I was re-watching the Faith deduction scene the other day, and had a sherlockian moment where the camera zooms in dramatically on your face and your mind flashes back through moments that suddenly all fit together like the last twist on a Rubiks Cube. Someone might have said something similar about Redbeard before, but I’m not gonna wade through meta to go find out. It’s about time I make my own meta, so (moriarty voice) welcome… to my first meta.
Thesis: Assuming that EMP is real, Redbeard represents Sherlock’s attitude towards love, and acceptance of his love for John.When Redbeard is a dog, Sherlock still lives in “sentiment-is-a-quality-of-the-losing-side” land. When Redbeard is a human, Sherlock overcomes his fear of expressing love, and no longer views it as a childish weakness.
Where do we start? ASiB, of course. Cue Sherlock beating Irene Adler at her own game through exploiting her love.
Sherlock’s got it all figured out. “Sentiment”, or love, is nothing but a chemical. And he doesn’t need it. He doesn’t have friends, he doesn’t need people, and he likes it that way. At least, that’s what he’s convinced himself.
In TGG, Sherlock exposes his feelings about love again, this time to Moriarty. The dialogue, because I couldn’t find gifs:
JM: “I’ll burn the heart out of you.”
SH: “I have been reliably informed that I don’t have one.”
JM: “But we both know that’s not quite true.”
Here he is, entangled in a web spun by Moriarty himself, with John Watson at the center of it like bait, and he’s blind to his own sentiment. Even Moriarty has recognized Sherlock’s feelings for John Watson, and yet Sherlock is still in denial. This denial is hurting both him and John, as Moriarty takes advantage of Sherlock’s ignorance. Granted, Moriarty might also see sentiment as a weakness in itself, but either way, Sherlock’s not handling the whole “sentiment-thing” very well.
In fact, in the very next episode (THoB), we see this:
In denial that he emotionally needs John. ‘Nuff said.
I think we could also casually connect John to Redbeard, and to Sherlock’s sentimental side, since the whole reason this conflict with his emotional side has risen is because of John.
Comparing John to a pet, which one gets sentimental about. Subtext = loud.
(Side note: If Redbeard hasn’t been mentioned before season 3, he could be solely a creation of Sherlock’s mind palace, supporting EMP-after-TRF theory…)
Now that we’ve taken a look at Sherlock’s underdeveloped emotional maturity (or shall we just say unhealthy attitude towards/fear of love?), let’s talk about Redbeard. The dog shows up in Sherlock’s mind palace as a way of comforting himself, and calming himself down. That, to me, is pretty solid evidence that Redbeard represents love, sentiment, and Sherlock’s emotional side in general. His emotional side is so suppressed that it’s not even human. He views sentiment as a chemical defect, so far removed from himself that it’s represented by a separate being, a different species. Sentiment, he has decided, is no better than the instinctual behavior of a dog.
The line “they’re putting me down too, now” speaks volumes. He’s buried his sentiment (represented by Redbeard) so deeply that it feels like he’s
killed it, aka “put it down”. But if his sentiment was totally dead, he
would die too. His subconscious is slowly realizing that living without
love is “no fun”.
Next stop: TSoT. Sherlock calls Mycroft during the wedding, as if he’s trying to touch base with the man who represents everything cold and machine-like he tries to be. As if he needs to remind himself to keep his sentimental side on a tighter leash. (Actually, if Sherlock’s in his mind palace right now, then Mycroft could straight-up just represent his cold calculating “I-think-I’m-a-sociopath” side. It’s a battle now, between the judgemental brother and the loving dog. His mind is resisting the possibility that sentiment is important and necessary, since it’s spent so long shunning it.)
To which Sherlock replies, “I’m not a child anymore.”
Ouch. He’s basically saying that the devastation he felt as a child for losing the dog he loved was just stupid sentiment. A chemical defect, which he has grown out of. As a side note, perhaps Mycroft encouraged and/or caused Sherlock’s fear and dismissal of the value of love? He’s certainly using Sherlock’s memory of love to criticize / belittle him. Anyway, even though the deepest crevices of his mindpalace have recognized that suppressing his sentimental side is slowly killing him, Sherlock himself hasn’t figured it out yet. He can’t figure it out, because if he accepts his emotional side – and his feelings for John, how will he make it through John’s wedding day? If love mattered, then his feelings for John would have to matter. If he accepted the love and humanity within himself, he’d fall to pieces at the heartbreak of John choosing someone else.
No, he has to squash that part of himself. Alone is what keeps him safe, after all. Except… there’s the fact that Mycroft mentions Redbeard at all. This shows that Sherlock’s too-cool-for-love facade is slipping. Redbeard is slipping through the cracks, and now Mycroft has noticed.
Time to look at season 4.
Redbeard is getting closer and closer to the surface. In what the casual viewer is supposed to think of as “reality”, Sherlock keeps getting flashbacks of Redbeard and Eurus.
One of the interesting things about TST is how much Sherlock lets his
emotional side hang out. It’s like he’s experimentally poking his
“Redbeard” out, to see if letting it out will ruin everything, or save
him. He even admits to using a dog for a case just because he likes it.
