Liberty wrote:

I don't believe (if Sherlock is right) that the cardiac arrest was planned or calculated .... the idea was to incapacitate Sherlock, which probably meant to make him unconscious.   I think she meant him to bleed out and lose consciousness.  I'm not even sure if she thought that much further.   Her calling the ambulance was meant to prevent him dying, as it might have been too late by the time John found him.  There was no intention to cause cardiac arrest. 

I have some trouble accepting this because in HLV we were shown how Mary neatly incapacitated both Janine and the bodyguard and made them unconscious without shooting them. She would be certainly capable of taking Sherlock out without hurting him too, if she was so inclined.

Also, the person like Mary who outsmarts Mycroft and had experience with killing people in the past certainly has at least the basic knowledge about human anatomy and should be aware that her actions could lead to a fatal cardiac arrest and the death Sherlock. Yet she shoots him as if he was an irrelevant piece of meat. Instant death, vegetative state, paralysis of limbs... that all could be a possible result of Mary´s actions, even if she called an ambulance right away. And what if an ambulance was delayed for some reason on the way to CAM´s tower? How could Mary prevent that?

Liberty wrote:

But I think the one that Sherlock deduces is the one we're meant to go with, for now.  Sherlock and John seem to believe it. 

But Sherlock is heavily compromised where Mary is involved and his judgement is not to be trusted in this (I speculate about the possible reasons in the thread "Sherlock and Stockholm Syndrome"). Also, the outlook whether John and Sherlock believe Mary is very subjective, IMHO. Personally, the scene:

JOHN: She shot you.
SHERLOCK: Mixed messages, I give you  that.

gave me the impression that John doesn´t believe surgery story at all, but has no time to press it, because Sherlock collapses on the floor in the next moment and he has a different priorities from that moment on. Sherlock´s conduct, on the other hand, make it look like he is telling John this fairy-tale for some reason of his own...

Yes, she wanted to incapacitate for her a longer time than, say, Magnussen (who is starting to come round by the time John arrives - presumably after leaving Janine and the security guy because they had come round too).

But also, I think she wanted him to believe that she would kill him.  He wasn't supposed to deduce that she called the ambulance.  He was supposed to be so afraid of what she might do that he wouldn't tell John.  Knocking him out wouldn't have been enough to convince him she meant to kill him, especially as she was pointing a gun at him.  

The fact remains Sherlock is very much alive.
His words and actions to me, seem to prove he has not only forgiven Mary, he actually likes her.

The thing is-- Sherlock offered to help her. And, it was unconditional! And, she still shot him! When he offered, she could have stipulated, "You don't tell John.", and he would have done it-- at least for a while. It would have bought her time. But, noooooo....

Last edited by RavenMorganLeigh (May 15, 2016 4:33 am)

And Sherlock did tell John, against Mary's wishes, as soon as he could after he worked it out.  So if she'd assumed that he would tell John, she wasn't far off the mark.   We really don't know what would have happened if she had taken a different course of action - we can only guess at what she thought would happen, and why she chose the particular course she did.   It seems that nobody acted exactly how you would expect them to in that episode anyway. 

But if Mary believed Sherlock wouldn't tell John, then she might have got him on board in the first place.   I think she can't really have believed that.   We would we even have believed it ... if we hadn't seen S3, what do we think Sherlock would do if he found out John's wife was an assassin?  Would he try to keep them together, accept her as a case and then kill her target for her?  Or would he tell John and bring her to justice?  I have to say that the latter seems more likely, given what we knew up until that point.  I'm saying this because it seemed obvious to me that Mary should have asked Sherlock for help in the first place, but after thinking about it a long time, I can see exactly why Mary would think that Sherlock would expose rather than help her.    He's supposed to be on the side of the angels, after all. 

(I don't think she was ever really a risk to John, though.   Sherlock thought she was, before he worked out her motives.  But afterwards he realised that she wanted to keep John (and to protect him).  Sherlock was the one at risk - she certainly wanted him to think that he was).

Just to be sure, we're talking about why Mary acted as she did, aren't we (rather than what she should have done)?

Last edited by Liberty (May 16, 2016 8:40 pm)

Liberty wrote:

I don't think she was ever really a risk to John, though.   Sherlock thought she was, before he worked out her motives.  But afterwards he realised that she wanted to keep John (and to protect him).  Sherlock was the one at risk - she certainly wanted him to think that he was.

John was definitely in danger from her there at Lenister Gardens. If her face was not projected on the building, she would have shot him right away.

And on what scene do you base your conviction that "Sherlock realised she wanted to protect John". I see no such thing in a narrative, just Mary waving her gun around.

Liberty wrote:

However, it seems that she thought threatening to kill him (and almost kiling him, to back up the threat) might just stop him telling. 

And killing him altogether would make her even safer because he would never had a chance to reveal anything to John that way. So why the doubts and claims she didn´t want to kill him? She did - and nothing can be better proof than this.

