Schmiezi wrote:

tonnaree wrote:

In my humble opinion, Mary turning out to be Moran would be the best possible twist. 
I've stated before that I'd rather her not be a grey character.  Let her be an out and out villian and go out in a blaze of dark glory.

I've seen the idea suggested several places of there being a showdown where Mary is holding a gun to Sherlock and John is holding a gun on Mary.  I think this scene with these actors would be amazing and I would find it deeply satisfing.

But that's just me. 

Not just you - I am with you completely on this one.

That would be SOOOOOOO so good. And just a matter of, who would fire first...of course, John would shoot Mary dead first, before she had chance to shoot Sherlock. Maybe her gun would go off as she dropped to the ground and the bullet would graze through Sherlock's shoulder or something.

My ultimate favourite ending for Mary is that the master criminal of the episode (or series arc as a whole), has Sherlock, John and Mary all in a room together. John has been given a gun and told that he has to make a choice who lives and who dies. He has to kill either Sherlock or Mary, or ALL OF THEM WILL BE KILLED (including him).
 

Wow since you guys are entertaining the possibility of Mary being the Moran Character of BBC I suggest you have a look at this writing which analyzes how Mary's reveal may happen and her exit. I’m pretty surprised how predictable Mary’s demise is when you actually start to theorize it.
 
Also thanks for opening a thread where people can objectively discuss Mary as a character and her motives etc. etc. Here is an old post I wrote about Mary in the old thread. I am still wholeheartedly in agreement with what I wrote there. This is mostly a combination of my own reactions and what I feel is the authors’ intent. If I have time I will write about how I felt about her from start to finish as I watched the show in more detail. Cheers! 

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tykobrian wrote:

Hmm... a thread discussing Mary's character and motivations. Ok I'll bite.

Well after watching series 3 quite a few times I think Mary is fundamentally an emotionally abusive and morally bad person. Why do I think so?
__> She lied to John about her identity, and then never apologized, and actually blamed him for the situation ("It's what you like")
__> She shot and threatened Sherlock, his husband John's best friend so she can keep lying to him forever
__> She withheld vital information from John because she feared that he would leave her if he knew the truth.
Most definitions of “emotionally abusive” include manipulative behavior like that, especially as concerns other people close to one’s spouse. Lies of that magnitude are emotionally abusive even if the spouse never finds out. It’s just in opposition to “physically abusive.” It’s disrespecting one’s spouse as an autonomous human being, manipulating them, and treating them like a possession. It’s a form of denying a spouse’s freedom without literally shackling them: you take away their options without their knowledge. If I went to a therapist and told them Mary had done to me what she did to John, I’m pretty confident they would call her emotionally abusive — and probably a lot worse. Threatening a spouse’s friends alone would do it, much less threatening them with death, much less threatening them to keep one’s secrets.


Now there is some argument that Mary, Sherlock and John share pretty much the same personality and morality.
 
For example, Mary shot Sherlock. But then Sherlock shot Magnussen and back in ASiP John shot the cabbie. So why am I rebuking Mary and not Sherlock and John?

Because in case of John shooting the cabbie, as Sherlock puts it (before even realizing it was John, so he was not trying to protect him), “He didn’t fire until I was in immediate danger though, so strong moral principle”
 
So why did Sherlock shoot Magnussen? Was John in any immediate danger from Magnussen when he was flicking John's face? No. But was Mary in danger from Magnussen’s blackmail? Weren’t many people? He had already driven Lord Smallwood to suicide and Mary to attempted murder. He had placed John in a fire. And then he promised that he’ll take steps to tear John’s whole life down by contacting the people whose life Mary destroyed through her hitman career. So, yes, one could argue that Magnussen was dangerous. Sherlock’s motive was to protect people from Magnussen (the conversation with Mycroft before makes this clear) and, as he says to John before getting arrested that Mary is safe now.
 
