just-sort-of-happened:

Yesterday was saying that maybe this episode is like a horror version of Sherlock in that it’s meant to be a nightmare for fans, it’s the anti-episode, it’s everything it shouldn’t be and we’re supposed to notice.  Today @marta-bee was talking about Uncle Rudy possibly being a reference to an anti-portrait.

This whole series has made a steady stream of references to the devil.  Notably in TST John and Mary discuss twice and through a mirror the difference between the devil and its spawn.  They also discuss movies The Omen and The Exorcist.

Anyway, there’s a funny little moment when John, Sherlock and Mycroft are discussing what to do about their uhm bomb problem when we cut to Mrs Hudson, vacuuming to, ‘the number of the beast’, by Iron Maiden,

Now…  Sure this is a funny little moment.  We already saw that she is a badass in TLD so this fits: she does unexpectedly cool things, right?  Except.  Except this is a very unusual song choice for Mrs Hudson.  

Now, technically Mrs Hudson can be into any song she wants to but.  The Number of the Beast came out in 1982 when she was 45.  (We open the show with a reference to 1982 and arguably this is around the time when Sherlock’s childhood flashbacks are occurring in TFP).  Now maybe she was a 45 year old metal head back then but there’s something odd about this song choice.  That’s why we laugh, it’s strange and we didn’t know she liked this type of music so we are amused. 

But, what was even the point of blowing up Baker Street?  To up the stakes, to start the game, to be the maguffin that gets it all going, sure, but also, maybe, to throw in this weird reference.  TST featured Margaret Thatcher, aka The Iron Lady, as someone who could provide some clues to Sherlock about Mary.  Villain-coded and devil-coded Mary.

“At one point in TST Sherlock is stopped in front of a shrine of pictures of a very bad woman: Thatcher.  He feels something is off but he’s not sure what.  He has extreme foreboding here, the camera work, the lighting, the way the other people disappear. This shrine of Thatcher is about Mary.  Mary is a very bad woman about whom he has a very bad feeling.  And something is missing from the shrine: the bust containing the AGRA flash drive.  So, Sherlock’s instincts tell him Mary is terrible and that he’s missing a piece of information about her: her secret agent past.”  

(italics added later) from this post.

Now, if you thought that the Moriarty element in TFP was silly well, it was.  We saw a flashback and then, apparently, Eures had gotten him to film a series of uhm video clips for her to taunt Sherlock with 5 years later?  Okay.  The thing is Moriarty has been coded as satan I think since their conversation at Baker Street after the court case in TRF.  He has an apple, he owes him a fall, this is symbolism about Sherlock being like Eve and eating the apple of the tree of knowledge and being ejected from Eden.  In TAB Sherlock explicitly states that he’s waiting for the devil when he’s awaiting for Moriarty.  But, no, in fact, Mrs Hudson tells that to Lestrade about why Sherlock is just sitting in his flat for days on end.  

Magnussen also has been called the devil in HLV by Sherlock.  He tells John he made, ‘a deal with the devil’.

All of the villains of Sherlock are connected to water (see @thepineapplering‘s meta here.)  Water is connected to, among other things, emotions via four elements symbolism.

We see Sherlock running from his emotions as early as TGG when he talks about not knowing the solar system.  (He’s ironically trying to actually talk about his feelings to John when the latter storms out.  Ironically, he saves a child later on via his obscure astronomical knowledge).  Well, no, we see this retroactively via ASiB when he seems to emotionally skewer the woman for having feelings, however slight.  The solar system and sentiment are both things that others see as basic knowledge (”primary school stuff” associates it to early childhood, even) and that Sherlock has told himself he, ‘deleted’, because he has no use for them.  

So Sherlock’s personal villains, his demons, his devils lurking beneath are emotions.  That’s why all villains are associated to water.

In TFP Eures is literally on a island, she’s isolated and yet trapped by water, surrounded by water.  Isolated and surrounded by feelings, trapped by feelings.  

Now, let’s look at the lyrics to Iron Maiden’s, ‘the number of the beast’, 

“Left alone, my mind was blank.
I needed time to think to get the memories from my mind.

What did I see, can I believe,
That what I saw that night was real
And not just fantasy.

Just what I saw, in my old dreams,
Were they reflections of my warped mind
Staring back at me.

Cause in my dreams, it’s always there,
The evil face that twists my mind and brings
Me to despair.

Six-six-six the number of the beast.
Hell and fire was spawned to be released.

Torches blazed and sacred chants were praised,
As they start to cry, hands held to the sky.
In the night, the fires burning bright,
The ritual has begun, Satan’s work is done.

Six-six-six the number of the beast.
Sacrifice is going on tonight.

I’m coming back, I will return,
And I’ll possess your body and I’ll make you burn.
I have the fire, I have the force.”

X

So, here we can see that this song that Mrs Hudson so innocently and hilariously is listing to is about a man’s visions and nightmares.  From his own deepest fears, from his own psyche.  He questions what he sees, what he sees is the face of the devil and the mark 666.

We’ve seen that TFP doesn’t make a lot of sense plot-wise and that everyone seems out of character.  I mean The EMP warriors have been hammering out meta about this series being fake from day one, so I got nothing special to add to the idea that, ‘it was all a dream’, or, ‘it was all in his head’.  But I do want to say that the devil imagery, the references to the devil, to a nightmare of the devil, that’s of your own making, to water/villians/emotions, all of this does go back to the idea that we’re in Sherlock’s psyche.

