Look who’s awfully comfy handling Mycroft’s umbrella. I don’t think she even touches anything else in this episode, except to lean or sit.
Oh. Wow- Scary Mary controlling Mycroft as well…? That would line up. Someday I’ll be able to rewatch without having a panic attack, thanks for finding this!
But if she’s not real how can she hold things… 👀👀👀 nice spot!
This image doesn’t make any sense if Mary’ dead. We’re expected to think that Mycroft’s umbrella was standing without anyone keeping it still? And what about the other people in the room? Mycroft’s agents?
It’s almost as if something is entirely in someone’s head…
mary wat u doin you ded
Very interesting… does anyone know of other instances in which Mary seems more corporeal than she should be?
Hey same ridiculous insomniac anon do you know what gets to me too??? John cheating on Mary even if it’s texting… people argue that it’s in character he’s a womanizer after all but isn’t he the guy who’s loyal very quickly? What do you think?
Hi Nonny!
Yeah, I never understood why they went the route of making all of S4 essentially NOT about John and Sherlock. I liked the visuals of T6T and TLD, but Mary REALLY fucking killed it for me, especially the magical redemption arc they chose to give to her. The whole season felt really ooc for me, and Mary being more of Sherlock’s partner than John was REALLY rubbed me and many others the wrong way. The way the narrative was going, it SHOULD have been her being on the run FROM them, not working WITH them.
Because of this, I really, really feel like there is a false narrative at play here, that the entirety of S4 is being told like a blog entry(hence why they stopped the blog AND used the title of one of the entries to clue us into this fact) because of all the OOC-ness, inconsistencies, fourth wall breaking, “scene jumping” and the “fakeness” of Mary’s death and TFP. The season contains a sense of adventure, is romanticized (though in the wrong direction), and fantastical elements, just like the blog. I found it SO bizarre that Sherlock CONSTANTLY kept saying “I’m Sherlock Holmes!”… just like John’s blog would have done. And TFP for me is John’s TAB, so there’s already an alternative narrative. Anyway, this went way off topic, but you get me. John’s blog is playing out on screen. Why, I don’t know; perhaps to show the general audience that not having John and Sherlock in the picture together doesn’t work, since most of the entries are told as if John is standing on the sidelines watching events unfold – ergo making the season seem very not-our-show. Plus, calling the first episode “The Six Thatchers” after a blog entry on John’s blog and ENDING the season with Mary narrating is so telling to me.
Second part of your ask: I AGREE. It’s really weird to me, simply because we SAW John was essentially done with dating by the end of ASiB because he was happy with whatever he could get with Sherlock. And it took him TWO YEARS to mourn Sherlock before he decided to move on, and for whatever reason, Mary was able to establish that trust with John within six months (I presume she emulated what she thought John wanted, but she’s a professional manipulator). He only stayed with Mary because he didn’t think Sherlock wanted what John wanted, and perhaps also some manipulation on Mary’s part, convincing John that Sherlock would never love him like she loved him.
So then when John is “cheating” I find it really OOC, if only because I just can’t see John ever wanting to get involved with anyone every again after the heartbreak of both Sherlock and Mary. Though, I still hold the belief that it’s really Sherlock John is texting in T6T, and we are told otherwise because of the false narratives (given that I think that the episodes are being told like a blog entry, it’s only natural to assume lies about the things truly happening are present). And maybe it was “just texting”, fine, but it just doesn’t really fit John’s character to me unless that person is Sherlock or unless John is doing another plan behind everyone’s backs with Mycroft (ie. the texting is coded and E is an associate of Mycroft). He has serious trust issues, even an emotional affair with some rando on the bus just doesn’t jive with his character arc they’ve built up over three seasons.