And then there’s Mary shooting Sherlock. Was Mary in immediate danger at Magnussen’s office? Only from Magnussen, The person she DIDN’T shoot! Was Sherlock a threat to her? No, he was actually offering her his help! So why did Mary shoot Sherlock? What were her motives? Sadly, we don’t actually know all the facts and Mary seems pretty tight-lipped on the matter. We can only infer from what Sherlock explains to John. He says that she “had to” shoot him so she could escape. But if Sherlock was offering to help her, he obviously wasn’t calling the cops right? And at that time no alarm went off and no outside person was alerted of the break-in. So from whom was she escaping? I think it’s actually ‘what’, not ‘whom’. Mary was escaping from the truth. She shot Sherlock to keep her secret from John. I can’t find one single selfless reason for Mary to have shot Sherlock. She had the upper hand. If she just needed to buy a minute to make a run for it, she could have shot him in the leg or the shoulder and disabled him momentarily. But nooooo, she shot him right in the heart.
 
Let’s brush motive aside a moment and pretend Mary had some noble reason to shoot an innocent man who was offering her help. Sherlock tells John “Mary saved my life” and calls the shot “surgery” but I believe Sherlock is lying when he says these things. I personally think Sherlock wanted to appear to be in Mary’s good side so he can buy more time to covertly find more info about her background and true motivation. But his plan backfired when he was compelled to shoot Magnussen and was forced to be continents away from John. Anyways, that’s kinda off topic so I’ll stick to the shooting scene and Sherlock explaining Mary’s actions in a good light. We the audience can see that his words don’t match the things we’ve seen before. First off being the obvious: Sherlock DIED. Mary killed him. The sequence clearly shows that his heart stopped and the doctors gave up and left the operating table and then were astonished that he came back.

 
 
It never happens in real life but Sherlock Miraculously came back to life because he remembered that John was definitely in danger from Mary! This again proves that actually he does NOT trust her. And Mary certainly didn’t appear to want to spare Sherlock in the first place. She actually swore to him that if he even took one more step towards her she’d kill him. 

And sure enough, when Sherlock did take a small step towards her she immediately fired him right in the heart which did kill him!
 
On the other hand, some people are even arguing that it was actually Mannussen who called the ambulance. But for now let’s disregard that because even if she called the ambulance, it doesn’t change the fact that Sherlock’s heart stopped and he escaped death thanks to the writers. Writers do not usually have the “good guys” shoot and kill the titular protagonist of the show. So I would argue that Mary appears as a villain because the writers wrote her that way. And let’s not forget they also wrote these scenes:
__> Mary is sad to see Sherlock survived and said her name.
__> Mary goes to Sherlock’s bedside while he’s barely functioning and threatens him to keep quiet.
__> Mary hunts down the escaped Sherlock, with a silencer equipped gun.
__> Mary threatens Sherlock, again, that she will kill him to keep her past a secret from John.

So, no, I would not say Mary is supposed to be read as a “good guy” after these actions. I would say that reading her as selfish and violent is pretty spot on.  Motives matter, A LOT.
 
 
Another angle where Mary and Sherlock may seem similar is that Sherlock lied about faking his death and made John suffer for 2 years.
 
So why did he do it? We know that John, Mrs. H and Lestrade had snipers locked on them. Moriarty’s network needed to be eradicated before it was safe for Sherlock to reveal himself. So Sherlock’s motives, again, are to protect others from harm. And it’s not like he went through the plan happily. He even told John that he was almost in contact with him so many times but had to refrain himself. So he did what he had to do grudgingly. This picture is a nice reminder to that:

On the other hand Mary lies to John by letting him believe she is normal and just some nurse who cares about him and likes him. The motive? We actually don’t know yet. We can guess a hundred things. Maybe she’s just a CIA operative/ hitman on the run who happened to meet John and randomly fall in love with him and kept her identity hidden because that’s the only way she thought she could have a normal life. Who knows if David knew the real Mary. Or maybe Mary worked for Moriarty and was assigned to watch John to look for signs of Sherlock’s return. We don’t actually know anything for sure to properly judge Mary’s motive as good or bad.
 
Now let’s compare how long those two maintain lying to John. Sherlock maintains his lie until it’s safe to return. He shows remorse once he sees how upset John is. In fact, Sherlock apologizes to John on several occasions. Like:
--- “Bit mean springing on you like that, I know”
--- “Sorry, sorry again. Sorry!”
--- “Please John forgive me for all the hurt I’ve caused!.”
--- “John, you have endured war, and injury, and tragic loss - so sorry again about that last one…”
So I’d say that he shows remorse for his actions.  I’d say the writers made it clear that he shows remorse for his actions. Even though what he did was for morally good reasons and was his only option, he still feels guilty for lying to John.
 