Imagine the Sherlock of season 1 admitting something so purely sentimental like that!
I’m really distracted by the fact that right after Sherlock compares the dog toJohn, John’s first thought is that Sherlock likes the dog. (cue middle schooler voice) like, like likes it/him.
Anyway, so much subtext here.
The dog, which lowkey represents his emotional side just as much as Redbeard does, only on a slightly closer-to-the-surface level… is not moving. It must be said that Mofftiss didn’t plan for the dog to not move, but they still kept it in the episode, and chose what dialogue to shape around it.
Here they are, the main characters in Sherlock’s mind palace, standing around staring at his emotional side like “how do we make it move? how do we get the ball rolling on embracing your emotional side?”.
To which Sherlock replies, “slow but steady, not unlike John.” So he’s working on coming to terms with the okay-ness of sentimentality, but it’s not going to happen overnight. Just like his relationship with John is very… slow-burn.
Back to the flashbacks.
Redbeard is coming to the surface of Sherlock’s mind, little by little. Along with this, we get to see Sherlock acting more and more based on sentiment than on cold, hard reason. He listens to the advice of a dead ex-assassin just because he’s so in love with John that he doesn’t stop to think.He relies on John saving him to survive an otherwise deadly situation with a serial killer. I wouldn’t call those cold-hard-reasoning decisions. I’d call them desperate acts of love. Whether you ship johnlock or not, you gotta admit Sherlock is full of sentiment in TLD. He allows it to consume him. He might even be subconsciously trying to prove himself right about sentiment being a stupid chemical, even if it destroys him. All the while, his memories of Redbeard grow a little bit clearer… but they’re still, in the end, memories of a dog. He doesn’t trust his sentiment yet. In fact, he has the recurring memory of the dog being killed. Like how as a child he repressed his love and emotions in order to be like Mycroft and impress him. It’s becoming clearer (although not anywhere near actually clear) that repressing his emotions like that was as tragic as drowning a dog.
Enter Eurus stage right. She represents Sherlock’s cold, calculating hard-logic side. Yeah, that used to be Mycroft’s job, but Sherlock’s view of his cold calculating side has changed. It’s no longer the nice business-suited rich guy older brother. It’s an isolated lunatic that hurts people over and over again, because it doesn’t understand love.
In fact, it views love as an irrational, harmful thing. Sound familiar?
Interestingly, Mycroft shows more sentiment in this episode than usual. This episode is definitely EMP, so we can safely say that Mycroft’s change of personality is Sherlock’s mind realizing that even Mycroft is human, and needs to express emotional things that aren’t always perfectly logical and calculated, otherwise he’d be no better than Eurus.
It’s also interesting that Mycroft invited Moriarty to Sherrinford. It’s like all three of these super cold, calculating people are scheming against Sherlock unlocking his loving side. They all represent road blocks on the way to emotional freedom.
Another interesting point is THIS CRAZY (but easily overlooked) MOMENT.
This gif doesn’t have the caption, but they do say redbeard. What the he*l? Here’s my thoughts on the villains saying that word.
Moriarty used Sherlock’s sentiment against him (targeting his friends to get him to kill himself) in TRF, and Eurus uses Sherlock’s sentiment against him in her horror-maze mocking the value of love. So they’re in cahoots to “burn the heart” (aka emotional side?) out of Sherlock. With Moriarty, it worked. But in Sherlock’s mind palace, against Eurus, it doesn’t. More on that later.
Eurus isn’t healthy. Just like suppressing love and humanity isn’t healthy. What she calls “emotional context”, she says, “destroys you every time.” But she’s wrong.
When Eurus… (who used to be a therapist! Sherlock previously viewed his love-suppressing calculating side as something that kept him sane and healthy, like a therapist tries to do!) … Euros shoots John. Pause a second to remember what she represents in this meta. That shot John. And finally, Sherlock’s mind palace realizes it. The part of himself that he has devoted his entire life to constructing, like an iron wall to keep out love, is actually what stopped him and John from going further with their relationship. Now that he’s identified the problem, he can start tearing down that wall.
In fact, this starts a domino-effect of realizations. Living like a heartless machine is so dangerous that John, who represents his love and humanity as well as representing in-real-life John, tries to warn Sherlock about Euros’s “reprogramming” thing. Euros is hurting him and his family and everyone he loves. It’s not protecting them, like he has believed for so long. So the revelation gets crazy and turns into a psycho murder-maze, manipulating Sherlock and John again and again…
Until Sherlock chooses sentiment over cold hard reasoning. The murder-maze is designed so that every single time he has to solve a puzzle, his sentimental side is put at odds with his cold-machine side. To give in to sentiment would be going against who he’s comfortable being, but to go with the “logical” solution would be barbaric. Monstrous. The tables have turned! Now love, code-word Redbeard, is the sane thing to do, while cold-hard-reasoning is the less-than-human chemical defect character flaw.