There is no sister but rather this is Sherlock’s most isolated essence.  An essence that is lonely and wants to have a friend.  But also one who’s, ‘killed’, said friends before.  Meaning he’s both evil Eures and vulnerable, sad Eures.  He’s a contradiction.  He wants to get close to people and he wants to also bury his feelings in a well.  He’s specifically afraid to get as close to John as he wants to be.  But, he’s now even more afraid that if he pushes him away he will drive him away like he has already done in the past.  

This is his emotional turning point, this is why the theme of, ‘emotional context’, is brought up again and again by Eures in seemingly disjointed ways.  If you don’t face your fears, and face your emotions The Three Garridebs will die.  The romance will die if you don’t dare face it.  The friend in the well cannot wait forever.  You can push your feelings down but eventually they will die.  That person will stop loving you..  Your chance to love like John so adamantly insists at the end of TLD maybe be gone before you realise it.  

Sherlock loved someone before and then he buried that.  (I think that’s Sebastian from TBB).  Now he sees himself doing the same thing to John. He needs to rescue his feelings for John from the well.  The well of his own fear and indifference.  The well full of feelings.  His horror is emotions.  This is his nightmare where nothing is more frightening than emotions.  

Now Eures is a woman.  Sherlock’s deepest emotional aspect is a woman.  Now my friends cringed after TAB when I said that the women in that episode represented Sherlock’s feelings but I really do think that’s one of the meanings of TAB.  Sherlock has always feared his emotions and preferred logic, the mind. The mind, the logical side, etc, has always been associated to the male aspect and to the east.  Feelings, intuition, water, circles, has always been associated to women and to the west.  Now, we have this contrast because Eures is, ‘the East Wind’, associated to being super intelligent, rational to a fault, to the point of being a full-on psycopath.  But, but, there’s also little-girl-lost Eures who will be magically cured by a single hug from Sherlock (see the hug from TLD).  His deepest self, his feelings, are armoured by this extreme reason, a cold calculating machine, a high-fucitininng sociopath.  But, under some very fragile walls lies a very lonely vulnerable, deeply emotional child.  (Remember his realising that the room he is trapped in his fake?  Those are the flimsy walls of his cold exterior, inside is a weeping child who doesn’t know how to be integrate their strong feelings of love and fear).  Remember how little Eures appears at Baker Street and implies she can’t differenciate beween her emotions after cutting herself?  This is meant to show us that she’s disturbed and like inhumanly cold, right?  Except that she’s not cutting up an animal (or other behaviours associated to childhood psychopathy) she’s hurting herself and trying to understand her many feelings.  She is confused by them but not lacking them.

Sherlock is Eures: lonely and trapped by her emotions and yet she can leave at any time.  Sherlock can be free at any time.  (Remember, ‘I want to break free’, by Queen playing as Moriarty got out of the helicopter and made a sexual joke?)  Moriarty represents Sherlock’s sex drive (remember he says he’s Mr Sex in TRF and is Sherlock’s id, in chains, in the basement, in HLV).  His sex drive/Moriarty wants to a) break free and b) visit Eures island of emotional isolation.  He needs to integrate his sexual and his emotional feelings, that’s why Moriarty and Eures must meet.  At Christmas.  A time when Sherlock and John try to talk about their emotions, year after year, it seems.

During 5 minutes at Christmas Sherlock’s sexual attraction and his feelings met for the first and only time, maybe.  Maybe it’s in ASiB?  Maybe it’s in HLV?  We can speculate as to which 5 minutes were most poignant and why but I think we can see that every once in a while, maybe on a special occasion like Christmas or a birthday (TLD hug) we can have a break through where emotion and attraction meet and you know, break free.

PS we saw a sort of villainous version of John in TLD via Culverton (with tons of deeply sexual overtones) from @warmth-and-constancy.  And then we see John go into the balcony at Sherrinford and just plain old look at the water.  We see him in relation to water just as we first see Culverton.  John, again, is being subtly coded as a villain.  But, why?  Because John is the person that Sherlock’s in love with.  He is the villain because he is making Sherlock face his deepest fear.  Sherlock is literally horrified of being in love, hence John and the water imagery.  

Eures literally is Samara Morgan from the Ring and from Appointment with Samarra.  Sherlock must inevitably face her, his inner fears, his deepest demons.  And Samara from the Ring becomes a supernatural monster because she was abused, neglected, left alone.  She died in a well.  This is Sherlock’s monstrous side (remember, ‘he’s our monster’, from TLD?).  A little child who just needed love but instead was isolated and alone.  This is Sherlock.  Literally being Samara and having an appointment with himself.  (Here I was talking about Appointment with Samarra vs Samara Morgan but with John as the little girl)

When he said he needed to go, ‘deeper into himself’, in TAB, well, he wasn’t kidding. 

Oh, one more thing, the reason that Mrs Hudson’s song struck me was because that scene is followed by one where a guy says he doesn’t know where Sherlock is and then we see those two fisherman on a boat.  The camera angle is very low and instead of cutting back and forth we get a (seemingly) continuous shot.  The effect is nauseating and discombobulating (suggestive of being a dream).  We also see this odd object on the wall that looks like a simplified devil logo: a face and horns,

But also I just realised it’s also a circle.  And a mirror.  So this is Sherlock’s greatest fear, greatest horror: feelings and introspection with regards to said feelings.  That’s the true devil, here, the true villain.

You. Are. A. Genius.