Now for Mary. Her lie is maintained until Sherlock accidentally discovers it. So she shoots him, but he miraculously escapes death and decides to tell John the truth. Even knowing his life is in danger to do so, he reveals Mary to John.
 
Also looking back we can see that maintaining the lie had always been her number one priority. In TSo3 we see Mary getting a subtly threatening message from CAM on her wedding day. And at one time John was kidnapped by unknown people and almost burned to death. Who knows if that was CAM’s first message to her but I’d expect a smart and cunning person like Mary to put two and two together and realize that CAM was trying to get to her. Still she chooses to hope for the best and keep things under wraps and risking John’s life. She would rather have John dead than revealing the truth.  Mary never gives up the truth voluntarily.  It has to be forced out of her.
 
And now for the strangest part. Mary never apologizes or even says sorry for her actions!! And it’s not because she doesn’t know the word ‘sorry’ exists in the English language or something. She did say sorry for a lot for minor things. She laughed through John’s proposal and said sorry. She pointed out that Sherlock would need a confident to pull off faking his death and said sorry when she saw John wasn’t amused. When John learned that she actually didn’t like his mustache she said sorry. But lying to John since he knew her? Shooting and (nearly) killing John’s best friend? Not one single sorry or forgive me or I feel so bad or I understand why you’re so upset! Nothing! There was absolutely nothing keeping Mary from apologizing to John, and it would only help her situation, but she never, ever does. The writers made sure to leave out any semblance of apology. I think most people in Mary’s situation would apologize immediately or near to it, and many would go so far as to beg for forgiveness. Most people apologize to their loved ones even when they don’t think they’ve done anything wrong just to make them feel better because they hate to see them unhappy. At the very least they’ll apologize for having upset them. Being in pain to see someone else in pain is just part of what real love is. Then you’d think Mary would apologize out of guilt: a secret she kept and hurt the person she loves in the process. But she didn’t express any remorse whatsoever. If you ask me, her silence speaks volumes. No remorse at all. And it’s not like Mary doesn’t understand that John would be hurt from all this. She does tell Sherlock, “…it would break him and I would lose him forever”. So it looks like she only cares about John’s feelings insofar as they make him remain with her!
 
Ok now let’s discuss the ways Mary and Sherlock let John handle the emotional fallout of their lies.
 
Sherlock lets John beat him up without ever fighting back, despite being brutally injured and tortured perhaps not 24 hours prior. He lets John wail on him for as long as he needs to.  He then gives John his space and lets John come to him in his own time and when he’s ready. He says to everyone who asks about John that he is not in the picture or working with him anymore. Who knows maybe John might not have ever taken him back and so he would’ve just had to move on and try to make do without him. But then Sherlock is told John is in danger and he immediately drops everything to rescue him. But even after that he assumes nothing and lets John come to him at his own accord. He tricks John with the bomb at the end, after secretly switching the bomb off. He emotionally manipulates John into revealing whether or not he’s forgiven. But right after he finds out John does forgive him he reveals his lie.
 
And yet there’s Mary. She also, presumably, gives John his space as it seems they haven’t talked in six months and he may not even be living with her. The only scene we get is six months later so it is difficult to actually fill in missing scenes. What we do have to go on is Mary refusing to stand up when John asks her to come to him so he can speak his prepared words. We have her face and attitude looking put out. We have her tears only after John says he will stay with her. So we can tell she is happy to hear him say these things but we still can’t tell if she shows remorse or feels guilty for what she did. But what we do see is a lot of snark, “Oh! Are we doing conversation today? It really is Christmas!”