Fitting, isn’t it, that Mycroft tries to persuade him to shoot him instead, which would represent clinging to his cold calculating side further. But Sherlock’s done with that. He’s arrived at the very heart of Sherrinford, his mindpalace’s way of keeping his sentimental side buried deep down under lock and key, and is ready to bust his sentimental side out of mind-prison forever.
BOOM. His cold-hard-reasoning-protects-me-and-those-I-love side (aka Euros) freaks out. This isn’t who Sherlock is, is it? He can’t just do that! But he does. He actively chooses love and self-sacrifice and other mushy gushy things over logical deductions, with the belief that it will be more useful.
Suddenly, he wakes up in a totally different place. Good. He’s even closer to accepting and embracing his humanity/love as a positive thing. John (remember what he represents?) is still trapped at the bottom of the well, though. He’s not quite there yet.
Eurus mocks his sentimentality, but her power over him has weakened quite a bit. He’s already messed up life and potential relationships too many times
due to “Eurus”, aka his obsessively cold-calculating-side. John
Watson is too important, and he’s not going to let fear of expressing love hurt the person he loves most.
Until Sherlock’s mind stops pretending his emotional, human, loving side is a stupid dog…
and accepts it as a valid part of being a human being…
Only then does Sherlock’s mind palace make the permanent decision to accept his loving side as good and necessary. In fact, he uses sentiment to save the day.
…by comforting his somewhat shell-shocked, somewhat childish, let’s-be-like-Mycroft-and-supress-our-emotions-in-favor-of-cold-facts side, because that part of him doesn’t go away. It just becomes less all-consuming.
and, of course, by rescuing John in the well, as a way of un-doing the suppression of his loving side in the death of Victor Trevor.
Finally, his two sides can be equally respected.
And Redbeard, the code-word for love, is a human being worthy of equal status to any other aspect of himself. That’s the real reason why Redbeard became a human being. To show that Sherlock has changed, and is ready to love John (helps that Victor Trevor is a John mirror too, right?). All he has to do now is wake up.
P.S: Next up on my meta-writing list is Eurus’s cryptic song, which ties in to Redbeard theory pretty well. This meta post has gotten too long already though, so I’ll save it for next time.
This scene. I can understand why people have said “it’s not in character”; though I couldn’t disagree more.
Mycroft himself has spoken of his distaste for “leg work” and told us that “field work is not [his] natural milieu”. He doesn’t say why. Laziness is perhaps presumed by the viewer, but – having seen this – I don’t think so.
We know that Mycroft favours logical thinking patterns and that he believes emotions cloud the judgement. He therefore tries to eliminate all emotion from his thought processes. However THAT DOES NOT MEAN HE DOESN’T FEEL THEM. A stoic is not a psychopath. As humans we are designed, in-built to experience emotion. Mycroft may adhere to principles of stoicism, he may be disdainful and (I would argue) even fearful of strong emotions, but he absolutely has them. Far, FAR more than he would like, wishes to admit or wishes anyone to know about. He wears his Iceman label as a shield. It’s his protection.
Mycroft has not reached the position he is in without having to make difficult decisions. Has he ordered Loss of Life, imprisonment? Probably. More than likely. But from behind a desk. A shield against emotional attachment. “What about the girl on the plane?” I hear people ask. He was prepared to have that child crash that plane into the sea! If that’s not cold detachment I don’t know what is! Hmmm, actually he does what he always does (where Sherlock isn’t concerned!) he separates emotion and deals with the logistics. And, in a logical sense at least, he’s right! If that plane crashes into a town or city then hundreds may die. From a logical perspective, yes. He’s no stranger to decisions like this and as long as that person remains abstract to him then that gives him the ability to cope emotionally. He doesn’t know this child. He wouldn’t want to know this child, because that would make it too hard. Has anyone noticed how he protests the most fervently at the phone calls with the child? He doesn’t WANT to be drawn in. Has anyone noticed how at one point of the phonecall he covers his ears? Emotional protection. He’s protecting himself from becoming emotionally involved and it clouding his thought process.
When Mycroft is handed that gun he is being asked to DIRECTLY kill a person. There is no shield. He is being asked to point that gun at a living, breathing person and pull the trigger. And he is not capable of doing so. He has always KNOWN he isn’t capable of doing so and that is undoubtedly the real reason for his dislike of field work. Behind his desk he can do what he does best. Think. Plan. And his hands stay clean. Logically, there is no other choice and he has a man in front of him begging him to shoot him. Logically he knows this, but doing it yourself is very different to giving the order for it to be done when you’re safely back in your office.
(reblogging because awesome meta. and: “field work is not [his] natural milieu” i love this line i don’t know why maybe simply because mycroft.) (“in case you’ve forgotten”)
I thought this scene was absolutely in character for most of the reasons above. Mycroft doesn’t like legwork. He thinks “getting involved” is always a mistake. Ordering an assassination is not the same as being the assassin.
Doesn’t mean your hands are clean, though. Even (sometimes arguably) within the government agency context, ordering an assassination is still premeditated murder and the first person to admit that would be Mycroft. He straightens his tie and lifts his chin when a gun is pointed in his own face. He knows his moral worth is questionable and he doesn’t feel he especially deserves to live.
