I think one big problem I have with the whole thing is a linguistic one: "saving one's life" is different from "preventing someone's death". What Mary possibly does, is the second, not the first. For me it simply does not make sense that you should save someone's life by seriously injuring him in the first place. 

SusiGo wrote:

mrshouse wrote:

Okay, I have to answer point after point.
I admit that the liking or not liking of a character is the very least valuable argument in a thread dedicated to discussion.
But I think I have made a lengthy post about the measures of death in real life and how it is visualized in the movies. There's no answer to that so far. Discussing that it is an obvious fact that he wasn't dead is a whole new level for me tbh.
Of course, Sherlock was not really dead for me either because I don't think anything serious happens to a main character, but that was about it.
Up to the point of wanting to fight, giving up, meeting his inner nemesis, I might agree.

I am with you here. He may not have been dead in a medical sense but the symbolic darkening of the scene and the doctors giving up on him are quite clear. They went as far as possible to show that there was no realistic hope of saving him and that he could only rely on his own strong will to protect John. 
 

 
I think that it is clearly what the creators wanted us to see.  He obviously still had brain activity at that moment but what we are shown is the doctors giving up, the DOCTORS GIVING UP.   We are being shown Sherlock coming back from a state that the doctors working on him deemed hopeless.

But this is the explanation as well - it is a story arc reaching beyond the end of series 3. I am very sure that this is not last thing we see about Mary's past, etc. There will be no married idyll.

And it is the true cliffhanger, not Moriarty. The same went for series 2 in a way - of course people discussed the method of the fall, but many were far more interested in how Sherlock and John would be reunited and how they would cope with the aftermath. Less frustrating, but still two different cliffhangers in one episode. 

Last edited by SusiGo (May 6, 2015 3:29 pm)

If you ask me, there will be no married life with a baby. They have talked more than once about series 4 being (even) darker. There are some excellent speculative metas on tumblr, and some of them have been posted on the forum as well. I think the three or four big M's will be solved and treated: Moriarty, Mycroft, Mary, and maybe Moran. But this is a bit OT in here. 

Vhanja wrote:

I am myself very excited to see where they take this in S4. Will it be brough up again? How will their life be? And how on earth balance the dynamics of married life, a baby on the way and what is supposed to be show about Sherlock and John?

Gosh, I change my hopes and fears about that about three times a day. That is so far apart from what I feel was always the big winning team of the show and what I fell head over heels in love with during S1 and 2.
 

From what we are shown I think we were meant to believe Sherlock managed to survive because of his mind palace and will , and that alone.

John Watson was much more qualified to provide on scene care and/or cpr than the paramedics so unless Sherlocks heart stopped in the ambulance or at scene the timing of arrival is irrelevant.

We know the....heart starting again ...took place in what looked like an emergency ER or Surgery room which was some time after the shooting.
Could the supposed 5 mins really have made a difference...well not unless he died/heart stopped 5 or more mins before he arrived at the hospital...which considering his condition...naked...gown..attachments..attendants...etc doesn't look likely.
Either it's the...just tv...or Sherlock is making up excuses...

How would Sherlock have known who called the ambulance and how long it took? Wasn't he unconscious/consulting with Molly, Mycroft and others in his Mind Palace?

RavenMorganLeigh wrote:

How would Sherlock have known who called the ambulance and how long it took? Wasn't he unconscious/consulting with Molly, Mycroft and others in his Mind Palace?

 
Exactly, that is one of the big holes in the Baker Street scene.

But that doesn't actually make sense if you consider the Baker street scene. Remember Sherlock explaining the time of arrival of ambulances, and mentioning it had been Mary who called it. John would have mentioned that he had called and got that information from the operator, too.

I prefer not to speculate but to keep what is there. And we get no proof that Mary called the ambulance or that John knew someone else had called before. My reading is still that Sherlock tried to keep himself and John safe by telling this story about Mary saving his life. They are in a room with an armed assassin and he knows he will collapse any moment.