I mean what the actual hell! John has done absolutely nothing wrong to her. For all the awful things she did to cause him pain and never even apologizing, John has been a saint to even consider taking her back, and it’s beyond reasonable that he would need a lot of time apart from her to process it all. And still John’s first instinct when he sees her again is to be kind. But Mary’s first instinct is to be rude and sarcastic, not to make John feel at ease. She has no qualms about causing him further pain. After everything, Mary is irritated that John has had the nerve to not speak to her. She acts entitled to John’s love, and resentful that he would dare withhold it. And it’s not like it’s the first time we’ve seen this side of her. In the proposal scene she agrees with John that she’s the “best thing that could have happened” to John because  I think she sees her place in John’s life as someone for John to put on a pedestal. Mary liked being the rock in the life of a ruined, depressed man: she could do no wrong, and he adored her, and that was as it should be. But once John started pulling away, Mary became less kind.
 
The writers didn’t make these choices on accident. If they wanted to show us a sympathetic Mary, they could have. So I think we weren’t supposed to view her as a morally good person. In contrast to Sherlock, Mary comes off as selfish where he is selfless. This is not subtext or deep reading. This is just dialogue, plot and action clearly presented in the show.
 
As for whether she’s a sociopath, I think so. I think she feels like the objects of her affection have to belong to them at any cost. I think she is lonely but is too messed up to have healthy relationships. As for whether it’s nature or nurture, I generally don’t think those are completely separate anyway. I read several books on sociopaths and it’s not that simple. It’s more tragic for the characters if they have terrible backgrounds but the end result is the same. I’ll spare a tear or two for Mary if her childhood was awful but I still wouldn’t want her anywhere near John.
 
Anyways, that doesn’t mean I dislike the addition of Mary in the show or something. I like Mary in terms of being an interesting character. For example I love Moriarty as a character. But in both cases I understand that both are fundamentally morally bad characters and would never start thinking they’re morally equivalent to John or Sherlock. I doubt Mary’s story is over and I’m looking forward to know more about her.

EDIT: typos

Thanks for your detailed post, tykobrian, I agree with your ideas. Would love to discuss them further. 

Vhanja: Yes, he is, but he does not bear the slightest similarity to Canon Moran who is Moriarty's right hand and a kill shot, who hides in an empty house in order to kill Holmes. Moreover, the character is so minor that he has no dialogue at all. And no one has managed to find out the actor's name which is quite strange. So one might argue that Lord Moran is a red herring and the Canon character has been incorporated into Mary who is a kill shot and does have a dark past. 

Last edited by SusiGo (February 14, 2015 10:51 am)

Very interesting links, tykobrian, thanks for posting. There is indeed something strange about Lord Moran if you regard this is as his one and only appearance as a villain. 

tykobrian wrote:

Another angle where Mary and Sherlock may seem similar is that Sherlock lied about faking his death and made John suffer for 2 years.
 
So why did he do it? We know that John, Mrs. H and Lestrade had snipers locked on them. Moriarty’s network needed to be eradicated before it was safe for Sherlock to reveal himself. So Sherlock’s motives, again, are to protect others from harm. And it’s not like he went through the plan happily. He even told John that he was almost in contact with him so many times but had to refrain himself. So he did what he had to do grudgingly.
On the other hand Mary lies to John by letting him believe she is normal and just some nurse who cares about him and likes him. The motive? We actually don’t know yet. We can guess a hundred things. Maybe she’s just a CIA operative/ hitman on the run who happened to meet John and randomly fall in love with him and kept her identity hidden because that’s the only way she thought she could have a normal life. Who knows if David knew the real Mary. Or maybe Mary worked for Moriarty and was assigned to watch John to look for signs of Sherlock’s return. We don’t actually know anything for sure to properly judge Mary’s motive as good or bad. 

 
I very much agree, Mary’s motives are still completely unclear.

tykobrian wrote:

Now let’s compare how long those two maintain lying to John. Sherlock maintains his lie until it’s safe to return. He shows remorse once he sees how upset John is. In fact, Sherlock apologizes to John on several occasions. Like:
--- “Bit mean springing on you like that, I know”
--- “Sorry, sorry again. Sorry!”
--- “Please John forgive me for all the hurt I’ve caused!.”
--- “John, you have endured war, and injury, and tragic loss - so sorry again about that last one…”
So I’d say that he shows remorse for his actions.  I’d say the writers made it clear that he shows remorse for his actions. Even though what he did was for morally good reasons and was his only option, he still feels guilty for lying to John. 