Mycroft has not reached the position he is in without having to make
difficult decisions. Has he ordered Loss of Life, imprisonment?
Probably.
Well, if Sherlock and Eurus count, it’s not just probably. Also, Mycroft didn’t have any trouble letting his brother go on life-threatening missions, nor did he have trouble watching Sherlock being tortured and since he went there to do the watching, he did do leg work. And he didn’t mind Sherlock getting shot by Mary. The word “stoic” is not what I’d use of a brother like that.
If he was so against leg work, why did he go with Sherlock and John? He even wore a disguise and seemed to enjoy that. And he was the one who knew what they were up against. Not that John was able to kill that man either. But totally in character for him, of course, since he was established as a coward long before.
I thought the girl was someone’s imagination. I haven’t rewatched but I’ve seen people say so several times. How could Mycroft know about any phone calls? OTOH, why would anyone care about an imaginary girl in the first place? *puzzled*
Wouldn’t Mycroft have shot and killed that clown with his gunrella if the bullets had been there?
I think the point is that “leg work” would have been doing the torture rather than the watching?
Mycroft sends Sherlock off to do legwork overseas but wouldn’t choose to do it himself. The first time, Sherlock chooses to go as he has to break Moriarty’s network up completely or John, Lestrade and Mrs Hudson are still at risk from snipers. The second time is punishment for shooting Magnusson and the decision is forced by the scrutiny of other government officials. Also, Mycroft only goes to Serbia at the start of S3 when Sherlock isn’t traceable (took him 6 months to track Sherlock down).
He only told Sherlock and John “the truth” about Eurus when he was terrified by the clown break-in – a deliberate set up devised to terrify him.
Even in the U.K. you’re allowed to defend yourself in your own home if faced by mortal peril (clown had a big sword and was about to charge). Providing the weapon is licensed and proper safeguards are in place, self defence would be legal.
Then he felt he had to go with John and Sherlock as he’d continued Uncle Rudi’s ahem questionable treatment of Eurus and it was his responsibility to sort things out once he was convinced she’d escaped. He also still apparently didn’t tell the whole truth.
The little girl was believed to be real by Mycroft, Sherlock and John until very late in the episode.
I still don’t get how they all could have had the same hallucination or whatever. Did Eurus pretend to be the girl? Change her voice and everything? Was it some sort of hypnotism?
I guess “leg work” depends on how you define the word but I’d say that learning Serbian in a couple of hours and infiltrating whatever that group was that had Sherlock counts. No way of knowing what he had to do to get where he was. And if he really was as much against it as he complained afterwards, why not send someone else? Besides, like Sherlock said, he was already working on saving himself. I don’t remember anything said about how long it took him to track Sherlock or that he had trouble tracing him. He was in a hurry because London was in danger. Also, I doubt any snipers were interested in John & co after Jim killed himself.
My point about the clown was that it showed Mycroft had no qualms about shooting a person. He could have run away. I’m sure that big house of his had somewhere secure where he could’ve been waiting for the police to arrive. It’s got nothing to do with any legal issues. Killing that man to save his wife wouldn’t have meant he was a murderer. Especially considering the circumstances. Sherlock was a murderer. Mycroft didn’t have any trouble making that go away, when he (finally) wanted to. He could easily have done that again if necessary. Now both the wife and husband died. If Mycroft had shot himself, I wonder what had happened. He was the one responsible for Eurus and her safe-keeping. That was something he failed at. He could’ve played the hero and sacrificed himself because of that.
I’ve included who I consider the six ‘main’ villains above. There’s others you could argue for – Hope, Shan, Norbury, etc – but I think these six are relatively uncontroversial picks. Some of them have multi-episode arcs (Moriarty, Mary, Magnussen, Eurus) while Irene is mentioned several times after her appearance and Smith, while only a single-episode villain like Hope or Shan, seems to loom somewhat larger. Anyway, y’all are welcome to consider other villains. I’m going to look for patterns in these six.
Here’s what I’ve got:
Male villains on BBC Sherlock are the heads of organizations. Female villains on BBC Sherlock are lone wolves.
Magnussen and Smith have business empires. They own physical buildings and have visible entourages. Moriarty’s got a criminal empire. His resources are a bit less visible but we know he’s got half a dozen snipers at the swimming pool, and we meet several members of his network. Moriarty, Magnussen and Smith display their power not just by threatening but by dominating other dangerous and powerful people. They have many people “under their thumb”.
What about our female villains? Irene has a network of clients which she uses to protect herself. Mary used to have a small team of agents she considered her peers, and that team would take on clients together. Eurus has (ugh) an indeterminate number of people brainwashed into obeying her every whim. It’s worth noting here that even though Irene is a dominatrix, she exercises her power not by dominating but by manipulating (”I know what he likes”). Eurus does the same: she convinces people to do her will. Mary, too, exercises power by manipulating, although it’s not clear how much she did so as an active assassin (as opposed to manipulating Sherlock and John in order to maintain her cover).