I don’t know. People say it’s in his character, but I just have a really hard time seeing it, especially since he knows the kind of person Mary is (killing Sherlock for trying to tip off John), like… I can’t imagine he would do that again. Mary’s complete shift from the character she was in S3 is what’s tipping me off the most about a false narrative, and as such we can assume the other characters may not be who they seem to be as well, at least in my opinion.
sora-the-soulless said: Mary didn’t try to kill Sherlock. As he points out, she specifically shot him in a way that he would survive “You saved my life” does anyone pay attention to these things or…? There’s no false narrative, the show’s had sloppy writing all throughout series 3 to now I don’t see why it’s suddenly a hidden conspiracy like it hasn’t always been here
Yeah, uhm, @sora-the-soulless I’m gonna have to say that we are both watching two completely different shows, then, and you are reaaaaaaalllly not going to win this argument. I have spent nearly two years studying her character arc and writing a tonne of meta about her character and her purpose in the narrative both surface level AND subtextual. When I write meta, I write without bias from proof presented to me in the narrative. Which than leaves me to say this: I’m sorry but what part of “she went back to Leinster Gardens WITH A LOADED GUN MOUNTED WITH A SILENCER AND POINTED IT AT A MAN IN A WHEELCHAIR” doesn’t scream “she tried to kill him”????? WHAT PART OF “she murdered me”I N HIS OWN HEAD DOESN’T SCREAM “killed him”?? Sherlock said this TO SAVE HIS OWN ASS AND TO PROTECT JOHN. SHE HAD A LOADED WEAPON ON HER AT A TIME WHEN SHERLOCK WAS LITERALLY DYING WHILE COMING UP WITH A STORY. Why do Mary-stans refuse to see what is in front of their faces??? WHAT SHOW ARE YOU WATCHING? I’m not trying to be pedantic, but you are forcing me to drag out my receipts about her.
I have a tonne more from others, but I know you’re not going to read these. Anyway.
ALSO, HERE’S SOME RECENT PROOF: She uses Sherlock’s love for John against him; SHE TELLS SHERLOCK TO PUT HIMSELF IN DANGER, THEN JOHN WILL COME SAVE HIM. Sherlock is SO desperate to have John back, that he jumps at the chance and does it. SHE DOES THIS. POSTHUMOUSLY. AND THEN IT’S LATER REVEALED THAT JOHN WOULDN’T HAVE DONE IT. THE ONLY REASON HE SAVED SHERLOCK IS BECAUSE HE FOUND THESE DVD’S THAT HE DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT.
JOHN DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT THE DVDS. ERGO, WE CAN THEN PRESUME THAT MARY KNEW THAT JOHN WOULDN’T GO SAVE SHERLOCK – ERGO SHE BASICALLY TOLD SHERLOCK TO KILL HIMSELF. SHE HATES HIM SO MUCH THAT SHE WANTS HIM DEAD EVEN WHEN SHE IS “DEAD”.
THESE ARE THE FACTS. THIS IS SURFACE-LEVEL SHIT.
AND JUST TO BE CLEAR: I DO NOT HATE MARY. She was written as a villain. STATING SHE IS A VILLAIN IS NOT MARY HATE, IT IS MARY FACT. FOR CHRIST’S SAKE, THEY DIRECTLY LINK HER TO MORIARTY WITH DVD’S THAT SAY “MISS ME”. I don’t know how much clearer this can be.
This is one reason why people think there’s a conspiracy going on, because her character did a complete 180˚ in S4. SHE SHOULD NOT HAVE HAD A REDEMPTION ARC.
Clearly I am never going to convince everyone of all the proof and facts about Mary’s villainy, no matter how loud I shout them. But you have come to the WRONG BLOG to try to stan for Mary, because I’ve receipts for literally every moment in the series for her. Please, I welcome your debate points, but I can guarantee to you that this is one argument we will disagree on completely. I am one of the biggest proponents for villain!Mary because THE NARRATIVE HAS SURFACE LEVEL FACTS TO PROVE IT.