I am not quite sure Sherlock understands the full concept of remorse yet. He does apologize, that is “what you’re supposed to do”, but to be honest, it does not come across as very heartfelt. The one time it does (and at which point John accepts the apology) he is actually acting.
 

tykobrian wrote:

Now for Mary. Her lie is maintained until Sherlock accidentally discovers it. So she shoots him, but he miraculously escapes death and decides to tell John the truth. Even knowing his life is in danger to do so, he reveals Mary to John. 

 
I agree for the most part, though I think Sherlock had to tell John in order to escape the danger. Mary’s fear is to be found out, and for John to find out. And “there is nothing” she “would not do to keep that from happening”. So the only way for Sherlock and John to be save (and for Sherlock to get the time to properly heal) is to make that fear happen.

tykobrian wrote:

Also looking back we can see that maintaining the lie had always been her number one priority. In TSo3 we see Mary getting a subtly threatening message from CAM on her wedding day. And at one time John was kidnapped by unknown people and almost burned to death. Who knows if that was CAM’s first message to her but I’d expect a smart and cunning person like Mary to put two and two together and realize that CAM was trying to get to her. Still she chooses to hope for the best and keep things under wraps and risking John’s life. She would rather have John dead than revealing the truth.  Mary never gives up the truth voluntarily.  It has to be forced out of her. 

 She does seem know CAM was after her, hence her choice of her maid of honour. I already shared my thought of why she did not ask for help, but I don’t think she is risking John’s death, the presumably knows CAM quite well and knows he would not kill him. Here is what I wrote earlier about not asking for help.

Lola Red wrote:

I think she indeed get’s both Sherlock and John absolutely wrong. She see’s them as two man who are one the side of the angles, willing to risk their life to get after “the other side”. I think she believes that once they find out that she belongs to “the other side”, they will turn on her. What she fails to see is that John is deeply bound to her by the same thing that is clouding her own judgement: sentiment. And she fails to see that Sherlock can actually emphasise a lot with “the other side”. He might be on the side of the angles, but he is not one of them. For him, it is a conscious decision that he has to make every single day of his life. One could argue that when he shot an unarmed Magnussen in the head, he decided to leave the side of the angles (at lest temporarily). In a way, the way Sherlock is wired is closer to Mary than it is to John, who is closer to Lestrade for example. John and Lestrade are “angles”, Sherlock and Mary are not and have to decide which side to stand on. And Mary fails to see that, she thinks the "angles" will turn on her, but she is blind to the fact that Sherlock isn’t one of them and John is more than just an “angle”, he is an “angle” in love with her and that alters their actions.
Admittedly, this is was quite a trip into speculation land, but there you go.
 

tykobrian wrote:

And now for the strangest part. Mary never apologizes or even says sorry for her actions!! But lying to John since he knew her? Shooting and (nearly) killing John’s best friend? Not one single sorry or forgive me or I feel so bad or I understand why you’re so upset! Nothing! There was absolutely nothing keeping Mary from apologizing to John, and it would only help her situation, but she never, ever does. The writers made sure to leave out any semblance of apology. I think most people in Mary’s situation would apologize immediately or near to it, and many would go so far as to beg for forgiveness. Most people apologize to their loved ones even when they don’t think they’ve done anything wrong just to make them feel better because they hate to see them unhappy. At the very least they’ll apologize for having upset them. Being in pain to see someone else in pain is just part of what real love is. Then you’d think Mary would apologize out of guilt: a secret she kept and hurt the person she loves in the process. But she didn’t express any remorse whatsoever. If you ask me, her silence speaks volumes. No remorse at all. And it’s not like Mary doesn’t understand that John would be hurt from all this. She does tell Sherlock, “…it would break him and I would lose him forever”. So it looks like she only cares about John’s feelings insofar as they make him remain with her!
 

The never apologizing point is made so often that I start to think I have watched a different cut of the episode than most people. Mary says “I’m sorry Sherlock, I truly am.” right after the shooting. If one writes off that apology as insincere, I can sympathise with that, but has really no one heard it? The shooting barely comes up in any discussion between the characters afterwards; the main focus point becomes the lying to John. For that, she never uses the words “I am sorry”. She does make it clear why she lied to him “it would break him and I would lose him forever”, “I you love me don’t read it in front of me… because you won’t love me when you’re finished and I don’t want to see that happen.” and her astonishment when he does forgive her “You don’t even know my name.”, but true we never see her asking for forgiveness for the lying part.
 