We can tell that our female villains are qualitatively less powerful than our male villains by the fact the latter can frequently be found threatening the former. Moriarty threatens to turn Irene into shoes, and gives her instructions on how to manipulate Sherlock. Magnussen threatens Mary convincingly enough that she resorts to using force to answer him. And although Eurus is actually (magically!) more powerful than anyone else, in TLD we see her pretending to be a character under grave threat from Smith.
By making their female villains qualitatively less powerful, the writers open the door for another gendered pattern.
Male villains on BBC Sherlock cannot be forgiven for their crimes. Female villains on BBC Sherlock are always forgiven.
Sherlock shoots Magnussen because he can see no other way to end the threat he poses. Culverton Smith is arrested and presumably imprisoned. Moriarty is put on trial, escapes, and kills himself later on the rooftop at Bart’s. All three end up imprisoned or dead.
Now, Mary ends up dead just like Moriarty. But unlike Moriarty, Sherlock’s doing everything he can to protect her, and there’s no discussion of her going on trial for her crimes. And like Culverton Smith, Eurus ends up imprisoned. But Eurus started the show imprisoned, and so it doesn’t actually pose a meaningful barrier to her freedom, or the threat she poses if she decides that a hug from Sherlock hasn’t actually Quieted Her Forever.
On a surface level, Mary and Eurus have the same ends as Moriarty and Smith. But on a character level, it’s entirely different: Mary and Eurus are fundamentally forgiven for the people they’ve killed and the wrongs they’ve done, where Moriarty and Smith aren’t.
Irene, obviously, is forgiven too. Sherlock saves her from execution, but he executes Magnussen himself. Quite a difference.
Male villains on BBC Sherlock do not have personal relationships with Sherlock and John. Female villains on BBC Sherlock do have personal relationships with Sherlock and John.
This one is less universally true. If we say that Irene has a relationship with Sherlock because she’s allegedly in love with him, then we must say the same for Moriarty as well – even moreso, since Moriarty seems even more obsessed.
But the other four villains bear out the pattern well. Mary is John’s wife, Eurus is Sherlock’s sister. Neither Magnussen nor Smith have any relationship to Sherlock or John at all – in fact, Sherlock has to fake a relationship to Magnussen’s secretary to get close to him.
The personalization of female villains on BBC Sherlock can also be seen in how they’re referred to: Moriarty, Magnussen, Smith; Irene, Mary, Eurus.
This ties into the previous two observations. It’s easier to tell a story about forgiveness when the villain in question has a personal relationship with the protagonist. And that personal relationship can be a real source of threat, in the absence of the drama that being ‘the most dangerous, the most despicable human being’ can provide.
*
When I look at these patterns, I see an inability to conceive of women as being powerful or threatening in the ways traditionally reserved for men. I was so excited when for a hot second I thought we were getting a Lady Smallwood villain reveal, because Lady Smallwood has that type of traditionally male power. But instead she remains a nonthreatening bit player, and the villain is Norbury – another lone wolf ushered quickly off the stage.
I actually don’t fault the writers that much for falling into these patterns. A lot of writers do. What bothers me is when they try to pass themselves off as feminist visionaries for having made the ‘Holmes brother’ into a sister or turning Mary Morstan into an assassin. No, sorry, your work is a bog-standard reflection of the sexist culture from which you come – as exemplified by your villains.
JOHN:
Redbeard?
SHERLOCK: He was my dog.
MYCROFT : Eurus took Redbeard and locked
him up somewhere no-one could find him.
JOHN:
Mycroft’s been lying to you; to both of us.
JOHN: They’re not dogs’ bones.
I’m working on another meta and I’m curious what headcanons people have formed on this point. Preferably Watsonian, not Doylist explanations.
I get that, as children, Mycroft would have wanted to protect Sherlock from the ugly memory of his best friend’s murder. But now that they are all adults and Eurus is using Sherlock’s ignorance on this point to manipulate him, why doesn’t Mycroft simply tell him, “By the way, we never had a dog. Redbeard was a young boy who went missing”?
Aside from saving a juicy plot reveal till later in the episode, I think he was probably hoping/clutching desperately at straws that it wouldn’t come out. Either that or he hoped that he’d have chance to bring it up at a later date when he thought Sherlock could deal with it better (or when John wasn’t around – he clearly wasn’t at his most comfortable having to air the dirty family laundry in front of John).
For all Mycroft is ruled by reason and pragmatism, he makes some terrible decisions when his judgement is clouded by emotion, and particularly terrible ones when he has little to no control over a situation. I think him withholding that information was both
a way of him maintaining some sort of semblance of control over the situation and an attempt to shield Sherlock from further emotional pain.
Mycroft is a very cost/benefit analysis kind of thinker to me, and personally I don’t think he wouldn’t see the utility in telling Sherlock something so distressing unless it was absolutely necessary. Especially given that he’s been forced to dump a metric shit ton of fucked up family history on him in a very short space of time.
