My thoughts entirely.

Exactly.
All I wanted, all I expected and they delivered.
Nice.

I don't really see the problem.  The questions were answered.  And I'm not sure how much further people wanted Mary to go than saving Sherlock's life.   What would have been a better "redemption arc"? 

I think we have reached a point of discussion where it comes down to what people like, and you cannot find an agreement there.

I am not satisfied with her so-called redemption arc, partly because she never apologised, I am not satisfied with the missing explanation of how bad she really was, and I am absolutely sure that the marriage was not a happy one.

I am not bemused by people who see it on a different way, btw. Why would I? It's a matter of taste, concerning the character and concerning the way of story telling.

Liberty wrote:

I don't really see the problem.  The questions were answered. 

Not one of them has been answered. HLV made a big deal about Mary´s dark past and then in TST, all these things were retconned as if they didn´t even existed.
Why put such things to your series, if you want these things to be forgotten next time around?

Liberty wrote:

And I'm not sure how much further people wanted Mary to go than saving Sherlock's life.   What would have been a better "redemption arc"? 

That´s exactly what this poster has been criticising. The writers didn´t explain any of the things they insinuated about Mary in HLV, nor her magical spying skills she obtained during TAB, but we should overlook all these inconsistencies, because Mary let herself be killed for Sherlock´s sake?

No, Mary´s "redemption"  is not enough to make sense of her character, however noble it may seem....

I'm afraid that the writers just want us to be convinced that the matter is closed.
This is the more annoying for me as we are told by ACD:
 
"It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data."
 
I still don't believe that I have sufficient data.
This also goes for more matters where I feel that they want us to be done with: The Fall (still!) and the fact that Sherlock by shooting Magnussen is indeed a murderer. By showing the fake version of Sherlock being officially innocent they meant us to be lulled into believing it, too. And isn't Sherlock himself by not giving a thought about this proof that there isn't a problem? Who am I then to see one?
 
In canon, Sherlock never murders anyone.
So it's like with the Mary case: It's difficult to walk away from the canon and find an easy, plausible way to return to it. (Reminds me somehow of a cat carelessly climbing up a tree and then not finding her way back down.)
 
Maybe it's just my unappropriate desire or "weakness" - according to Moriarty:
 
"You always want everything to be clever."

 

I don't have an article to hand, but Moftiss explained that they thought that Holmes killed Milverton in canon.   They thought that Watson was an unreliable narrator - obviously he was not going to expose Holmes as a murderer, so he wrote up the case with an unknown woman doing the deed at the end.   So in the Moftiss version, they just made explicit what they already thought had been implied!

Of course, our Mary is not much like the canon character, and her story is not an adaptation of the original book (although some elements are used).  But then neither is Eurus canon.  I don't think they are obliged to stick to canon, but can use it how they like.   However, I do think they've come closer to canon at the end of TFP.   The rest can follow on from there.   The non-canon elements which are a bit awkward are Eurus and Rosie (who I still suspect was originally added purely for the line about the "three"!).   But Mary is not so much of a problem: John is now the widower who will carry on having adventures with Sherlock. 

Last edited by Liberty (June 4, 2017 7:40 am)

Possibly she's taken her secrets to the grave, so we will never know.

Yes, and being a mercenary who kills people for money implies that it's not always a killing that can be justified (as it can in when they were trying to save hostages). So I think she performed other jobs that were more dodgy, moral-wise.

John is a soldier. He can understand that killing can sometimes be necessary, or at least justifiable, for the greater good. He has done the same himself. It's not the knowledge of her having killed for money that she was scared of when whe said that, because he already knew that. It was the content of the stick, ie the details. How many had she killed? And for what reasons? The hostage job would be understandable for most people, but what other things has she done?

Well, John didn't really know that she'd killed for money, or really anything about her past, or anything much more than that she shot Sherlock, when she gives him the stick. 

A moment later, he knew from what Sherlock said that she had been an agent (which kind of implies that she was working for a government, which you could argue might have been for her country or the greater good).   He doesn't know about the freelance work until Magnussen mentions it.  That's what's on the stick (AGRA).   And that's the morally more dodgy part - the part most people would balk at - being by choice a member of mercenary organisation who will kill for money. 

But actually, what seems to be the real sticking point is the lying.   Mary thinks John will stop loving her because she lied anyway.  As she says, there's nothing she wouldn't do to prevent that happening.  If she thought not giving him the stick could prevent it happening, then she wouldn't give him the stick.   But as she thinks it's happening anyway, and she feels so bad about lying, she gives him the option of knowing the details - but doesn't want to watch the process.   And in fact, it's the case that John seems most upset about the lying.   What Magnussen says doesn't bother him.  And when he finally finds out the truth, he's probably most bothered about her lying about the initials, and her name! 

I actually think the latter explanation is the most likely, particularly considering the timing - that she gives him it before he knows anything else.  (Mary isn't talking about something that's worse than her being an agent/assassin, because that hasn't been mentioned yet).