Right so this is where I’m at right now: I agree that the sheer amount and extremity of errors and inconsistencies make absolutely no sense as things stand, but at the same time, I’m doubtful that anything can be done about it at this stage. Like, on the one hand, those errors and inconsistencies along with all of these things give logic to the 4th episode theory:
Benjamin Caron, who directed TFP, tweeted this (which he later deleted, but if you google “nothing in #sherlock is a coincedence” you’ll see that it did exist) which both contradicts about a million things in TFP if it is real and final and ties in with the whole “people always give up after three”
But at the same time, there are these issues with this theory, which in my opinion shouldn’t be ignored:
So my position right now is that yes, there being a fourth episode does make sense on a logical level, but I can’t see how they could actually practically execute it, unless they were to just release it on the boxset, which seems like a massive risk to me because I’ve already cancelled my s4 preorder because I was so disappointed and so have lots of other people and why air an embarrassing disaster of an episode only to reach a much more limited number with an actual potentially groundbreaking resolution?
Also, I’m just not willing to get my hopes up again if they’re only going to be crushed for the second time in less than a fortnight. At this stage, it really is a possibility that TFP was just so bad that anything else would make more sense by comparison and that this is just one more example of us being cleverer than the writers. Of course I’ll be delighted if there IS a fourth episode, but am I certain at this point? Sadly not.
I agree with all of this. The theory has grounds, but also too many things it cannot address also does not excuse the gaslighting that has occured
If you are reading this, you are probably screaming.
So are most of us. But some hope remains! This masterpost and theory
table collect the fandom’s last hopes—and they’re less crazy than you’d think.
The main takeaway is that the episode contradicts the rest of the show and real-world events far too much for it to be just a mistake. In fact, the evidence suggests that there will be a fourth episode.
“What? That’s ridiculous!”
That’s what I thought at first, too. But things in real life don’t add up, and they can’t be explained by bad writing. At this point, a rug pull is simply the most logical explanation. And if we’re wrong, well…it can’t really get any worse, can it?
This pack has 6 parts:
Issues: Everything within the episode that makes TFP not only a dumpster fire, but a (literally) unbelievable dumpster fire.
Clues: Real-life weirdness such as cast quotes that don’t fit, scenes missing from filming, and strange new promos that hint at a fourth episode.
Descriptions of the two main theories
Theory table: Compares which theories explain which issues
Resources: Links to meta that explain specific issues or the episode’s weirdness as a whole
Conclusions: What it all means, and why we should hold out a little longer.
Enjoy!
-soe
Disclaimer: Everything in this post is speculation. If you don’t want to get your hopes up, by all means skip it. However, I’d suggest at least waiting until January 29th before going full-out against Mofftiss (reasons below).
=============== Issues ================
Everything weird about that episode. With over 70 nontrivial plot holes, it’s hard to view the episode’s quality as an accident.
(The bolded phrases are descriptions, not the actual titles.)
Scenes that were filmed but that we’ve never seen? Quotes that make no sense with TFP as the finale? Something is up.
==============Theories================
It’s in Sherlock’s Mind
Everything in Season 4, since either the end of TAB or Mary shooting Sherlock, is in Sherlock’s mind as he is comatose. This theory requires all three episodes to be at least partly imaginary. A main variation is that John is talking to him as he is comatose, and that what John describes influences what Sherlock imagines.
For meta on variations of this theory, including EMP and John’s alibi, please see the TST Survival Pack.
It’s in John’s Mind
Everything in TFP is in John’s mind after John is shot. Variations include:
TST and TLD also took place in John’s mind.
Mary shot John, not Eurus.
This one is starting to gain more ground, particularly because it would make the whole season an adaptation of “The Three Garridebs”, leading to canon Johnlock, etc.
==============Theory Table=============
Green = Completely addresses this issue
Yellow = Addresses this issue somewhat plausibly, but not the best solution
They broke every rule of writing unless it’s a rug pull. The filming, cast and crew quotes, promotional material, and subtext within the episode make no sense unless a fourth episode reveals that it took place in John’s or Sherlock’s mind. The reputation of the whole show relies on them successfully revealing the real season finale.
So when would they reveal this fourth episode? When would it air?
“The Final Problem” is either sheer stupidity or utter genius. Either way, let’s enjoy one last conspiracy.
The game is on.
I will be updating the table and theory list regularly.
If you have theories, issues, or meta to add, please comment.
If you think a theory does address an issue that the table says it does not address (or vice versa), please comment.
If I described your theory inaccurately or you just want to add something, please comment.
If I tagged any of your meta above: I would love to add any other work you’ve done that I haven’t seen. If you’d like to add something, please comment it and I would love to include it in the next update.