Also:
I used – at discrete intervals – potential trigger words to update myself as to your mental condition. I was looking after you.
Redbeard was a trigger word. Even at the point at which Mycroft has pretty much lost all control of the situation in Baker Street, he’s still trying desperately to cling on to it because he thinks if he can he can look after Sherlock (even though it’s quite evident that he can’t, but hey, emotions + Mycroft = blindness to his own flaws and limits).
Mycroft’s whole life since he was a child has consisted of him carrying the family secrets in order to protect those around him. He then went into a career where keeping secrets is top priority in order to protect lives. It’s ingrained in him to keep things to himself for the good of others. I think giving up that responsibility and burden in one go would be hard for him, he’s hard wired to want to keep things quiet.
But if what Redbeard really stood for was such a big secret that even Mycroft dared not to reveal it to Sherlock in one go – how could Magnussen know about Redbeard and even had a file on it/him? Because I doubt Magnussen cares for missing dogs…
If Magnussen knew about Redbeard/Victor and thereby of Eurus and her existance/function, why was he allowed to continue? Why does Mycroft say people like Magnussen never do too much harm when he in fact knew one of the biggest secrets not only of the Holmes family, but of the British Government (Eurus and Sherrinford) and was very likely to use it for blackmail? Why did he built a nonesensical chain of pressure points when he had both Mycroft and Sherlock in his pocket by knowing about Redbeard/Eurus?
And how did Magnussen know?
And why did Moriarty, who also knew about Redbeard, never use this specific, devastating knowledge against Sherlock or Mycroft, but instead killed himself before his greatest triumph?
And if Moriarty was in cahoots with Eurus, who gave him the perfect ammunition to destroy Sherlock, why did he set up that suicide plan in which Sherlock had to kill himself or his friends would be killed? Why did Moriarty neither mention Victor, Redbeard or Eurus to destroy Sherlock? To show him that he knew nothing and was but a puppet, operated by his brother?
What was all this about?
Also,
what about the Holmes parents? They also didn’t know were Victor was, what
happened to him and who did it. I don’t see any reason, why they would agree to
the brilliant idea of turning Sherlock’s memory of Victor into a freaking dog!
Or do they wanna tell me they didn’t know about the memory conversion and by
pure chance no one ever mentioned Victor ever again after he got lost?
In
general, the Holmes parents are so OOC and act implausible in TFP. At the end
of the episode they are told that their son Mycroft has lied to them for
decades because their daughter Eurus is alive, a psychopath and, in fact, the
murderer of their other son’s childhood friend. But apparently, the Holmes are
alright. I must admit, they were a bit annoyed, but maybe visiting Eurus on her
lonely island and listening to her playing the violin calmed them.
@isitandwonder, I think you may be assuming too much? All we know from HLV is that Magnussen knows the word “Redbeard” and knows that it relates to something sensitive for Sherlock Holmes. That doesn’t necessarily imply that he knows all about Eurus and Victor and Sherrinford and Musgrave. Odds are, he got the info from someone in Moriarty’s criminal network – someone who knew that “Redbeard” was connected to a big secret involving Sherlock, but nothing more.
As for why Moriarty didn’t use the information, my sense is that he regarded it as an insurance policy, in case he died but Sherlock survived. He wanted to be sure the “game” would continue after his death, and he’d be able to torture Sherlock from beyond the grave. Eurus and “Redbeard” was the best way to do that.
@a-consulting-criminal, your question about the Holmes parents is one of the things I’m hoping to address in the meta I’m working on.
Regarding Magnussen and for whatever it’s worth – he said it himself – he doesn’t need to know all the details of a secret or even the truth – just having limited information is all that’s important. Or, the fact that he knows certain people or subjects are pressure points. Redbeard could have been fed to him through a multitude of avenues. Eurus could have done it…if for no other reason than to see where that particular investigation led Sherlock – how he handled it. She was (obviously) aware of what was going on, since it was her, after all, that broadcasted Moriarty’s pre-recorded message that brought Sherlock back from exile and certain death.
As for Eurus and Moriarty – she also wouldn’t have to feed him every bit of information. Moriarty was so fixated on Sherlock that just bits and pieces was more than enough to pacify / excite him. Eurus did say that Jim Moriarty wasn’t nearly as interested in staying alive as he was Sherlock’s eventual demise – no matter how that came about. Even posthumously.
While it’s never said directly, there is aspects of dialogue that implies Sherlock and Moriarty began their ‘dance’ as children. Sherlock was the ONLY person who suspected Carl Powers’s death was not an accident. He was the ONLY one who noticed Carl’s shoes were missing. As a kid, he went to the police, “made a fuss”, but no one paid attention. James Moriarty must have been made aware of this at the time (maybe they lived in close proximity to one another?) – because Carl Powers is how Moriarty began TGG with Sherlock – his first case. It was Moriarty’s ‘treat’ to Sherlock – to show him he had been right all along. So, Moriarty knew of Sherlock as a kid and it fascinated him – that there was someone else in the world like him – as brilliant as him.