THAT ALL SAID, WHY DO YOU FEEL THE NEED TO STATE THIS ON MY POST THAT ONLY BRIEFLY MENTIONS MARY? I respect your opinions, and I know damned well you aren’t going to read A SINGLE IOTA OF A SENTENCE on any of the posts I linked to in this response, but let’s be fucking real here, if Mary was a guy, and John and Sherlock were women, we would NOT be having this ridiculous argument and you coming off as a murder-apologist. But anyway. Please, show me your proof with evidence about how Mary is a good person and genuinely cares about anyone but herself.
“if Mary was a guy, and John and Sherlock were women, we would NOT be
having this ridiculous argument and you coming off as a
murder-apologist.”
All of this. I am constantly in awe of Inevitably and their extensive meta. I want to repeat this because I just feel this so hard and it actually -angers- me when people buy into Sherlock’s lie and try to paint Mary as being something other then what she was and defend murder?
Sherlock Holmes’ heart stopped.
The doctors pronounced him dead.
He died. Mary killed him.
Sherlock restarted his own heart.
He could have just given up. His fighting back for life and restarting his own heart was what saved him and it was not Mary’s doing. It was his. She did not save him. She stopped his heart. He DIED. He was about tostay dead until he thought of John. HE saved himself from the edge of DEATH.
She intended to kill him. Everyone saw. On the screen. Just because Sherlock says something when making up a story does not make it true. Sherlock lies. We saw sherlock die. THAT is true. Mary killed him.
So no. She did not ‘save his life’. That was a spoken LIE.
Thanks for your additions, Lovely. I forgot to mention the “Sherlock actually died” bit 😀
I was thinking yesterday and I realised I never questioned how well Moriarty was able to sell his fake actor persona. Sherlock thought it was because of the key that’s able to break into every computer, but we know that that key doesn’t exist, so how was moriarty able to do it?
I definitely hated the reporter chick, but are you telling me she didn’t at least check out these shows and see if he was actually in them? And it took the police over two years to prove Moriarty was actually real. If all of these were fake I’m sure it would only have took them a couple of days. Or what Moriarty was actually an actor on the side in case this situation ever came up?
No, I think Richard Brooke got the same deal as the cabbie. Maybe he was dying as well and in exchange for money he took up the persona of Moriarty.
So, who’s behind Moriarty? Mary, of course. She’s been orchestrating all of this from the beginning. Remember in the blind banker just before Shan was killed, she got a message from M and we assumed it meant Moriarty? Well, what if it was actually Mary?
It was Mary all along who wanted to burn Sherlock’s heart out. She made him into a fake and got him to take his own life. I do think that for a while there she actually believed that he was dead, but if Anderson could figure out he wasn’t dead then so could she. She called Mycroft and got him to tell the police and media that Moriarty was real and Sherlock is innocent, so he could come back.
So, I think she realised that killing him wasn’t the best idea anyway and decided to take something way more important from him, John. And boy did she try to break them up. Marrying him, then getting pregnant all that just to chain John to herself.
Shooting Sherlock in HLV was a mistake, because she didn’t plan on him interrupting her. What Magnussen knew could have blown her whole operation apart and she had to stop him, but also couldn’t let Sherlock stop her.
And then in s4 we really saw her evil side. Saving Sherlock from a bullet and making John lash out at him trying to drive a wedge between them. Sending Sherlock to hell was just a little bonus.
This is it though. She ruined him and the possibility of John and Sherlock ever getting together. I mean look at her evil face. This was her plan all along.
But yet again she underestimated the love John and Sherlock have for each other and that they can always find their way back to one another.
So, I think she was done waiting and just ended up shooting John. There’s no Eurus, it’s always been her and she put a bullet through John’s eye and Sherlock is the only one who can save him.
So yeah this is my theory, on the one hand i hate it cause it would mean moriarty is not real but i love him so much, but on the other hand it would reveal mary to be even more of despicable human being than we could have ever anticipated.
Sorry if this has been talked about before, please do link me to other metas on this if you have any.