-soe
THIS. 🙌🏻
Thanks for the tag! I LITERALLY just finished a mini meta, TFP is John’s TAB; It’s essentially reiterating everything already said here in other meta, but BLEH shameless self promo and all that :p
I think the strangest part about TFP from a neutral audience perspective is that it just…doesn’t make any sense. There were SO MANY plot holes. SO MANY loose threads. To the point where i’m amazed the BBC put it through? Did no one look at this script from a reader’s perspective? What really stood out to me were two things:
The errors of logistics, both in terms of story and literal physical movement (how did the characters get, physically, from point A to point B? and of course, in terms of story, how did we get from the end of TLD to the beginning of TFP?) How do the plot points connect, and where?
The amount of suspension of disbelief required just to accept that the episode itself exists, that it happens, let alone that it makes sense. Because for an episode of a show that is ostensibly set in reality (as in, what happens on the show, while fictional, could plausibly occur in actual real life) there is a hell of a lot of suspension of disbelief required to get through it. To the point where I think time travel might have made more sense. This episode required Doctor Who levels of suspension of disbelief, and for a show that prides itself on being gritty and real, that is a ludicrous expectation to have of its audience.
I have more specific queries listed under the cut. There are many of them. Note that these aren’t meant to be answered; rather, these are meant to illuminate the fundamental problems with the writing of the episode itself. (Though I’d love to open up a dialogue!) They concern mostly TFP, but questions from the rest of the series cropped up as well:
Do you remember this case? They mentioned it in A Scandal in Belgravia. You can find it on John’s blog here. I’ve written many metas on this before, and everything was pointing to elements of “The Geek Interpreter” being played out on screen. I assumed it would be in “The Lying Detective”, since that’s the trippiest and “The Geek Interpreter” looks like the main character is hallucinating, but no. It wasn’t in that episode. So where is it? Why can’t we find it?
We can’t see it because we’re in it.
For a little context, The Geek Interpreter is about Chris, who has a website that studies the true meaning of comic books. However, Chris started noticing the comic books were coming true – they were coming to life. He was right, by the way, even though literally no one believed him. But we’ll get to that part in a second.
Chris almost went insane. The only person he thought he could count on was KEMP, a person he only knew through social media. KEMP was represented by a smiley face promo picture.
Sound familiar?
Two weeks ago I wrote a meta about how “The Six Thatchers” being played out on screen meant John’s blog was coming to life. It made complete sense, seeing as how “The Six Thatchers” was a case John wrote about 5 years ago and the plot lines were very similar. This made me think of The Geek Interpreter, because I was acting just like Chris. He claimed the stories were coming to life. And I claimed that too. Instead of comic books, I was focused on John’s blog posts. And if they were coming to life, then “The Elephant in the Room” as well as “Happily Ever After” would be, too. Hell, if The Six Thatchers can do it, why can’t the rest of them? It made sense. It still does.
I wrote about this online. We all did. Just like Chris blogged on his website. One of my metas was posted in USA Today, proving the world did care about what fans had to say about Sherlock – this mirrors Chris posting online and comic books suddenly getting more attention from other readers. This mirrors perfectly.
And you know what? It was all a trick by the creators of the comic books. They were in on the downhill mental spiral this person took because he believed what he saw was real when everyone in the world was telling him it was a lie. That he was crazy. The creators were in on it. But Chris was right in the end.
John Watson said this about it:
“They’d been using Chris as a form of advertising. It would have been almost funny had it not been for the effect it had had on his mind. To make money, they’d risked sending this kid insane.”
So there you have it. Chris had a website devoted to decoding comic books. The creators started bringing the books to life without telling anyone. They made him feel isolated, crazy, and desperate because it helped with the marketing. But the books were coming to life. They admitted it and showed their hand after all hope was lost. Chris was right. He had been right from the beginning. The trick they played was cruel but there’s nothing he can do about it.
We have blogs devoted to decoding Sherlock. The creators started bringing the blog posts to life (The Six Thatchers). They did not admit to it, nor follow through the way they started. This made us feel isolated, crazy, and desperate. This didn’t matter because in the end it helped with the marketing. But the blog posts were coming to life. They will show their hand after all hope is lost. We are right. We have been right from the beginning. The trick they played was cruel but there’s nothing we can do about it.
I completely get that everyone is bruised and feeling pretty broken right now. I’m not having the best time myself but following this great post from @darlingtonsubstitution yesterday, there’s just such a glaring underlying clash in TFP that I need to write it out (yes, I hear your bitter laughter. Which one, you say). Please ignore this if it’ll just piss you off right now, I get it – I really do.
As darlington said, brilliantly, one of the strangest aspects of The Final Problem is that it
“is a dismissal of everything that came before; and it is a rejection of
the idea that is quintessentially Sherlock Holmes: rationality. Mofftiss
created a character in Eurus that is of the supernatural, an
all-knowing entity that single-handedly destroyed the sense of reality;
not only within the show’s fictional sphere, but it broke through the
fourth wall and took ours down with it.”