The Holmes parents – I don’t think they lived in obliviousness regarding Victor Trevor. They knew Eurus knew his whereabouts as they were desperate to get this information out of her. This much was stated in Mycroft’s flashback. Mycroft also added that they knew what happened, that Victor died, since Eurus began calling him “dead Redbeard.” So, none of that was left ambiguous.
I think it’s a lot to assume that these parents “allowed” Sherlock a “conversion” of his memories – it’s something he did on his own. Which, btw, is not uncommon in children with PTSD. Realistically, it’s not a leap to think that everyone, including Mycroft, suffered from the emotional fallout of what happened (Mycroft still feels it). These parents not only lost a 4 year old daughter to an asylum and what they thought was her eventual death a few years later; their 5 year old (Sherlock) almost died in a house fire, they later learn Victor had also died but were helpless in finding him, they lost their home and undoubtedly dealt with an ongoing investigation. They further continued to have both Mycroft and Sherlock professionally evaluated with psychiatrists and specialists – not only for their intelligence, but emotional trauma. This much is said within the episode, but also through Sherlock’s sarcasm throughout the entire series, such as: John: “Are you insane?” Sherlock: “No, my parents had me tested. Numerous times.” Sherlock’s parents might have been encouraged to maintain the illusion of Redbeard as a dog, until a later time when memories began to surface. And, since I suspect they lost all of their possessions in the fire at Musgrave Hall, it means they also probably lost family photos and any physical trace of Eurus.
We have to remember that at one point Sherlock was just a clever little boy. Not the man who denies emotion. For children you have to let them grieve in a certain way. The Holmes parents are not going to keep bringing up a boy who went missing, that meant a great deal to their son. They don’t want him to keep feeling pain. The same for Mycroft as a big brother. Sherlock was his little brother who played pirate games with his best friend. Just an extremely clever little boy, not the consulting detective who has honed and crafted his mental ability today.
Mycroft didn’t know how the memory of Eurus and Victor would affect Sherlock if and when it would be revealed. He always went out of his way to protect Sherlock even if it wasn’t the right way about it.
As we have seen, drugs played a large part of Sherlock’s like and his balance on the edge of falling into hole was always uncertain. This could’ve been the leap off. Mycroft just simply didn’t know. Also, just like Sherlock today, there’s a chance Sherlock detached himself from his parents from an early age so where might the conversation about Victor even come up?
Just remember at the time and ever since, Sherlock has been a vulnerable little boy who went through an extremely traumatic experience and his family, out of love, would not mentally want to do anymore harm.
Mr Homophobia is the driver of this ride, and I’m the enabler. Together we have hijacked the story and derailed it rather beautifully. So do hop on board – it’s gonna be a bumpy ride!
Choo – choo!
When Mr Homophobia – let’s call him ‘Jim’ – made his first appearance in the show, he already managed to give HBTQ people a negative representation:
Jim lured Sherlock into deducing him and ‘outing’ him as a dishonest gay man in front of John (who we all know is a bit closeted) and Molly (who had presented Jim as her new boyfriend).
As a Consulting Criminal, Jim also ‘helped’ minor gay characters in the show to appear to the audience as murderous people seeking revenge:
Jim’s Consulting services even included persuading a lesbian woman to dissimulate “falling in love” with a man (albeit in a rather treacherous way):
Jim’s true mission was made clear already in Season 1, though:
The inclusion of hallucinatory drugs made Mr Homophobia into an increasing problem for Sherlock…
…until the time was ripe for The Fall:
The Fall consisted in Sherlock abandoning the love of his life…
…and leaving said love interest in my warm, heteronormative hands:
And then, after Sherlock’s complete heartbreak…
… some traditional, homophobic tropes could play out nicely in Sherlock’s mind, even without Jim’s physical presence:
And Jim has even made sure Sherlock thinks he deserves being beaten:
And even if Sherlock might have had his doubts…
He still succumbs to the general concept:
Isn’t it amazing just how much Jim managed to do to an otherwise rational mind – the famous Sherlock Holmes – in just five minutes?
So, as I was saying, this story is really a beautiful train wreck; a masterpiece of post-modern, cynical art. Mr Homophobia and I – Mrs Heteronormativity – make a wonderful, serial-killing couple together. In short: Jim instils the fear and I give it some social context; we are the perfect villains!
[Sorry about this rather bleak take on Moriarty, but this is basically how I see him; as a companion metaphor to ‘Mary’. And this, as it seems, is now the way that everything’s going to remain… At least until the moment that Sherlock – and the audience – finally decides to WAKE UP and get rid of these villains once and for all!]
Exactly the same. TFP is about as realistic as Jurassic Park – that’s what I’m getting from this.
It’s a dangerous thing to post this @tjlcisthenewsexy Maybe some people get ideas an then in S5 we get dinosaurs …. :)))))
And there is even evidence for this … it happened before …. (X)
This is amazing, I love dinosaurs! And let’s not forget this:
And the book from which the movie Jurassic Park 2 was adapted was also called The Lost World by Michael Crichton… So, is the plane scene a hidden tribute to ACD’s The Lost World?
