Sherlock is not invincible and would not have killed himself for anyone.
"I Or You" is stretching & reaching for clues & has less credibility than 'he survived the fall' which I don't believe anyway.

I do harbour the possibility that he planned on taking Moriarty over with him, I've discussed that before. Having them both 'whisked away' & holding Moriarty somewhere out of sight has good possibilities.

"IOU" is a taunt from a mad man, used to try & cause distress & fear in Sherlock. It was 'everywhere' as a reminder to Sherlock that Moriarty can 'be everywhere' if he chooses; taunting & teasing him. It's simply a mad man's chant. Sherlock destroyed Moriarty's plans, Moriarty owed Sherlock some 'destruction'.

ancientsgate wrote:

How in hell did Sherlock plan all of that in the short time he had (even accounting for Molly's help and the Homeless Network)?

Short time?
Moriarty first spoke about falling 3 months beforehand; Sherlock had plenty of time.

Sherlock's tears there on the edge of the rooftop were real, coursing down his face and dripping onto his scarf-- not crocodile tears. I know he can cry on demand, you know, for show, but surely he didn't think he needed to cry to lend credence to what he was saying, with John 50 feet below him and another 50 feet out away from the building, where he couldn't have even seen the tears. So what in hell were the tears about, if what he was saying was all part of a big fat magic trick?

Sherlock was playing a part in which he HAD to be 100% convincing. The tears ran down his face when he spoke to Ian Monkford's wife in the Great Game. Even his nose started running, as it does in this episode. So he CAN cry very wet, streaming fake tears.
A good telephonist knows you can 'hear' a smile on a telephone; similarly you can 'hear' the tears just as easily.
He was playing the part as best he could; he HAD to be believable.

I'm not sure why you keep saying you don't want a Sci-Fi resolution; there has never been ANYTHING Sci Fi in this series; everything has been explained matter of factly & the solution is always very straight forward. So why would it be different now? And on the same note, the show has never been a clichéd love story, so why think it will change once again? That's going from one extreme to the other really.
No Sci Fi, no love story; just a simple explanation is what we will get.

The request from John for one  more miracle and for Sherlock not to be dead is a typical response in the grieving process.

We know that he can cry on demand, he does it in front of Irene's house and in TGG when he talks to the widow and pretends to be an old friend of her husband's. But this was for strangers and for the purpose of getting information. True, he wants John to believe that he's going to commit suicide and to be as convincing as possible. On the other hand John can't really see his face up on the roof. Or he wants John to hear he's crying. Would John think it to be out of character? I'm a bit at a loss here …

Agreed. There was no logical reason for him to cry; therefore his tears were real.

Molly must have an important role in Holme's planned "death".
In the episode of Reichenbah Fall, there's an unanswered hint of Molly.
I believe when Sherlock said he needed Molly then, he definitely had a lot of implicit meanings, and very likely he told Molly how to help him in the way he would arrange his "death".

The Doctor wrote:

I also believe nowadays that it will be indeed three years until we see the next episode (as per film timeline) - Moffat hinted several times at the beauty of having so much time to develop the Sherlock-John relationship etc. Poor John!

I heard they'd be filming in January. I presume there will be a spring-time 2013 showing of S3 in the UK and God knows when we'll see it in the states. Moffatt has said that there's some long-term thinking/planning in the works, yes, but TV is a business, the fandom is red hot at the moment, and no way will they let three years go by without anything new, not unless there's some tragedy that happens to the writers or the actors, god forbid. It'll be the old strike while the iron is hot thing, most likely. Next year, we'll see more, I'll betcha. Hey, there's some real solid profits to be made here!

It won't be shown in the UK til I think late Summer 2013 at the earliest. Filming starts January 2013 but that takes a few weeks and then they'll be loads of post-production stuff to do.

Time to embarrass myself horribly but here's my proposed solution:

IOUS:

With regard to the IOUs, I believe they're meant to signify a move in the game between Sherlock and Moriarty. Moriarty carves the IOU on an apple after being acquitted for the crimes at the beginning and planting the idea of a master key computer program in Sherlock's head. This lead to assassins moving into Baker Street. The second IOU is seen across from Scotland Yard, representing Moriarty's second move of casting suspicion on Sherlock Holmes for the kidnapping. The third IOU is after Holmes is escorted out in handcuffs from their flat. These are the three moves Moriarty makes before the rooftop finale. Sherlock says IOU while looking through the microscope, indicating he believes the kidnapping is related to Moriarty.

