RavenMorganLeigh wrote:

And Mary didn't shoot Sherlock in the head for a very simple reason, if she had, that would have been the end of the show! :-D

True!  But they didn't need to set up the episode with a head shot at the end, as if trying to make the point that Mary could have destroyed Sherlock's evidence against her very easily, but possibly chose not to. 

And I think the "You chose her", comment that Sherlock made to John was less about blaming John (which is how everyone seems to take it) and more about pointing out to John that he needs to be conscious of his choices, and why he makes them. If you've ever had the experience of having the same bad apples show up in your life, even though you decided never to have that sort of connection  again, and those people even presented as totally different, positive, sane people-- and then you find out after the fact that they're another bad apple--then, you know what I mean. :-)

But it's not really true, anyway.  John asks if everyone he knows is a psychopath - hyperbole, of course, but Sherlock answers "yes".  There's John's clue right there, that everything Sherlock is going to say is a lie.  Sherlock clearly isn't a psychopath.  And what about the other people John knows?  Mrs Hudson?  LeStrade?  Molly?  John doesn't surround himself with psychopaths.  Mary (if she really is a psychopath - we don't know), is the exception, not the rule.

silverblaze wrote:

We've seen the same thing and given it different meanings. That makes this show so interesting and God knows how Moftiss will turn it all on its head next time. I didn't take that to mean that Mary was evil, I thought Moffat set up a question: why did Mary shoot him, is she evil? And then resolved it in the baker street scene. Just to make it all more tense. 

You know, I really think it´s quite possible that that´s just Moffat´s writing style. Maybe he didn´t pay too much attention to how Mary acts in Leinster Gardens, he just keeps up the tension in that scene. But for me that´s where I decided that Mary is indeed a villain - she threatens to shoot Sherlock again, this time for good, she makes him bend over to pick up the coin with his fresh wound.. that´s just mean and not how someone who´s just desperate to keep a secret from her husband would behave. She didn´t even make any attempt to explain herself, she didn´t have time for that in Magnussen´s office, but in Leinster Gardens she would have any time in the world to say "Look Sherlock, I´m terribly sorry for what I´ve done, but you´ve got to understand that I had no other choice because..*explanation*" I don´t know, but to me Leinster Gardens being just a device to make it all more tense wouldn´t be great writing style..

Liberty wrote:

But it's not really true, anyway.  John asks if everyone he knows is a psychopath - hyperbole, of course, but Sherlock answers "yes".  There's John's clue right there, that everything Sherlock is going to say is a lie.  Sherlock clearly isn't a psychopath.  And what about the other people John knows?  Mrs Hudson?  LeStrade?  Molly?  Johndoesn't surround himself with psychopaths.  Mary (if she really is a psychopath - we don't know), is the exception, not the rule.

Food for thought, you´re certainly right in your conclusion that Sherlock´s answer does not match reality. The way I interpreted Sherlock´s "yes" until now was just that he had neither the time nor the energy in his state to elaborate about the difference between a psychopath and people who are perfectly normal but play high-functioning sociopath or lead dangerous lives. John is enraged and talks in hyperboles, and Sherlock is in pain and close to a break-down, he just tries to make John stop his rage for a moment, calm him down and bring him back to rational thought. I felt that his "yes" wasn´t a bad choice to confuse John for a moment and so interrupt his rant of "why is it always me, nice and normal John Watson, who is pulled into crazy sh** by some cruel fate?" I might be wrong though..

mrshouse wrote:

But I have trouble with the timing here, liberty. Your first point is quite true. She didn't go for the head shot. But the second one... Consider that the Baker street scene is months before Appledore. Sherlock couldn't dream of this outcome, there was his injury to deal with and it was all the way up to Christmas eve that he thought he could handle Magnusson by snapping hard proof he held on Mary.

I'm sorry, I missed this, and I'm not sure I understand?  I'm not on top form tonight .   I meant at Appledore, Sherlock chooses to keep Mary around for John, when (if he thought Mary was a danger to John) he could have let Magnusson deal with her and stayed around to protect John.   

SusiGo wrote:

This is one thing I simply do not understand (not in your post but in the context of the episode): why should anyone who gets shot and nearly dies be understanding just because he was not killed outright? This surgery thing does not make any sense. What does surgery mean? Operating on someone who is hurt/ill to make him better or heal him. Mary does neither of that. 

Actually, I think if this really was true and Sherlock believed that Mary had deliberately saved him, I think he would be able to see it objectively.  I think he just meant surgery in the sense that it was supposedly a precise shot aimed to cut parts of the body in a particular way, rather than just destroy. 

The trouble is, the way it's filmed, he gets as close to death as is possible, which doesn't seem to fit with what he's saying.  And he has a horrible recovery, thanks to Mary too.  He's flippant about it, but it seems there's a chance he might die at the end of the scene at 221B.  He tells the paramedics that he has internal bleeding and might go into cardiac arrest! It does make it difficult for me to see Mary as innocent.  But the fact that Sherlock risks death to tell John to trust Mary?  (Or to make Mary think that he and John trust her?)  It's so confusing.

