to come out of his coma. The song cuts off at “I’ve fallen in l–.”
And Moriarty is peppered everywhere because of “the final problem” of staying alive, because Sherlock still recognizes the connection between Moriarty and Mary shooting Sherlock, because Sherlock remembers Carl Powers drowning (not sure that Victor Trevor actually drowned), and because Sherlock doesn’t want to be a sociopath like Moriarty and by connecting him to Euros his brain is making the connection that the show has always made: that Sherlock can either choose to embrace a lack of sentiment like Moriarty, or to embrace sentiment like John.
I also feel like S4 is in line with Sherlock’s mind beginning to realize that Mycroft has to have some connection to Moriarty and Mary, he just can’t come up with anything that makes total sense yet because it’s all been a drugged, dying dream.
Other clues this is in Sherlock’s head: he gets to introduce himself as a pirate, the absurd gravestone cipher that he solves in less than a minute involves a string of numbers like the Bond Air numbers, iirc Mycroft says the patience grenade has a 007 in its name, Sherlock probably knows Wilde if he knows Shakespeare and gay Victorian history (and especially if Mycroft really did perform in the play) but it’s a little stranger for John to know it, Sherlock would imagine John and Mycroft reacting as underwhelmingly as they did to Sherlock deciding to kill himself, etc.
If they decide to do something Clue-like, I’m guessing they rewind back to the point where Sherlock embraces Euros or maybe just before to a slightly different Victor Trevor memory where Sherlock remembers that it’s a neighbor who did it.
I really don’t think Euros ever existed.
YES! Thank you, thank you, thank you. I love all of the meta about what John’s going through if this is his dying dream, but the evidence from the rest of the series just doesn’t support that conclusion. This episode is about how Sherlock is finally choosing love over pure reason.
Yeah, I gave some thought to the possibility that TFP is John’s dream instead but too many things are just about impossible:
John can’t just know what his chair looked like in Sherlock’s mind. If we’re in someone’s head, it’s far more likely to be Shelock’s.
– John has never heard Moriarty utter the words “the final problem” to Sherlock. If we’re in someone’s head, it’s far more likely to be Sherlock’s.
– John can’t remember stuff like the waterfall scene from Sherlock’s mind in TAB. If we’re in someone’s head, it’s far more likely to be Sherlock’s.
– The only time John has ever heard “Redbeard” was when CAM said it aloud at 221b. For John to make the leap to Redbeard being a childhood dog and not a pirate or a code is one thing. It’s another thing that John would somehow envision the exact same Redbeard that we saw in Sherlock’s mind palace. Then it just gets absurd to imagine John realizing that Redbeard is a psychological cover for a childhood best friend. If we’re in someone’s head, it’s far more likely to be Sherlock’s.
– I find it unlikely John would imagine all the lines and deductions in TFP. We know that Sherlock’s mind is capable of that from TAB, however.
– I don’t think John would imagine himself reacting so blandly to Sherlock going to shoot himself in the head.
– It makes a lot more sense to me that Sherlock would imagine his own childhood than John would imagine Sherlock’s childhood.
– The episode isn’t pointless if it’s in Sherlock’s head because Sherlock works through some old memories related to his fear of intimacy. If the episode was in John’s head, then Sherlock didn’t work through those things and John didn’t learn anything real about Sherlock, so what’s the point?
– What Dreams May Come explains why there’s so much suicide talk in TLD, why Sherlock makes a connection between John and suicide, why Sherlock feels like he needs to save John, why Sherlock feels like he has to go to hell to save John, why Sherlock is saying he doesn’t want to die while lying in a hospital bed, etc. There are too many elements borrowed from WDMC to make me think that’s not intentional. The evidence is even stronger than The Princess Bride (I wrote that meta too) so I’m surprised people take TPB parallels as gospel and are now willing to accept dream episodes, but don’t think the WDMC parallels are meaningful? People agree T6T and TLD make no sense but somehow want to hang on to bits of them? It’s cool and all, I just don’t understand it. It’s very clear to me at least, with the whole concept of John’s blog being ripped from the movie, that they were planning on WDMC from the first episode.
– If TFP was in John’s head then Euros is real, which just seems outrageously stupid to me. imo there’s no way Euros is real; her behavior even before TFP is nonsensical – actually literally logically impossible – and the idea that Sherlock would forget an entire sibling and his whole family would conspire to keep him from remembering her is ridiculous.
– If T6T and TLD aren’t also EMP like I’ve argued, then John’s character makes little sense anymore. His MP character makes sense if it’s Sherlock torturing himself in his head though. (Also, though my personal wishes have no bearing on what they’re choosing to
do, I can in no way get behind their relationship if John actually beat Sherlock like that.) And again, that would be consistent with WDMC.
– There’s no way TLD can be real for all the reasons I discussed in its EMP entry; even Euros being a super genius can’t make her invisible to CCTV, Wiggins, and Mrs. Hudson. Most damningly, Sherlock could only know Mary was telling him to wear the hat if she’s a figment of Sherlock’s imagination instead of John’s. If TLD isn’t real then TFP isn’t either, and it’s way more likely those things are both in Sherlock’s head since there’s continuity between them.
– Occam’s Razor. I think it’s way more likely that the whole series is in Sherlock’s mind given the mounds of evidence than it’s a combination of like, John having a dream plus unreliable narrator and alibi theory, some parts are true and some aren’t, etc. It’s pretty easy to wake Sherlock up at a hospital and have people get that nothing actually happened since Mary shot him; it would take a lot of explanation to explain how one episode was a dream, but the ones before that were only partly true in a few ways, and then they have to reveal why they didn’t just show things as they actually happened, etc. With EMP it makes sense that things weren’t shown in a realistic way because they’re all made up and happening in Sherlock’s head as he imagines them, but I haven’t really heard a compelling explanation for anything else.
It just seems more likely to me that nothing in this series makes sense and all the promo material uses imagery from WDMC and everything revolves around Sherlock’s memories because Sherlock has been trying to come out of a coma in an homage to one of the most romantic stories one of their favorite authors wrote, than it seems likely that Sherlock really does have a crazy secret sister and John is somehow privy to imagery from Sherlock’s Victorian mind palace and things Moriarty never said in front of him, etc. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
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