The water imagery in all its forms: pool, rain, aquarium, Thames, beach, Sherlock seeing water again and again in his mind. 
 

I also felt it had a lot to do with emotions in genereal. Frustration, guilt, temptation, anger, stress, jealousy, lovers (and friends) drifting apart - and for once it actually comes up and will be dealt with instead of just simmering under the surface (as it was in S3).

I have a feeling we're coming back to the water stuff later.   It wasn't just for this episode.  

I've always loved the Samarra story.  I don't believe in fate, but there's something incredibly satisfying and almost reassuring about the story.  So I liked its use here. 

I didn't feel it applied to the boy in the car so well.  Perhaps just in the sense that his parents would be worried about him out in Tibet, whereas what was going to happen to him could have happened anywhere, at any time.   But maybe if he'd just knocked on the door and said "surprise!", he could have been saved.  In a way, the fact that he was supposed to be abroad was irrelevant beyond the fact that he was sent a message that seemed to have come from beyond the grave.   Which was another theme - as that's what Moriarty and Mary did. 

There were also themes of trust and betrayal.

And John in the well. 

At the end of T6T , Ella says " you're having a recurring dream.."

Saving John Watson. In Pink we all know John saved Sherlock by shooting the cabbie, however in every episode since then , Sherlock has in some way , saved John Watson. . Most often Johns life in a fairly dramatic way that seems to be becoming increasingly dramatic.

Mycroft told us Sherlock disliked the Death in the market story and especially the end .So Sherlock wrote a fix it - his own version - that avoided death and where in the end Sherlock becomes a pirate.   
In the finale will we get Water again , saving John  again only this time maybe with a boat?

But I do wonder if this repeating theme is maybe Sherlock running some kind of fix it mind palace sequence or dream . Maybe until he gets the ending he likes ? 

Last edited by Mothonthemantel (January 3, 2017 12:33 pm)

Possibly we could add motifs to this discussion!

Pops wrote:

SusiGo wrote:

The water imagery in all its forms: pool, rain, aquarium, Thames, beach, Sherlock seeing water again and again in his mind. 
 

Exactly that !! And all the promo shoots having a "dark watery" theme.
 

I think the water imagery was there to strenghten the central motif or "sharks".

As we know from speech of Mrs. Norbury, she compares sharks with agents - just like the sharks have to swim constantly lest they die, the agents must constantly be in the move, always looking above their shoulder and if they think they can just settle peacefully somewhere after such life, some awful chance will soon shatter this illusion. Just like the shark - Mary - was destroyed by the consequences of her actions despite falsely believing that she now found her safe harbour in life.

The dark blue water mirrored on faces and surfaces in this ep seems to reflect this world of sharks in which the character find themselves during the episode....
 

Not really a theme but it was interesting that Sherlock created two elaborate, and false, scenarios to explain the very simple. Once when he was talking to the client along with John balloon about how the guy's wife was a dangerous spy (wonder where he got the inspiration for that one?) when she had in fact just left him and then again with Mary when explaining how he had tracked her down with mathematics and psychology when he had just used a tracer.

Could just be Sherlock having fun or maybe a hint from Mofftiss that some of our fan theories are so crazy when the actual explanations are very simple.

Last edited by Lis (January 3, 2017 7:30 pm)

SusiGo wrote:

And John in the well. 

 
When I saw that scene in the trailer all I could think of was the old nursery rhyme, "Ding, Dong, Dell, Pussy's in the Well".  And now all I can think about is that John has to go down into the well to try to save something/someone - Rosie? Difficult to even contemplate that.

Someone is still trying to burn the heart out of Sherlock.  John and everyone else Sherlock loves are still very much in danger and need to be "saved". If Moriarty set all this in motion before he died, this is a diabolical long game indeed.