Whereas Hope in ASIP seemed to have mysterious powers when he said “I’m gonna talk to yer … and then you’re gonna kill yourself” (x) but it then (disappointingly to Sherlock) turned out that he was just threatening people with a fake gun, Sherlock unquestioningly accepts in TFP that Eurus has the bizarre psychic power to rewrite others’ memories and, simply through talking to them, to control their behaviour utterly from that point forwards.
This is utterly contradictory of both Conan Doyle’s Holmes and the Sherlock we know.
@green-violin-bow thank you so much for including the podcast information!
I agree completely. TFP is not only a transgression of the essence of Sherlock Holmes (both acd and bbc), but an insult to acd’s The Final Problem as well. The hanging Garridebs has been talked about quite a bit the last two days, but what of the letter Holmes left Watson before heading to the Reichenbach Falls to face his death? Didn’t Gatiss just recite every word at Proms 2015? TFP is not only a slap in the face for advocating Johnlock, but a kick in the teeth for recognizing the most cherished and tender moments between Holmes and Watson in acd canon. Even if TFP turns out to be satire, I don’t understand why it has to be at our expense – are we to be the martyrs? But for what cause? How can we be certain that Mofftiss and Co. are on our side? Their silence is deafening, and it’s definitely getting scary.
DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU HAVE GIVEN UP ON MOFFTISS AND DO NOT WANT TO HAVE YOUR HOPES CRUSHED AGAIN, AS THIS MIGHT BE UTTER BULLSHIT, but:
I just re-watched tfp to overanalyse the utter shit this episode was and found something that made me a little suspicious:
This shot is one of the cameras in Eurus cell. It is one of the recorded videos that show her manipulating the prison warden, and it reads 18992201.Of couse they could be random numbers, but I thought hey, why not strip them down. The first idea was a date, 22.01.1899, but I couldn´t really find anything.
But what if we seperate them? There have been numerous rumours that we might get a fourth episode next sunday and someone even found out that yahoo has a fourth episode listed.
The date for that episode is the 22.01.
Now we´ve still got 1899 left. A little google search on Arhtur Conan Doyle was done and I found THIS:
Conan Doyle wrote a PLAY in 1899 THAT DREW MATERIAL FROM SCANDAL IN BELGRAVIA, THE FINAL PROBLEM AND A STUDY IN PINK.
Now, lets see what we got this episode:
Honor Kneafsey
the girl who not only played the girl on the plane, but also one of the sisters at the beginning in A Scandal in Belgravia. (Plus: everyone on the plane in tfp was “asleep”, just like the dead people in asib)
A Study in Pink
basically the whole ending of this episode was asip flashbacks. We´ve got shock blankets, 221b, even the flippin text Sherlock send (You know where to find me. SH) is the exact same text he send to Lestrade in the beginning of asip. Everything is back to the beginning.
There is so much more to this, but I really want to believe I´m on the right track here. They promised us a rug pull, but they had to give us a rug first. This is it.
The reason TFP was so bad was because it wasn´t the original story. It´s a PLAY. In fact, this is THE PLAY where one of Conan Doyles famous quotes regarding his characters comes from:
Doyle later recounted how he had received a cable from Gillette
inquiring, “May I marry Holmes?”, to which Conan Doyle replied, “You may
marry him, murder him, or do anything you like to him.
THAT IS WHAT THEY DID. They redid 1899 and made us believe we we´re watching the original story. But it´s not, and we will have to wait to the 22.01 to find out what really happened.
(sorry if this was rambly. I am neither a good writer nor is my english good enough to put all my thoughts into words. but my key message is: if you are still willing to hope, please do!)
I am not willing to hope again but I’m reblogging this for everyone who needs this rn (though you might regret hoping when it doesn’t happen and I’m not gonna watch it anyway)
Eurus and Sherlock are the same person. Just like at the end of Fight Club, his biggest enemy is himself. Mycroft told said as much in TAB about leaving him alone in a prison cell. Which is exactly how we find Eurus.
Agree…Eurus is one of Sherlock’s inner deamons, one of the fights he had to fight with himself!!
Is this something they thought about or is this just some kind of coincidence? Again?
No coincidence imo!! @just-sort-of-happened@consulting-benaddict
Btw in this line you have also Moriarty’s and Sherlock’s conversation: “I see, you are me!”
Also Moriarty is a part of Sherlock…the rude “let’s play a game” part…
But lovely @ebaeschnbliah wrote a nice thing about it, look at it! Here’s a link, because I’m on mobile
Thank you so much @loveismyrevolution for mentioning my thoughts. And I fogot another antagonist of Sherlock who can be read as a part of his old self. Frankland the mad scientist without any conscience. I kow, at first sight there seems to be no connection. But compare their actions in THOB. There are parallels although the Frankland character is exaggerated.