Liberty wrote:

As for whether she meant to kill him - I think that we've had Sherlock's deduction, and without another twist it has been left as her meaning for him to survive the shot (there's also the fact that there was no further attempt to kill him).  I suppose we'll find out in S4, one way or another. 

Sherlock´s deduction - that was just a bunch of words. But what did we actually see on screen?







How come that one sentence of Sherlock can convince you that Mary did not meant to kill him, but all this proofs about Mary´s murderous tendencies and ruthlessness don´t convince you about an opposite?

Last edited by nakahara (May 17, 2016 8:53 am)

Liberty wrote:

Because I don't think it works, storywise.  We had the shock reveal that Mary was trying to kill Sherlock, but that's only about half way through the episode, and it's followed by Sherlock's deduction that she didn't mean to kill her.  He takes her on as a client and ends up dispatching the main villain.   There's no subsequent reveal that Mary really was trying to kill him, so it's left as it is after Sherlock's deduction. 

Sherlock's mind palace after he's been shot is before he makes his deductions - at that point, it looks to him as if Mary was trying to kill him, and it's meant to look to us as if she was trying to kill him too. 
 

But these scenes are an actual look inside Sherlock´s head, not mere words. Sherlock deduction can be a lie (it´s not as if he never lied before). Also, some of them, like Magnussen´s "bad, bad girl" and Mary´s "you won´t love me if you read this" are independent from Sherlock´s mind palace (they are real) - and they too point out onto Mary´s shady character. I can´t see how Sherlock´s deduction invalidates them, tbh.

And what about Sherlock fleeing from hospital with an unhealed shotwound and endangering his life that way for the sole purpose of arranging the meeting with Mary? Why was this neccessary if Sherlock thought Mary doesn´t want to kill him? Why was he forced to take precautions and to place her image on the facade of a building if he believed she is absolutely benign and tame? For me, there´s only one explanation: he held her for such a dangerous woman that he risked his life anyway and revealed her to John in an environment that was under his controll. He didn´t dare to confront her in a place where she would have an advantage over him. That all is the proof that he was aware of her dangerous, potentially deadly character and didn´t underestimate it. Words like "Mary saved my life" hold no water if we confront them with Sherlock´s actual acts during an episode.

Also, Sherlock acts with such precaution just shortly before he makes "the deduction". He obtained no new facts about Mary during the time between their confrontation in Lenister gardens and their return to Baker Street. Yet suddenly Mary is all safe and she saved Sherlock´s life? For me it´s only one more indication that Sherlock is lying here, big time.

I just found this and would like to share it with you because the argumentation is as easy as it is convincing (at least to me). I will post the whole text here and give the source at the end: 

Mary could have been good
I can concede that Mary could have shot CAM and still have been a good person. I can believe, given her background, that she would’ve felt that was the only way to do things, if she was doing it to protect others. Maybe not a morally good option, or the best option, but it wouldn’t immediately make her a villain.
And if the writers had chosen to go that route, killing CAM to protect family, she still could have been a good character. How do I know? Because that’s exactly what they did with Sherlock when he eventually kills CAM. At some point, both Sherlock and Mary make the decision: “Magnussen is a dangerous man and I need to stop him.”
So it speaks volumes that the writers instead had Sherlock interrupt Mary’s assassination attempt. Because now Mary is placed in the same position Sherlock will be placed in: killing in front of a witness. No longer can she do this in secret and return to her seemingly normal lifestyle.
In that moment, Mary is given a choice. Either she receives Sherlock’s help and/or shoots CAM, knowing that John will find out, or she shoots Sherlock. John will not listen to CAM unless given a large body of undeniable facts, but he will believe Sherlock far easier, especially if he makes it up there in time to see her in the black outfit with a gun. But if she shoots Sherlock, she can avoid John finding out and try to deal with CAM later, knowing full and well that CAM will continue to harm her family and other innocent people if she lets him go.
Mary must chose between protecting others and protecting herself, and she chooses herself.
Then Sherlock is given the same general setup. He has a witness (several actually), and if he shoots CAM he is placing a sentence upon his own head. However, if he lets CAM go, CAM will continue to harm others, including John.
Sherlock must chose between protecting other and protecting himself, and he chooses others.
That what I mean when I say “Mary is a villain because she shot Sherlock.” Not “where did she shoot him on his body” or “let’s go through a minute-by-minute discussion on whether Sherlock actually died”. Mary was given an option to take down CAM with Sherlock’s help, and she placed her own life’s value far above Sherlock’s, her husband’s, and even her unborn child. And yet, given the same choice, Sherlock gladly and without hesitation throws away his life to save others. Mary is selfish and had no intentions of protecting others by shooting CAM anyway, if she did she would not have decided that continued secrecy of her true identity was the most important value to her. She is a villain just as much as Sherlock is a hero, and that wouldn’t change no matter how many times John forgave her or how surgical that chest wound was. Mary made her choice, and she is not a bit sorry for it.

source: http://thebisonwitheadphones.tumblr.com/post/143810961424/mary-could-have-been-good