Last edited by Lola Red (February 14, 2015 5:46 pm)

Some people have remarked, though, that she is wearing gloves which you cannot use on most smartphones. 

As for the not wanting to kill - the most important thing about that for me is the fact that Sherlock thinks he is going to die, that he has been murdered as can bee seen from his mind palace. And he very nearly does. 

Lola Red wrote:

tykobrian wrote:

Also looking back we can see that maintaining the lie had always been her number one priority. In TSo3 we see Mary getting a subtly threatening message from CAM on her wedding day. And at one time John was kidnapped by unknown people and almost burned to death. Who knows if that was CAM’s first message to her but I’d expect a smart and cunning person like Mary to put two and two together and realize that CAM was trying to get to her. Still she chooses to hope for the best and keep things under wraps and risking John’s life. She would rather have John dead than revealing the truth.  Mary never gives up the truth voluntarily.  It has to be forced out of her. 

 She does seem know CAM was after her, hence her choice of her maid of honour. I already shared my thought of why she did not ask for help, but I don’t think she is risking John’s death, the presumably knows CAM quite well and knows he would not kill him.
 

I just wanted to add that Mary's relationship with Janine doesn't necessarily mean that she knows Magnussen is on to her.  (In fact, if Magnussen knew who she was, then perhaps befriending Janine would be a bad move).   I think it's possible that it was the other way round - she was watching Magnussen, probably with a view to getting her files back at some point (or possibly even with a view to killing him).  

I get the feeling at the wedding that the telegram from Magnussen is when Mary is first aware that he knows who she is.  She looks quite shocked at that point and is trying to hide it (I wonder what they told Amanda, given that she didn't know Mary's story yet?).   After that, she moves fairly quickly - they're not long back from the honeymoon.   If she thought Magnussen knew who she was all along, then I think she'd have killed or threatened him months earlier. 

I don't think John's life is at risk from Magnussen. 

It  seems foolish for Mary to call the ambulace..she is giving her voice to police and placing herself at the scene of the crime.
Sherlock seems to base his assumption that she did by calculating London traffic to the minute...which is lol.
If Mary shot Sherlock for temporary silence and escape..did she really expect him to survive..and then not tell anyone? That seems a very foolish way to buy his favour .
It all seems nonsensical to me...but I think we're supposed to believe it , which treats the audience as fools.

Finally found this old writing on the possible ways the showdown in CAM's office could've happened. I myself have tried to think about it but not in such a detail as here. Frankly I remember during the first hiatus I always held back because I thought that I would be overthinking stuff. *snort* I’m glad I don’t hold back anymore because I’m having more fun (with you all) and discovering more stuff.

archipelagoarchaea wrote:

Note: In case it’s not obvious from the title, this is not a pro-Mary post. You’re free to skip it if you don’t like meta that claim she shot to kill.



So, Sherlock walks in on Mary threatening Magnussen. He’s surprised, but he offers to help her anyway. Mary pulls a gun on him and threatens to kill him, but he trusts her so implicitly that he calls her bluff and takes one step forward. Mary has Sherlock eating out of her hand, but the situation is complicated. She has a secret to keep, and Sherlock might tell John. What should she do?
 

Scenario 1: Mary kills Magnussen but not Sherlock, asks Sherlock to talk with her later and not tell John.
Advantages: Magnussen is dead and can’t blackmail her. Sherlock may help her.
Disadvantages: If Magnussen’s dirt on Mary is in his flat, police will find it and Mary will be exposed. There is a chance Sherlock won’t help, possibly slightly greater than if she hadn’t shot Magnussen. If Mary leaves, Sherlock and John will be possible suspects in the murder, though it’s unlikely they would be convicted.