Frankland (and Baskerville as a whole under Mycrofts protection) conducts his own dangerous experiments. He uses human beings as objects to test his self-produced drug. And we cndemn him for his actions …. rightfully.
But now look what Sherlock does. He is willing to administer a drug to John. Sherlock doesn’t know how it could effect the man. A man who is his closest friend – his only friend. A man who suffers from PTSD. Sherlock does it nontheless. Under safe conditions – he says – but that’s not the point.
And in TSOT Sherlock tells the guests that once he’s druged John and John lost one whole day.
Sure, it’s not quite as bad as Frankland’s actions. The motives are different. But it is very very ‘a bit not good’. We love Sherlock and therefore accept his action. Maybe even smile at it. But at the core …. it is the same shit. And Sherlock considers this too during his ‘evolution’ and realizes the wrongness of it.
Eurus is Sherlock, the part that is the frightened child Sherlock who’s emotional development was stopped because of Redbeard, he has to save her to save himself and John, he has to reintegrate that frightened ‘pure intelligence only’ part into the whole of the man who loves and who needs an emotional life.
and he has to do it where it began, at home where he was a child, the place where he buried the trauma.
We see the result. His music is a beautiful duet, both parts are in harmony and it’s beautiful.
I love this addition @alltheholmesandjohn!!!
Exactly that!!
And you know what…the last duet is not only in harmony… no, it’s the most beautiful Johnlock music there can be, because both themes John and Sherlock are as lovely entangled as possible and it’s passionate, it’s happy, it’s balanced and it’s really really lovely!!!
It made me cry so nice…and nothing about this finishing music is about anything but John and Sherlock!!!! @ebaeschnbliah as addition, you know, music 😉😅
Oh, this is a wonderful addition @alltheholmesandjohn @loveismyrevolution Can’t wait for watching it again. Thank you!
I think we can all agree that Martin Freeman is an acting god, yes? Several times throughout the course of the whole series, he’s given me serious meta / plot bunnies from a TOTALLY SILENT reaction to something that another character is saying.
Just a shift in body language, or a facial expression, that makes you think, “wow…there’s a HUGE story here that we’re not being told in the episode.”
And in The Final Problem, he has done it to me again, bless his bastardy boots.
It’s in the scene where John gets tired of all the hot air in the office, and steps outside for some sea air instead:
Now, this could have just been a reminder shot for the audience: they’re alone; they’re isolated; miles and hours from any help.
But look at John’s face.
That’s a really strong reaction. It’s not just discomfort…it’s verging on terror. He flinches away, tries to control his breathing, and all but runs back inside…it’s almost like he’s having a panic attack.
Why would John Watson be so afraid of water?
At first I thought there must have been some childhood trauma that gave him a phobia of water, and that’s why Euros put him in the well. Which would have been great if we’d ever been given any backstory on John Watson at all thanks Mofftiss. (Ahem. Sorry. Personal sore point there.)
This was such an odd line to me… Maybe it was something John said to his patients in Afghanistan who’d suffered interrogations. Maybe he said it to a fellow soldier when they were captured…or maybe it was something he said to himself, over and over, after he was taken prisoner.
The second clue comes from The Six Thatchers:
Again, that’s a really strong reaction. It’s not just ‘oh shit’ or ‘well that’s it, we’re screwed now’…that’s a nearly full fetal position. It’s a duck-and-cover protect-your-head movement, and very uncharacteristic of Captain John Watson, Fifth Northumberland Fuiliers, BAMF ex-army doctor.
And he did it when AJ mentioned being tortured. For fun.
As an army doctor, I have no idea if John would have been given RTI training. But would he have needed it? Would he have had any privileged military knowledge at all, ie, what troops were stationed where, or what their next moves were?
In other words: would he have had the kind of information that would be tactically useful to the enemy?
I doubt it.
True, he was an officer, but he was a surgeon…probably stationed at a single military hospital, treating patients who came in from all over the map. The military operates on a pretty strict need-to-know basis, and I don’t imagine a surgeon would need to know anything about the combat units’ inner workings.
So if he was captured and tortured, they wouldn’t have gotten much out of him. And I think they probably knew that: they just wanted to torture someone. For fun.
And how was he probably tortured?
My conclusion: John was a POW in Afghanistan, where he was subjected to some sort of water torture – probably waterboarding – by his captors. And since he didn’t have any sensitive military intelligence, they didn’t do it for information…they just did it for fun.
tl;dr – Damn you, Martin “I can do that with a look” Freeman, and your amazing plot-bunny-giving “acting is reacting, lovey” talent.
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