 

Last edited by Liberty (August 28, 2014 10:09 pm)

Okay, another theory I just thought about: What if Sherlock deludes himself into thinking that Mary “saved” his life? Like he said: Human error. He started out to really like Mary. She spoke for him to John, she was intelligent, she knew when he was fibbing and seemed to try and strengthen the friendship between John and Sherlock. She wasn’t the jealous girlfriend she could have been. Then there was the wedding, where Sherlock tells everyone that he loves Mary, too: “When I say you deserve that man, it is the highest compliment I am capable of” an “I will always be there for all three of you”. It seems to me that re really liked her for herself until she shot him. Maybe not from the beginning, but at the end of TSoT.
So, because he considers her as a friend he is really shocked, when she tries to kill him. Because that’s what he thinks she’s doing, while he is in his mind palace. Of course Moriarty would tell him that John Watson was in danger at this point. Because if she killed him, then who knows what her plans for John really are?
That is until he survives and wakes up. He doubts her being really evil, because he survived and he cares about her. She is John’s wife and his friend and because of these feelings, he tries to give her the benefit of a doubt. The he investigates her a little and comes up with his “surgery” explanation. He just desperately tries to connect the way he felt about Mary with the fact that she did shoot him. So he clings to the fact, that she could have gone for a sure kill shot and didn’t. But his explanation could still be wrong, so he tries to validate his theory while at the same moment letting John know, no matter which way it turns out.
So he confronts Mary, having a little bit of insurance in case she is just a cold-hearted killer, but tries desperately to prove his “surgery” theory. Why? Because he loves John and was very fond of Mary, too.
Then he sees that Mary is an excellent shot and could have killed him, if she really would have put her mind on it. And he realizes that she really cares about John, because she would do anything to protect their relationship. That’s enough to convince him of his own little theory, because that’s the theory that would prove to be easier to live with, emotionally at least. She would still be John’s loving wife, Sherlock’s “friend” (not my opinion, but his at this point…who needs enemies if he has friends like Mary?) and life could go on, because she wouldn’t be the heartless killer, John wouldn’t be as heartbroken as he could be and Magnusson was still the only really evil man here.
 
What do you think? Of course maybe he is just acting, I almost never can tell and this thought just crossed my mind as I was reading the posts in this thread.
I think I would really like Mary to be a villain next season. That would be quite devastating after Sherlock deluded both himself and John into thinking that she is “a good person now”, wouldn’t it?
 In my eyes, she already is one anyway. I don’t care what her past is, if she was a saint or cold-hearted. She shot Sherlock and he could have died. Possibly would have if he wasn’t the lead character of the show. And she was willing to take the risk that he died. There is only so much a character can do and remain on my good side. Shooting the hero like she did and willingly risking his life isn’t one of it. No matter for whom she might have done it, to me it proves that she doesn’t care about Sherlock and it is the end of any “threesome” I might have enjoyed. I always cringe when I see John and Mary hand in hand when Sherlock’s plane leaves. It just feels wrong to me, I don’t want her on team “Sherlock and John” anymore, thank you very much.
 
 

Yes, I think it will be difficult for the writers to let her off with that (almost killing Sherlock).  They haven't given her a really good reason to so.  There's self-protection and keeping her secret, but I don't think that's enough.  

Maybe she would have been better just waiting for John to arrive and having it out in Magnusson's office.   I suppose she thought John would leave her (but he didn't when he found out the "truth" as presented by Sherlock).  But having the confrontation right in front of Magnusson would have taken away some of the power he had over her at that point.   John knowing Mary's secret makes her less dangerous in a way, because there's less for her to protect - which might be why Sherlock is so keen to make John know it. 

I've tried to think of Sherlock being on Mary's side, but I don't think I can do it without more information (which might come in S4).  What we've got makes Mary a villain.  But there could be stuff that we don't know about her motivations.  She's still a complete mystery. 

I still have it in my head that it's possible that Sherlock suspected something about Mary much earlier.  There are some things that are odd about TSOT, and they're maybe explained if Sherlock already has suspicions of some sort.  On another thread I was wondering about Sherlock's choice of Madonna in the drunk game he plays with John - it seems to me that he did know something at some level (Don't want to repeat myself to much, but Madonna = the immaculate conception = Mary Morstan was created free of sin five years ago).   But he still supported Mary all the way in front of John and the public, as he continues to do in HLV, despite even more compelling evidence against her! 

Shady, I lean towards thinking he's acting.  But with more information I could possibly be convinced the other way. 

Somebody, I think in this thread, but I'm sorry, I've forgotten who it was, suggested that Mary might be a "Severus Snape" character, and I think that's possible.   I do think there's going to be another twist.  It won't be left as it is, and either she'll be a proper villain or she'll be exonerated in some way.   But it will take an awful lot for us to be able to forgive the shooting.  I think it would be more difficult for them to go down the "good" route with Mary now, than the "evil" route. 
 