"PS. Got something of yours you might want back" :

I believe this is a hint that plays on The Great Game. At the end of The Great Game, Sherlock mistakenly believes Moriarty distracted him to get the Bruce Partington plans when he sets up their meeting. In The Reichenbach Fall, Sherlock correctly deduces that the key code is a distraction in Moriarty's game. When he texts Moriarty referencing the key code, he intentionally acts naive' in order to lower Moriarty's guard by letting Moriarty believe that he thinks the key code is the solution.

Molly:
I believe Holmes had two tasks for her. Sherlock figured out Moriarty's solution would be having him commit suicide before meeting Moriarty on the hospital roof. He confides that he thinks he's going to die to Molly when he meets her in private. He arranged the meeting on the hospital roof to take advantage of the method of death (jumping from a very high height) as well as access to Molly, a mortician. I believe Sherlock, much like in the Conan Doyle novels, knew Moriarty had contacts who would continue Moriarty's work had Sherlock somehow survived the solution to the Final Problem. Therefore, he planned to fake his suicide regardless of what happened on the roof to protect his friends and acquaintances. This is the second task Molly later helps with. Her first is helping to contact his homeless network (nice modernization of the Baker Street Irregulars) and possibly coordination with Mycroft.

The Call to John:

In The Final Problem, Moriarty has a child deliver a message calling him back to the hotel to attend to a sick English woman. To separate the two in The Reichenbach Fall, Moriarty has one of his associates call Watson as a paramedic lying that Mrs. Hudson has been shot. Sherlock's callous reaction indicates he knew of the rouse and the immediate email from Moriarty "I'm waiting" afterward, for me, confirms it.

The Fall:

These are what I take as clues to how Sherlock survived:

1. Holmes' comment to Moriarty that he's just like him, prepared to do anything, prepared to what ordinary people won't do, and the reminder that he's not an angel.

2. Sherlock's insistence that Watson keep his distance and watch him on the roof. Sherlock calls John's cell just as the cab pulls up but before he sees John.

3. The loud ringing John Watson hears when he's disoriented after being knocked over by the bike after getting out of a cab that Sherlock seemed to know he was getting out of.

4. The blood splatter of the corpse is only the head area.

5. How quickly the paramedics pulled the body off the ground and brought it inside. Moving a person immediately after such a fall without assessing their condition, if they're alive, could result in permanent damage, for instance if they broke their back. If Sherlock died, it's hard to believe they would disturb the scene before the police arrived.

6. Sherlock's lack of any visible injury at the end.

7. Sherlock throughout the series never calls when he can text, a foil to Mycroft who never texts when he can call. Sherlock explicitly says he prefers to text in A Study in Pink.

Whatever the trick may be, it's hard to imagine it would have worked if Moriarty were alive when Sherlock jumped. Moriarty would have most likely either watched the jump or looked over onto the street to see the body. If Sherlock somehow jumped to safety or another body fell instead, Moriarty would have caught it. To say Moriarty wouldn't have watched because it's not in his character is a bit of a stretch or, at the least, not something Sherlock would leave to chance. Sherlock's plan, therefore, most likely included Moriarty being dead. I believe it is Moriarty’s body that ultimately fell.

I believe that Sherlock was prepared to kill Moriarty at their meeting from the very beginning. That Moriarty committed suicide altered the plan in that Sherlock would not have to do it. Given that Moriarty was already dead, possibly already experiencing rigor mortis and having no heartbeat, his body would only bleed out of the hole in his head because of gravity if it fell from the roof. This could explain the blood pattern. He pretended to believe in the "key" and lead Moriarty on to stall for time for John to return from Baker Street and his accomplices to get into place on the street. That he lifted Moriarty initially as if to throw him off suggests he was fully capable of doing this to his nemesis.

The big question is how did we see him fall. Moftiss initially said there was a clue everyone missed in that it was something Sherlock does not normally do. I think it is calling John. In the past, he has always texted John, but in this last scene he calls him instead (Sherlock says the opposite of Mycroft, that he never texts if he can call). Why then did he call? I think it was to mentally prepare John to expect to see Sherlock fall to his death. He did this during the Hounds of Baskerville to prepare John to see the hound under the hallucinogen.

One piece of evidence for this is that Sherlock dials the phone to call John before he sees John step out of the cab. Another piece of evidence is that it looks like the silhouette of Mycroft driving the cab taking Watson to the hospital if one pauses the frame after the large man yells through the window. If true, this would be a nod to the canon in that Mycroft drove the hansom that took Watson to Victoria train station in The Final Problem. It would also be a nod to the canon in that Watson did not recognize the driver. This would explain why the cab passed the other man who came to the window to take Watson because of the timing and the drop off point in the square at a distance from the hospital.