Scenario 2: Mary knocks out Magnussen but not Sherlock, asks Sherlock to talk with her later and not tell John.
Advantages: She still has a chance to find whatever Magnussen has on her. Sherlock may help her.
Disadvantages: Magnussen still in a position to blackmail. Magnussen knows that Sherlock knows about Mary. There is a chance Sherlock won’t help. Sherlock and John might get arrested for trespassing.

Scenario 3: Mary leaves without knocking out either Magnussen or Sherlock, asks Sherlock to talk with her later and not tell John.
Advantages: Sherlock may help her.
Disadvantages: Magnussen still in a position to blackmail. Magnussen knows that Sherlock knows about Mary, and whether he agreed. There is a chance Sherlock won’t help. Sherlock and John might get arrested for trespassing.

Scenario 4: Mary kills both Magnussen and Sherlock.
Advantages: No witnesses. Magnussen can’t blackmail her anymore.
Disadvantages: If Magnussen’s dirt on Mary is in his flat, police will find it and Mary will be exposed. John will be a possible suspect in both murders. John likely to chase down Sherlock’s murderer unless Sherlock dies slowly (see Scenario 6). John might get arrested for trespassing.

Scenario 5: Mary shoots Sherlock, killing him instantly, then knocks out Magnussen.
Advantages: Magnussen only witness. She still has a chance to find whatever Magnussen has on her.
Disadvantages: Magnussen still in a position to blackmail. John might get arrested for trespassing. John likely to chase down Sherlock’s murderer or force Magnussen to reveal her identity. John might get arrested for trespassing.

Scenario 6: Mary shoots Sherlock with slowly lethal shot, then knocks out Magnussen.
Advantages: Magnussen only witness. She still has a chance to find whatever Magnussen has on her. John too busy saving Sherlock to chase her down or interrogate Magnussen.
Disadvantages: Magnussen still in a position to blackmail. John might get arrested for trespassing.

Scenario 7: Mary shoots Sherlock to incapacitate, knocks out Magnussen, then calls the ambulance.
Advantages: She still has a chance to find whatever Magnussen has on her. John too busy saving Sherlock to chase her down or interrogate Magnussen.
Disadvantages: Magnussen still in a position to blackmail. Magnussen knows that Sherlock knows about Mary. John might get arrested for trespassing. Sherlock is alive and more likely to expose her to John than if she hadn’t shot him. 999 has a record of her voice calling the ambulance.


Sherlock claims that Scenario 7 is what actually happened, but it doesn’t actually make sense as a logical choice. It has no advantage over Scenario 2, save that if Sherlock did choose to expose her to John he could do so right then and there. But Scenario 7 Sherlock is much more likely to want to expose her than Scenario 2 Sherlock. What’s the point of being exposed later if you’re far more likely to be exposed? Even if you did accept this as an advantage, you’re weighing it against the possible (at the very least) loss of Sherlock’s life. The fact is, the only scenario in which shooting Sherlock makes more sense than not shooting Sherlock is Scenario 6: Mary meant for Sherlock to die.

Some people might claim that Scenario 7 is what the show tells us, but that’s not actually true. Mary doesn’t give any of these exonerating details herself, which is odd considering that ‘there’s nothing [she] won’t do’ to keep John. Except explain herself, apparently. These details come from Sherlock, who doesn’t actually have any evidence, and are never even confirmed by Mary. A good theory is one that not only explains the facts, but predicts facts yet to be discovered. As the person who supposedly saved Sherlock, Mary should have the perfect theory as to how. In other words: the truth. When Sherlock claimed that she performed ‘surgery’ with her bullet, she should have been able to say ‘Yes, I shot you in the liver because it has a high survival rate’ (or something of the sort). When Sherlock says she called the ambulance, she should have been able to say ‘Yes, I used Magnussen’s phone.’ The fact that she never does suggests that these things are not true. She can’t elaborate because there’s nothing of substance to elaborate upon.

Sherlock claims that Mary shot in a not-immediately-lethal location to buy herself time to negotiate, but the location of the shot is just as well or better explained by Scenario 6: it’s a distraction for John. This is supported by what actually happened, i.e. that Sherlock went into cardiac arrest and clinically died and only survived by sheer force of will (a miracle, basically). I don’t personally care that he wasn’t medically dead. It only takes 3 minutes of clinical death for irreversible brain damage to begin and he was clinically dead. 