Last edited by Liberty (August 29, 2014 7:23 am)

Yes, I agree!  It's got to be a really, really good and unexpected explanation, and I'm very curious about how they would do that.  I'd like to see it, but I also think Mary could make a very interesting villain, and of course the pregnancy really complicates that scenario! 

I just saw an interesting detail on tumblr I had paid no attention to. In the show Mary's name is quite important - Sherlock calling her Mrs Watson immediately before she shoots him, her having chosen the name Mary Morstan from a gravestone in Chiswick, the A.G.R.A. thing, "Is Mary Watson good enough for you?"
But if you look at the credits at the end of HLV she is still called Mary Morstan, not Mary Watson. This is strange because I assumed that she took John's name at the wedding. It could also be a hint that in fact she is not Mrs Watson because her marriage is invalid. 

I am quite sure that they are not the same for all episodes because in HLV they list Andrew Scott as Moriarty. And I suppose they did not include Lars Mikkelsen in the TEH and TSoT credits. 

So they could have gone and called her Mary Watson but chose not to. 

SusiGo wrote:

Just found a meta I had saved some time ago - this is just a short part enlisting a lot of unanswered questions from HLV. IMO this is exactly what makes it so difficult to do a commentary (and this is not even including Johnlock):

"When Mary apologizes to Sherlock immediately after shooting him, is it genuine or mocking (nothing of the sort is ever repeated)? Did she call the ambulance, or did Magnussen (or John)? Did Mary intend to kill Sherlock in Leinster Gardens, or was she merely prepared for self-defense? Does she really believe the revelation of her past would hurt John worse than Sherlock’s death (after all she was the one who said ‘do you have any idea what you’ve done’)? Is her fear when Sherlock collapses for him or for herself (John looks murderous, and it’s him she’s looking at)? Does Sherlock believe she meant him to live, or is it only an act? We’re deprived of all the months between the confrontation and Christmas — there’s not even a post-honeymoon blog post to go by — adding ambiguity to both John’s and Sherlock’s behavior at the end. Does John genuinely want her back in his life, or is he sticking around for the baby, or because Sherlock told him to? Did he really not read the flash drive? Did Sherlock? What has Mycroft been doing? — his brother was shot and the shooter’s still at large. What did John and Sherlock tell Lestrade? Does Mary know something about Moriarty? We only see a manipulation of his image — is Moriarty’s return even real?"

source: http://archipelagoarchaea.tumblr.com/post/92372390998/the-lie-of-his-last-vow

I started to answer over on the Johnlock guide, but I'm afraid I'm not a Johnlocker and I was going way off-topic, so I hope it's OK if I bring it over here?

I really like that meta and agree with loads of points!  That Mary is the cliffhanger, not Moriarty.  That writing is "inherently contrived" and that they've chosen to write Mary in that ambiguous way. 

"This is not the setup for a character who is intended to remain as presented. In other words: one does not film in such a consistently ambiguous fashion if one wishes the surface reading to remain in place forever. Ambiguity is created to hide things in plain sight, to distract those who are willing or prime to be distracted, not to be ignored for the rest of the show (at least not this kind of show)."

"If we are to accept the tale that Moffat has woven with the confrontation scene and the reconciliation scene, it would mean that John can’t tell when someone’s lying (‘I’m not John. I can tell when you’re fibbing’) but still recognized and was attracted to an aspect of Mary’s character that Sherlock himself missed."

... and lots of other good bits.

I'd like to say a little about the idea that if Mary loved John she couldn't shoot Sherlock, because she'd seen the pain John experienced after Sherlock's death, though.  I think suicides can be very traumatic for those left behind.  John must have questioned himself about the suicide aspect.   Instead of trusting his own instincts about what Sherlock really felt (when he got the call about Mrs Hudson), he insulted him ... then came back to see him die.   I imagine he blamed himself a bit and wished he could go back and change that.  Or change any number of things that he felt might have contributed to Sherlock's death.   Then there's the whole thing about whether Sherlock was a fake or not - I think John has faith in him, but did he ever have some doubts?  After all, Sherlock tries to persuade him that he's a fake.  If any of it is true, then John didn't know who Sherlock was and has lost him in a different sort of way - lost somebody who never was.   So I think that method of "death" was particularly difficult for John. More than a murder in the course of duty would have been.

Now, Mary saw John go through that (above).  He'd managed to cling to his faith in Sherlock, but revealing who she was would destroy his faith in her.   Yet again, he'd be questioning whether the person he'd loved and had faith in had ever really existed, except in this case he'd know they hadn't existed.  So I think Mary would be right to think that finding out about her could be devastating for John.   Losing Sherlock - well, from her point of view (and she isn't in John's life for that long), she saw him become happier while Sherlock  was dead and he was with her.   

If Mary had killed Sherlock (and I have to say as well, that she tries to kill him because she thinks it's a necessity, even though we could see an alternative), John would never have known about her, and would have been able to grieve for Sherlock with Mary's support. 

So she's coming at it from a different angle from us (one of not knowing John that well, and, I think, genuinely believing that she's good for him, because that's what she's seen).

Last edited by Liberty (September 13, 2014 8:43 am)