Sherlock has John arrive as planned and calls him to deliver his suicide letter. He keeps John at a distance to prevent him from getting in front of the one story garage blocking the entrance to the hospital. Many people say this is to conceal the trick but this area is in public view to anyone else on the street walking by, anyone watching from a window, and to Moriarty's aides wherever they may be. Sherlock doesn't have to just fool John of his death. He has to fool everyone who could potentially see the jump as well. My belief is he kept John at a distance to prevent the sniper from having a view of the front of the hospital to confirm it was Sherlock's body that fell, since the sniper would be aiming at John.

Holmes then delivered a suicide message over the phone from a distance to raise Watson's expectations of seeing Holmes dead when he saw the body on the ground. The ringing in his ear and disorientation Watson experiences after getting knocked over by the bike renders him in a daze and unreliable, possibly to help with making him see Sherlock instead of the body that fell.

I think this is a sign that John is experienced PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), which he was diagnosed with in A Study in Pink. The very first scene of the series is John having a flashback to the war, so it’s not unlikely he suffers from PTSD. I think Holmes called John to emotionally charge him to trigger PTSD, which can cause auditory (the ringing) and visual hallucinations (seeing Sherlock fall instead of Moriarty).

A possible clue suggesting this is the case is that the episode opens with John returning to his psychologist, indicating the immense profound distress he felt from Sherlock's death.

Given how the biker was dressed, I wouldn't be surprised if this was one of Holmes' homeless network following orders. I believe that the surrounding crowd were members of the homeless network, meant to immediately cover the body and testify it was Sherlock Holmes when the police came. This includes the paramedics, who would never lift the body of someone who just fell from a roof without a medical examination, since it could lead to permanent damage. If the body were dead, which seemed to be the case, they wouldn't move it before the police arrived. Consequently, their job was getting the body out of plain sight as soon as possible.

Molly's second task is taking Moriarty’s body immediately into the mortuary and declaring it to be Holmes'. Since she knew him well, she could identify the body herself and she probably arranged with Sherlock to switch with the body and dress him up to appear dead. This is why the paramedics pulled the body immediately off the ground amidst the crowd.

My theory on the order of events is once Sherlock threw over the body, he cleaned up the blood on the roof and rushed downstairs to the morgue. The paramedics brought Moriarty’s body in immediately amidst the panic, with John still being disoriented during the whole scene, where Molly declared him dead. Once alone, Sherlock switched places with the body and disguises himself to appear like he had fallen for when Lestrade and Watson arrive. Watson would be so distraught he wouldn't question the death. He then goes into hiding with Molly's help to round of the rest of Moriarty's organization which will lead up to events similar to The Adventure of the Empty House.

Also a body cools over 12 to 48 hours after death, so Moriarty's body would still be warm after hitting the ground when John checks the pulse. In addition, the body that hit the ground bounced, suggesting it fell from a high height. If another body were dropped as Sherlock fell, at some point two bodies would have had to been visible falling.

Conan Doyle planned on leaving Holmes dead until he had the epiphany that he could branch out as a writer in the context of Sherlock Holmes. This would suggest a less haphazard and convoluted answer than the one we find in The Adventure of the Empty House.

Alternative Theories:

Whatever the theory, one major question is did Sherlock jump or not. If he did, how did he survive? If he didn't, how'd his body get on the ground when John arrived?

If Sherlock did not jump, then it's hard to believe it was his body that John saw. Sherlock has an inhuman intellect but he's not inhumanly fast enough to beat a body falling off a building to the ground in time to make the switch. Even if he ran, he has to somehow get to the ground floor and without being seen. Consequently, if Holmes didn't jump, it'd be hard to believe he was on the ground unless one argues he wasn't on the roof when the body fell.

If he did jump and let's say landed in the rubbish truck, one would have to explain the body that hit the ground and bounced. That the body bounced suggested it fell from a high enough height to have enough momentum to bounce on pavement. If this were the case, then the body would have had to have been dropped from higher than one story (the height of the blocking garage building), and then people would have had to at some point see two bodies falling.

For people who say there was a switch, notice the body doesn't change positions before and after John fell. We actually see the entire scene that John misses. A crowd forms around the body and a woman with frizzy hair reaches for Sherlock's head, with hospital staff keeping the observers away. Notice when John lifts his head, there is no one around the body and a crowd forms. We are seeing the same scene twice from two angles (birds-eye and John's PoV). There's no lapse in time where we don't see what's happening for there to be a switch once John rounds the corner. Any switch would have had to have been made instantaneously after the body hits.

Last edited by Lupin (January 29, 2013 9:28 pm)

It is like Sherlock is just waiting for the call. He seems to fully expect it and has already worked out his next move. So the call was meant to lure John away. Is that just a nod to the canon or is it an integral part of the plot/story? Was John meant to stay away? Was his return a surprise? In the canon Watson does not see the fall.

Oh dear...now I've posed even more questions.