I think the thought had to have occured to him, that Sherlock was actually alive. I'm sure he dismissed it though.

I kind of resent The Empty Hearse because it unraveled everything about my favorite episode, and it leaves me wondering what was real and what was fake. Mainly Sherlock's interactions with John.

The whole goodbye, the seemingly mutual trust and 'hey, we're in this together'. Sherlock appears to have known much more than he told John. I don't know if I can forgive that.

SherlocklivesinOH wrote:

Has John done anything to make Sherlock trust him less?

Nope. But he has become less predictable. Sherlock used to be able to predict when he would poop before he knew it himself. These days, he's got his own life & he's following his own path more & more.
 

Greetings all,
Newcomer to this forum here!
I just finished re-watching Reichenbach and noticed something new, thanks to my Empty Hearse knowledge. My apologies if this is mentioned elsewhere.
When John joins Sherlock at St. Barts following their escape from the police, we see Sherlock sitting on the floor, throwing a rubber ball against a desk, a la Steve McQueen in the Great Escape. During the next several minutes there are multiple closeups of the rubber ball in Sherlock's hand. Perhaps he was practicing cutting off his pulse with it?

A Lemon Tree wrote:

MahnSherlolly03 wrote:

The whole goodbye, the seemingly mutual trust and 'hey, we're in this together'. Sherlock appears to have known much more than he told John. I don't know if I can forgive that.

I noticed that Empty Hearse made a point to show reunification with John, Lestrade, and Mrs. Hudson, all of whom clearly were in the dark about Sherlock being alive. I think this is to demonstrate that the three people followed by snipers cannot know that Sherlock is alive. Additionally Sherlock said it was imperative for John not to know about the faked suicide plan; this suggests to me that hiding the plan from John is not due to callousness or lack of consideration, but because the plan will only protect Sherlock's friends if they believe him to be dead.
So here's my theory:
Moriarty wants to ensure that Sherlock doesn't pull an Irene Adler and fake his death. So he orders his ring to continue monitoring John, Lestrade, and Mrs. Hudson. If they do not show "enough" grief, all three will be killed. If Sherlock had kept John in the loop, John would not have been as convincing in his horror and grief, placing all three in danger.
This theory is also consistant with Sherlock telling Molly that Moriarty erred by thinking that she did not matter.Luckily the person best suited to fake Sherlock's death is someone who was not deemed important enough by Moriarty to warrant snipers and surveillance.
That said, I certainly hope Sherlock did some serious 'splaining to John after the train incident before being truly forgiven. But somehow I doubt that ever happened.

^ This. This is what I'm wanting. Closure. An explanation. I think your theory is exactly right, despite the fact that Sherlock told Anderson the snipers weren't a problem.

A Lemon Tree wrote:

Just thought of another piece to the theory.
Perhaps Sherlock was convinced that he would die on his hunt for Moriarty, much like how Mycroft told him he would die within 6 months of the second Bond-like mission. Sherlock might have thought that telling his friends that he was alive would make it harder for them to deal with his inevitable death later on, particularly because they would know that he died trying to protect them. Not to mention they would hold out hope that Sherlock faked his death again and may spend the rest of their lives seeking proof that Sherlock is alive after all, a la Anderson. I can totally see Sherlock rationalizing the decision by saying that his friends would have to cope with his suicide mission either way, so may as well let them believe in the first one and get their grief over with.

That's really interesting. I never thought of that. That's a good theory.

Poor Sherlock.

Some good ideas here; thank you!

I do get a bit cross when people react as if Sherlock had been off acquiring a tan on an extremely leisurely world cruise, as opposed to the dark and dangerous crawl through the underworld, rounding up seriously nasty people,  which was his reality...

MahnSherlolly03 wrote:

Willow wrote:

Some good ideas here; thank you!

I do get a bit cross when people react as if Sherlock had been off acquiring a tan on an extremely leisurely world cruise, as opposed to the dark and dangerous crawl through the underworld, rounding up seriously nasty people, which was his reality...

Haha

That's why I love the scene near the beginning where Sherlock's captured and tortured. As much as it hurts to see him in danger, I wanted to know what he was doing. On the flipside, it really scares me to consider what exactly caused the symptoms we see in Season Three, like his less-than-functional Mind Palace when it's important, and his need to cope with his John problems by joking around in TEH.

Well, I guess the answer is that in reality people who are exposed to extreme danger and privation for two years are not going to come out of it unscathed; there inevitably has to be a period where, hopefully, they recover physically and emotionally, and Sherlock didn't get it because he was thrust straight into the underground terrorist plot.

I think this is more than sufficient to explain why he was 'off his game'; he was recovering from what was most definitely not having a fun time. And then he got shot 
 

I watched TRF again yesterday, here is what I think:

Several thinks that I found bit strange:

In one newspaper there was Conan Dolye mentioned. Just an easter egg???

Mycroft says James instead of Jim Moriarty???

When Sherlock and John go to St. Barts after escaping the police, it is almost dark outside. But when Sherlock is up the rooftop it is perfectly daytime???


Well I cannot see where there was a plan to let Moriarty have the upper hand.
Of course the Mycroft and Sherlock do not communicate thing was overdone so obviously not true, but I think that Mycroft fed Moriarty the information about Sherlock because he tried to get information out of him. Maybe he underestimated him. I think that because Sherlock seems to be honestly shocked about what Moriarty does about him on the news and so on.

When Molly offers her help for the first time, Sherlock seems to be hardly thinking, what could it be and maybe already had the fake death in his mind.
He knew that Moriarty wants him to be dead, after what he said to him in his flat and also because of the IOU thing and the taxi ride...
He also knows he wants him to literally fall. But he still hopes, he doesn't have to do it.

The criminals nearby protect him just because Moriarty wants to play with him.

After the confrontation of  "Richard Brook" Sherlock realizes, that he needs to fake his death to get out of this. So he contacts Molly and I think also Mycroft (maybe because John suggested). So when John talks to Mycroft about what Moriarty knew, I'm not sure, if the already was into the plan?!

I'm not sure if Sherlock knew about the snipers, but I think he named John, Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade, to make sure that Molly is not on that list.

I think that Sherlock honestly thinks that there is any kind of computer code. He is quite clever but not a computer expert, is he? I'm not quite sure if there really isn't any computer code. Maybe not that simple, maybe just some hackers or maybe some key to a backdoor which are placed in many programs (remember the NSA has backdoors in encryption and so on). Sounds more likely.
What makes me not think, that he only informed the people what to do is, for example the security guys at the tower, in the first version they spill coffee all over the place, in the second version they are informed to fire the alarm. Really???

About the call that made John go to Baker St. I'm sure Sherlock arranged it (maybe with Mycroft), to get John out of the way.

About when he informed Mycroft what to do: when he asks Moriarty to leave him alone, he looks down for a short time (we know he can type quite fast). But I think it was after Moriarty shot himself as shown in TEH. Sherlock could not jump because the airbag wasn't prepared yet. But then he thought he could stop Moriarty. After he shot himself he had to do the whole thing and he didn't like it.

What was fairly obvious is, how he sent John back to the point where he wanted him to be.

About the snipers: We do not see what they see, so maybe they were also tricked by the ambulance station.

When Mycroft holds the newspaper about Sherlocks suicide he doesn't show any reaction, so he totally was in on it, because even if caring is not an advantage, about Sherlock he DOES care.