Guys…… so, there was a brief reference to Sir Richard Burton in Doyle’s The Lost World, and I suspected that the butler Richard Bruton in The Musgrave Ritual was based on Sir Richard Burton. You know, a bit of a Don Juan, well-grown handsome man, speaks several languages…… anyway, Sir Richard Burton life was “a mad adventure filled with danger, sex, scandal, and drugs… he was a Victorian rolling stone.” His last great act of defiance: translated and produced the Arabian Nights in all its massive 16-volume glory; wrote essays on homosexuality and pornography; and to avoid prosecution, he published a series of sex guides, including Kama Sutra, anonymously. The 1880s press was outraged, calling his publications “revolting obscenity” or “morally filthy.”
Sir Richard Burton died in 1890, and his wife burned nearly all of his papers –diaries, notebooks, letters, and manuscripts – 40 years worth of work, all gone in flames. Because she wanted to “protect public morality.” It kinda reminded me of TFP when the ancestral home burned, and with the way butler Bruton died (buried alive and silenced), perhaps ACD was using The Musgrave Ritual as a commentary and a protest, about the way he had to write Holmes and Watson? Since his readers in 1893 would know who Sir Richard Burton was. And of course, only two years after, Oscar Wilde trial. There’s…… something else going on with all the seemingly bizarre references in series 4and I think it’s to do with the allegories and allusions in ACD canon……
Hi, I’m ’Mary’. Or actually I’m A.G.R.A. Or – come to think of it – I’m rather ’Rosamund’. Or why not ‘Gabrielle’?
Or whatever. Whoever. The thing is, who I really am doesn’t matter; I could be anyone at all. ANYONE.
I’ll be who it’s convenient to be at any given moment. My mission: Serial Killer; I’m here to kill the series – slowly but surely.
I’m Mrs Heteronormativity; the one who tells you how to behave according to convention and normality. You do as I say – or else… I’m the one entitled to guide you through life, to make sure you remain perfectly ordinary. And here are some lessons about me I want to teach you:
1. You must always marry me; everyone knows it’s for the best.
2. Don’t even think about same-sex relationships!
3. I’m here to prevent any sidestepping.
4. Marrying an assassin is perfectly sane and normal.
In fact anything is OK as long as it means No Homo. Oh, are you hurt? Sorry, but collateral damage is inevitable.
5. There’s no use trying to express your pathetic feelings if I tell you they are inappropriate.
6. Just so you know: I’m everything you wish for.
7. I make sure your baby’s name is appropriate to gender.
Which means:
Nope.
Exactly. Good boy!
8. With me you’ll be sure to have the right family values.
9. I’ll always be there to tell you what to do – even if you think I’m dead. And it’s No Homo!
10. And ultimately, I’m the one who gets to define who you really are.
I do hope you’ve been paying attention to me now, and never more try to step out of the ordinary…
[This is, very much, how I see ‘Mary’. She’s not a real character – she’s a nightmare! That’s why she lacks any constancy regarding feelings or back-story or name or anything. And that’s why she keeps haunting the show even after her death, like a ghost. “Do not forget me” – we’re not getting a chance to ever forget the Abominable Bride, not even for a moment. She’s merely a metaphor. And series 3 and 4 are mainly about consequences – the results you get when you listen to this sort of concept and let it define your life.]
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”).
“Listen to the tape. Do it now, listen. Just listen!”
Because John tells us to pay attention to the tape–and we really should. So I put it all together,
isolated the audio, tried to tune my ear to hear what they say, and transcribed it for you guys. Maybe you can decipher the bits I couldn’t understand? But I think this is enough to get the idea.
If you follow me you probably already know I read this episode as being a product of John’s unconscious mind. With that in mind, paying attention to this conversation is truly revealing, since it’s John himself who comes up with this dialogue. The Governor is John’s mirror. Eurus deduces that he doesn’t trust his wife, that she’s selling him a fake image of her while hiding something, that he’s struggling with his feelings towards her, that he is sad, and that he has a secret.That secret possibly being his bisexuality(and his love for Sherlock). John also really seems to be rethinking his morals/ethics –which is actually a running theme in this episode. He keeps questioning himself what’s ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, in the scenarios he imagines, and relates them to his wife. Since he’s also figuring out Mary’s true nature in his hallucination (just like Sherlock was able to figure out a lot of things at the same time in TAB) I just think John might be reconsidering if it’s bad to feel the way he does about Mary, when he’s supposed to be mourning her. Notice the Governor saying “I like my wife”, as if that’s what he knows he HAS to say–but it’s not what he truly feels and Eurus knows he’s lying when he says that. Just like John, he never truly trusted his wife.
Also, I just clutch my chest seeing how the incredibly repressed Capt. John Watson tells himself he doesn’t need to cry–while actually knowing it’s okay to do it. Clear callback to that scene in TLD. Being embraced by Sherlock was just so important for him, because Sherlock let him know without a word that it’s okay to cry. God, my feels.
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.
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