Tags under the cut (if you want me to untag you please let me know, i just don’t have too many followers but am excited about this)
you’d THINK Mary would throw herself in front of John when someone was about to shoot him if she was really all that willing to take a bullet for someone, right?
And Sherlock is the one who flips up the table to give John cover!
Yes. It’s the first thing he does when the shooting starts.
GOD
Omfg. He flipped the table? How the fuck sid I not notice that (after watching it 3 times)
OH MY GOD
SHERLOCK DIDN’T EVEN TRY TO HIDE AT FIRST
HE JUST FLIPPED THE TABLE ASAP
OH MY GOD
(I WISH I COULD SCREENSHOT IT BUY MY VOLUME BUTTONS ARE NOT WORKING ANYMORE)
wow what a romantic detail! like, ‘here, baby, this is for you: hide here’,
While Mary does a 180 and literally runs away I’m screAMING
Okay, but she does push him down in the moment, doesn’t she? And what else she can do in that position? Sherlock, at the same time, is hidden behind the wall, Ajay doesn’t see him yet (but he sees Mary and is going to kill Mary, so…)
Break it down with slow-motion gifs and you can see it’s cut so you can’t actually tell if Mary is pushing John to safety or pulling him in front of her as a human shield while she dodges away.
there’s no way of telling exactly what she’s doing here
looks to me like she’s trying to use him as shield since if she were trying to save him she’d just shove him, easier than reaching around and pulling his shoulders imo, but ofc i can be wrong
How does she even see the pointer on John and why does she look to the right of John before taking action?
Sherlock saw the pointer from his position offscreen, and yelled “Get down!” which triggered Mary’s move.
Interesting that this video is seemingly all to do with Sherlock’s deductions about Mary. VERY INTERESTING:
What’s RED doing here in stuff about Mary? Red flag? REDBEARD? Red herring? And don’t you love how the ‘kind-hearted’ gets aligned to:
That’s right folks, you too can be a KIND-HEARTED ASSASSIN, what a niche job description. But wait!
What’s that you’re deducing, Sherlock? Kind-hearted and a sociopath?
And I especially love how the deduction GOOD MEMORY gets split so just MEMORY remains, especially considering all the unreliable narrator stuff around s4- and that doesn’t even get into the possible TD12 shenanigans. (x)
^And all with that ‘loving’ Christening scene… are our “”good memories””” of Mary unreliable? (Spoiler: yes 😉 )
I mean, red means rouge in french… Just like the march 8th thing in TLD
*eye emoji* NICE, also her RED COAT of villainy. (x)
Nice, all those wet jobs for the CIA *eye emoji* (x)
Is that redhead Amanda or Sian because I would totally buy that this is supposed to be “E” from the bus and that is absolutely terrifying that Mary could be so similar looking.
It’s definitely Amanda! She posted the red head wig on her twitter, and a photo of her in a long dark haired wig on instagram. (x)
Did we ever see her with that wig during her montage of being Bourne? I just don’t remember if we did or not but if not, then I’m calling the bullshit police.
Dark haired wig: yes… red haired wig: NO! *infinite eye emojis*
swimmingfeelsinajohnlockianpool pointed out that the line “Softer, Sherlock” sounds like it was delivered by Mrs. Hudson instead of Eurus and I wanted to make an edit.
If there are any other fucky audio bits you want me to edit as I have here, send them my way.
like i hate this but it sounds like the effect on the voice of the lady in the vivala.me vid
I may be crazy but it sounds almost like Mary to me?!
I can hear it being Mary! It’s just not fucking churros…
In The Six Thatchers, after introductions are made at the Wellsboroughs’ house,
Sherlock spots the Thatcher shrine, just as Mrs Wellsborough is saying, “Charlie was our whole world.” Sherlock is immediately plunged into this aquarium flashback:
Something triggered the watery flashback (which… bears no resemblance to well water, by the way). Was it Thatcher, or was it that turn of phrase?
