Had a client came to Sherlock/John before the fall with a
" my wife was a PA for a dubious businessmen , Witnessed something and was murdered...the police are useless...." story, Sherlock/John would have taken great pleasure in catching Mary and locking her up.
They would uncover her secret cia assasin work..her freelance murders..her faked ID,,, and her cold blooded - kill innocent witnesses policy.
Shagging John wouldn't get her off all that.
What about the familys of the people Mary has murdered? Don't they deserve justice and closure?
Does a person like this deserve to just...forget/burn the past and have a new fluffy Mary sue life as a happily married nurse with friends etc?

Whatever you think of Mary and her character,  be it love or hate, she is a killer .
She doesn't belong with Sherlock and John, they catch killers.
It is interesting when you blur the lines as the writers have done here , even going so far as to have Sherlock do his own killing, and show us the justification of that.

So some killers can be likable.. good people..and may even have acceptable motives when murder becomes a last resort.
Yet on the other hand we have the likable serial killer bad people types..with flimsy, unacceptable motives that use murder as a first choice option.
This is kinda what seperates our heros from our villains.
Sherlock is our hero...and Mary seems a perfect villain.
How can we continue with lines so blurred without turning Sherlock John Lestrade and co into a bunch of self righteous Hippocrates?
This is my problem with the Mary storyline , it doesn't fit Sherlock.

Last edited by lil (February 24, 2014 10:50 am)

SusiGo wrote:

Swanpride

Of course she is flawed. They do no one-dimensional characters which is one of the attractions of the show. 
But as I said before, I tried to look at what is there. And I miss her saying only once that she cares for John. That she does not want him to suffer. But we only hear that she does not want him to know about her past because he then would not love her anymore. For me this is an expression of selfishness. We are told again and again that she loves him but we never ever hear it coming from her own mouth. Honestly, even Sherlock manages to say he loves John in front of a whole wedding party, something we never expected him to do. 
Of course not everybody is prone to express their feelings verbally but then we have Mary's actions as well. I do not want to repeat what has been said in so many threads but shooting Sherlock, then threatening him again when he has just come back from being clinically dead and then again being willing to kill him at Leinster Gardens - sorry, but this is not an expression of love to me. 

Also, not once does she apologize to either Sherlock or John for practically killing Sherlock - let's not forget, he was dead, he flatlined, and he came back to life not because of her but because of his own Mind Palace.
She's actually not doing a lot of talking at all, at least not when they are back in 221B. She asks Sherlock what he already knows about her instead of just telling both of them about herself. It seems to me that she still isn't ready or willing to let them in on their past, at least not if that means that she has to tell them face to face. By giving John the USB-drive she IMO also hands over the responsibility to him - read it or don't read it, and if you read it I don't want to be there with you because I don't want to watch you while you're doing it. That is kind of understandable, on the other hand it's not what I would call 'taking responsibility for the actions of your past'. It's now John's job to decide whether or not he is going to read it - and maybe, but I admit that is totally hypothetical, she knows him good enough to just assume that he probably won't read it, and that might just be what she wants.

 

Last edited by SolarSystem (February 24, 2014 11:04 am)

Willow wrote:

Zatoichi wrote:

SusiGo wrote:

 There are small hints throughout the episodes that there may be something more to her than what we see.  

This is true for "nice Mary" in TEH and TSoT as well as for "evil Mary" after HLV.. I think it is safe to say that even after Sherlock (and you ) revealed the hints for her not being nice and innocent all along there are also small hints that there might be more to her than being a cold-blooded obsessive murderer/psychopath as Magnussen depicts her and as her shooting and threatening Sherlock suggests.

I said it before and I´ll say it again, that does not make me trust Mary, forgive her for shooting Sherlock or find her actions in any way justified, I am just open for backstories and additional information that make her and her motives more understandable. I find it hard to stay neutral here, too.. SHE SHOT SHERLOCK AFTER ALL! But people do horrible things all the time, the courts are full of them.. no sentence without all evidences and motives cleared.

Oh, and I believe in Moftiss.. 
 

Well, the courts are indeed full of horrible people doing horrible things but they are not characters in Sherlock; Moftiss are unlikely to provide us with an itemised charge sheet on Mary since it would not be fun.

I find SusiGo's analysis compelling but I am also aware that characters do not live in a vacuum; there has to be something for them to do in the future and I can't see what Mary could do in the future. Moftiss have made it clear that where will be no lethal killer nurse following them around shooting people she may think pose a risk, so what is left for her? Have a baby, live happily ever after in suburbia, J&M forever, really doesn't sound very Moftiss to me...

Itemised charge sheet? Sounds like fun to me..  No, but I honestly think they can and will shed some light on her motives and will present surprising new evidences or witnesses for her past. Because apart from shooting Sherlock everything that suggests that she is a really wicked and evil person comes from Magnussen at that point of the story, and I am inclined to mistrust his word.

About Mary´s future: I admit I cannot imagine her staying long-term, too..  but for one or two episodes I can think of plots that are neither killer nurse (with baby bottle and pacifier next to her gun, wah! ) nor desperate housewife.

I also keep thinking about the "disillusioned" from Sherlock´s initial impression of her.. has she trusted before and was let down in a horrible way? There were movie-plots before when someone took hold of someone´s child to make them do things, for example.. maybe she went "freelance" for a similar reason. In my opinion we can not really exclude something like that just with the facts we have about her now..

Last edited by Zatoichi (February 24, 2014 12:41 pm)

Good point, zatoichi.
That would add another sight to her reaction when sherlock deduced her pregnancy and she didn't really leap for joy.

Sorry, but I really tried for a thread without wild speculations and based on what we get in the episodes but it seems it does not work. 

Sorry..  I should have posted this somewhere else.

So, we have the strange dialogue in the bonfire scene, which is niggling away at me. Why should someone apparently devoted to John not try to help with getting John out of the bonfire, and instead stand by giving helpful advice along the lines of shouting 'don't drown' at someone instead of throwing them a life line.

I think I'm going to make some lunch and brood over it...

SusiGo wrote:

@ Ani: I agree. We must keep in mind that it is Sherlock and not an imaginary Moriarty speaking. It is Sherlock thinking "That wife!" And he thinks it in the most crucial moment of his life (or death) so it must be important. 
I actually started writing all this because I simply cannot believe Sherlock's explanation in Baker Street. I felt totally unwell with this and tried to find out if there is a reason for his saying these things to John. 

I totally agree with you with the mind palace sequence. And I take your observations as they are, Susi, without any speculations or accusations. We will see what Mofftiss are going to make out of this.
There are a few things which obviously don't work, in my opinion,  but any speculation can dismissed by Mofftiss anyway, so I am careful with it. Don't want to start an "attacking" discussion neither.
 

Fact is from the very start with Mary is she has a very easy out , or choice, which is tell John the truth.
I don't understand why she keeps paying a higher and higher price to keep her secrets..
-Marriage/relationship based on lies and false promises ..or tell the truth.
- remain under vile Magnussons power...or tell the truth.
-Keep John and everyone in danger ( bonfire plot)... or tell the truth.
- murder Magnusson....or tell the truth.
- shoot Sherlock... or tell the truth.

Fact is Mary never chooses to just tell the truth..she is convinced what ever Magnusson knows is SO bad not even John, who loves her ,will not accept it.
This is a stupid and selfish choice every time.
Mary doesn't come across as insecure as a person , or in her relationship with John ( best thing happened to him convo) so...
What on earth is in Marys ID and past that makes her think/choose  this way?

Last edited by lil (February 24, 2014 3:08 pm)