darlingtonsubstitution:

the-7-percent-solution:

In The Great Game, Moriarty made Sherlock dance by sending coded messages through the pink replica phone.  And in “Many Happy Returns”, we see this:

The box of stuff Greg has of Sherlock’s that he’s kept for some reason and decides to give to John.  In it are four important pieces of information – one could even say a game.

A yellow mask, a Hornby Train, Nicotine patches, and the pink phone.  

At first glance, seeing the pink phone reminds us of “A Study in Pink”, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be that phone.  In “The Great Game”, Moriarty sends a replica to Scotland Yard to communicate clues.  This phone in the box is more than likely Moriarty’s phone to Sherlock, since it was mailed to him in the first place and therefore Sherlock’s legal property.  

This box is a signal for the last pip.

The writers have sent the final pip, alongside the phone.  The viewers were given hints as to where the series was going.  It’s all in that box.  And it’s been there this whole time.  

“Nicotine patches.  Helps me to think”

This box is meant to be decoded.  The patches imply focus, brainwork.  The phone is the pip.  The mask is a reference to “The Adventure of the Yellow Face” while the train is a reference to Doyle’s “The Lost Special”.

The Adventure of the Yellow Face includes a wife with a huge secret regarding her previous life in America, the potential for blackmail, her chickens coming home to roost, her husband who stays with her no matter what the cost, her husband who (upon her request) doesn’t ask questions she does not want to answer, the concept of whether or not she believes her husband is a “good man” (and that he wants to be a good man), and Sherlock Holmes screwing it all up then instructing Watson to use the term “Norbury” whenever he gets too cocky in the future.

Whew.  That’s, like, episodes 8-12 right there. 

And this was hinted at before episode 7 aired.

Now let’s look at the train.

By now you must have heard the story of Doyle’s “The Lost Special”.  In 1893 he published a detective story about a missing traincar (called a ‘special’) that was detached from the original and hidden somewhere else.  This is exactly what happens in episode 7, The Empty Hearse, which is also parallel to “V for Vendetta”.  Considering V’s hearse was a detached traincar that went on to blow up Parliament, Sherlock having an “empty hearse” coincides perfectly with the empty traincar positioned under Parliament, as well, and now I have a migraine. 

In Sherlock, the missing piece of the train is hidden beneath Sumatra Road and it’s carrying something so disastrous that it must be stopped, lest it unleash hell.

“The roads we walk have demons beneath, and yours have been waiting for a very long time.”

So the yellow mask in the box was pertinent to five episodes spanning two series and eight plot points, but the train in the box was pertinent to only one episode and one throw-away plot point?  I don’t buy it.  

So here I wait, patient as ever, for that bomb to go off, the one hidden beneath the surface, tied up in legal disputes, the one that was detached from the rest and stowed away for the perfect time when nobody would know what hit them. 

They gave us our pip and told us to think, now it’s just a matter of time.  

Nice! I would argue, however, since the moment John shot Jefferson Hope, the “original serial killer,” John had ceased the connection of his narrative from that of the 5 pips, or, the past in America, i.e., the original story of Jefferson Hope in A Study in Scarlet. 

TBB sort of followed The Sign of the Four, the game is afoot! But instead of the Agra treasure, the quest has become “cracking the codes.” The first time Sherlock and John followed a train track in search of “the lost special,” they found a wall of ciphers. And instead of recovering the lost treasure in the tramway, we had a case of mistaken identity on all sides. Sherlock and John did crack the “book code” in the end, though, but we didn’t, hence, The Great Game.

The Empty House blew up in pieces in the opening minutes of TGG – which means ACD’s The Final Problem was not at all what it seemed. Since then, we’ve been provided breadcrumbs of where to look, why we must bear witness, and perhaps participate, in solving a 130-year-old problem. 7 years on, we are back at where we started:

Read the books – it wasn’t a comment meant to be patronizing, it was a plea – lots of people read ACD canon in the last 130 years, and yet, here we are. 

So, what have we missed?