Once the flashback is over, Sherlock immediately returns to the room:
But… it appears no one else has. Where are the Wellsboroughs? Where are John and Lestrade? In the next second, Sherlock snaps back to the full room, and asks, “You were saying?” and Mr Wellsborough takes the line this time, “Well, Charlie was our whole world.”
By the Thatcher shrine, John questions Sherlock about his reaction, and Sherlock responds, “By the pricking of my thumbs…”, indicating that this weirdness (see what I did there?) was caused by Sherlock having a premonition. This is a Shakespeare reference (another discussion of this here), to Act IV, Scene 1 of Macbeth:
For those who haven’t read Macbeth, it’s about a Scottish military man who receives a prophecy from three witches, saying that he will eventually become king. His wife (Lady Macbeth, naturally) then relentlessly pushes Macbeth into killing King Duncan to steal
his
throne. Both characters are consumed by guilt for the remainder of the play, and eventually pay for their crimes.
But this was not the only reference to Macbeth in The Six Thatchers.
The title of John’s blog post comes from arguably the best-known passage in Macbeth, his Act 5, Scene 5 “Tomorrow, tomorrow, and tomorrow” soliloquy:
Macbeth is explaining that death is inevitable, recalling the Samarra story. But he’s also telling us that life is not real, that we are all actors on a stage, something that is emphasized to us in The Six Thatchers many times over, in Ben’s makeup, his and Martin’s staring into the camera, the exposed cameraman in the Morocco scene, Mary’s “like it is in the movies” death scene, and by all the projectors.
This soliloquy immediately follows Macbeth learning that his wife has committed suicide. Lady Macbeth had been tormented by the thought that her hands were stained by blood which she could not wash out. Beginning in The Six Thatchers, bloodstains are also a common theme in S4.
Before she dies, Macbeth begs her doctor for some way to erase her memories:
Hmm… if only there were a way to do that.
The plot of Shakespeare’s Macbeth was inspired by the Gunpowder Plot. If The Empty Hearse’s Gunpowder Plotter, Lord Moran, was a decoy for Mary, have we come full circle with a reference to Mary in Lady Macbeth? Are these Macbeth references meant to signify a suicide (real or fake), covered up by the play we’ve been shown on the stage?
(CHARLIE, CHARLES, CARL. I wonder if Sherlock’s water moment was the swimming pool?)
Love these connections! Gunpowder Plot, Macbeth, pricking thumbs, The Empty Hearse, Mary, Lady Macbeth, Appointment with Death. And of course we have John HAMISH in his proud Black Watch Tartan shirt.
@longsnowsmoon5 I am more and more convinced that this is about Carl Powers… “Deep waters, all your life”. These are the waters we see on the screen, and they’re about Moriarty and the pool, not Euros and a well.
The Girl Without Hands is generally speaking a very awful story, it’s writing is just… not good. But! There is something there that could be connected to S4- the letters.
After the girl has her hands cut off, and is caught eating pears from the kings garden, he marries her because she is beautiful (typical) and she has a son while the King was away. When the Kings mother wrote to him, stating that the (handless) Queen had a child, the Devil replaces the letter with lies, and continues to do so as letters were sent back and forth, the fake letters tell the Mother to kill the Queen and her child. The mother is devastated by this and ties the child onto the Queens back (because you know… no hands) and tells her to leave for their own safety. At the end the Queen is taken care of by an angel until she is reunited with her husband 7 years later.
Now who has constantly been compared to the Devil?? I wonder.
Didn’t Mycroft get angel wings in the same episode?
Oh good memory! He did!
However, his wings are black, so still not pure, as the story seems to be focusing on.
“black wings” immediately reminded me of This Painting by Carvaggio, which depicts “amor”, the roman cupid. the title of the painting translates to “love conquers all”. to top it all off, there’s also a violin in the background. all of this may be a coincidence, but….. the universe is rarely so lazy
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