Next, Sherlock claims that Mary called the ambulance. His justification for this is that John didn’t find him until five minutes later and that the average ambulance in London takes eight minutes to arrive. Even if we accept that John didn’t find him for another five minutes (how on Earth would Sherlock know? he was unconscious), this is ludicrous to anyone with a basic understanding of statistics. An average is just an average. The standard deviation, a description of the spread of times, is just as important. To put it another way: Sherlock’s claim relies upon the idea that every single ambulance in London takes exactly eight minutes to reach its destination, every single time (or at least the vast majority). Sound ridiculous? That’s because it is. The ambulance may have been nearby already. We don’t know, and there’s no indication that anyone checked these claims.

Note that both these claims are made by Sherlock, not by the show. Yes we ‘see’ them happen, but we also ‘see’ Mary shooting both Magnussen and Sherlock. We don’t know if any of these things actually happened or not.

Next, Scenario 7 relies on Mary being able to get Sherlock alone and talk to him before anybody else, including John. If she used the morphine to do this, that would require (a) that he be sedated from the moment he reaches the hospital until the moment she gets him alone and (b) that turning down his morphine to make him lucid wouldn’t alert the nurses. (Note that opioids depress the heart rate, so turning down his meds enough to talk to him would make his heart rate go up. Unlikely for nurses not to be monitoring something like that). Remember that he said her name upon waking, so clearly that didn’t work if it was her intent. It also assumes that Sherlock would be more open to negotiation while lying in pain in a hospital bed under the influence of opioids because of her than while offering to help her. In addition, she has to be able to get John out of the room while she’s still there, and to do so for long enough to turn the morphine down, talk to Sherlock, and turn the morphine back up again. What if he came back early and walked in on their conversation? Even if he heard none of it, he’d certainly wonder why the morphine was turned down and Mary wasn’t doing anything about it. There are far too many variables out of her control for any of this to make sense as an alternative to Scenario 2. 

Finally, if you’d like an analysis of Mary’s shot by a surgeon, read this. There’s also this, in which a non-medical person analyses the likelihood of survival based on statistics. Something these together made me realize, however, is that it doesn’t particularly matter where Mary shot Sherlock. All you have to do is look at intent. If Scenario 7 is correct, then Mary shot to incapacitate and buy time. ‘Incapacitate’ is a broad term, but in context it means that Mary intended for him to lose consciousness quickly (say, within a minute — wouldn’t want John to walk in while he’s still conscious), and stay unconscious for at least an hour, possibly several, until she’s able to get him alone and manipulate his morphine so that she can talk to him. There are a number of possible methods of quick incapacitation: a blow to the head (it’s already established we’re in TV land where this isn’t incredibly dangerous), an extremely painful injury, a drug dose, or rapid blood loss. Of these, however, only the last would remain in effect long enough for Mary to get him alone and lucid before John. In other words, Mary must have meant for him to lose a lot of blood, and quickly. In case this isn’t self-evident, the kind of incapacitation Mary would have needed for Scenario 7 is incredibly dangerous and almost certainly lethal under the circumstances (not being already in a hospital). She may have called the ambulance — again, no proof — but she did nothing to stop the bleeding.

So. Even if we assume Scenario 7 makes sense, that leaves us with two possibilities:

(a) Mary shot to kill, but kill slowly (thus leaving a tiny sliver of chance for survival) or
(b) Mary shot to incapacitate, leaving a tiny sliver of chance for survival.

Interestingly, these would look exactly the same from Sherlock’s point of view, which fits what we see rather perfectly. That said, either Mary intended to murder her husband’s most beloved friend, or she decided that she would rather take an enormous risk with said friend’s life — and all the benefits to her husband Sherlock embodies — than risk her husband becoming aware of her lies and the danger he’s in because of her and possibly leaving her. No matter how you look at it, her decision is incredibly callous to John’s emotional well-being and dismissive of the value of Sherlock’s life.

So please don’t tell me she did this for John. I’m really not buying it.


Source: archipelagoarchaea, “Mary vs. Sherlock Scenarios - Why I Don’t Buy Sherlock’s Excuses”

I´m applauding. Logical, precise, to the point and very well thought of.