BBC Sherlock Fan Forum - Serving Sherlockians since February 2012 / Mary – the subject of discussion

**Posted by Sherlock Holmes** February 10, 2015 10:00 am

Just out of interest, does anyone know how many extra minutes/hours of footage were shot for other episodes that ended up not being used? It would be interesting to do a comparison. I can imagine there being about half an hour extra of cut material but for there to be so much....I'll have to ask my mother about this, she works in television.

Anyway, someone said that maybe people who liked Mary originally find it easier to forgive her after HLV. Well, I DID like Mary in the first two episodes and also in HLV right up to the point she shot Sherlock. I thought she was a cool character; a strong, independant woman, funny, perfect match for John, actually likes Sherlock, etc. I was really loving it. And then she just had to go and shoot Sherlock and spoil everything.

I think the small amount we are given on screen of the forgiving process not only makes it hard for fans to accept the forgiveness, but makes it hard for fans to accept that the forgiveness is real and genuine in the first place. I know a lot of people who believe that both Sherlock and John are just SAYING all of that stuff, and just playing the game so that, eventually, when they're ready, they can use it to their advantage and get her out of their lives for good. It's hard to tell because, as we know, Sherlock is an amazingly good actor when he wants to be and maybe John needed to take all that time between 221b and Christmas so that he and Sherlock could sort out their plan and he could rehearse what it was he was going to say to her.

I don't know if that's true or not, but it's a theory, none the less. It's one that I'd like to see come to fruition, and I'd like there to be something MORE to all this, because otherwise, I feel the ending of HLV in terms of their relationships is rather weakly written.

**Posted by mrshouse** February 10, 2015 10:17 am

@Vhanja, did you refer to my screenshots? I don't remember her crying in the Leinster garden scene. I would be very interested actually if someone posted screenshots at her "defence" and we could discuss our impressions, so fire away! And you are right about the heart work off screen and I don't have trouble with that at all. I think one sentence thrown in here and there might have done the trick already....
@Boss, I agree with you but I don't think we will get that story arc. At the moment the way I see it a couple of explanatory scenes fell under the rug in the cutting room, we have to like it or leave it, have Mary around as long as the writers and Amanda want it and maybe ( not fully convinced about that yet...) she might die. Probably much later than we expect, so we are all lulled in....

**Posted by Zatoichi** February 10, 2015 10:22 am

I´m with you about the use of screenshots, Lola Red.. I wouldn´t use them to make ironclad points as they are just glimpses and can be interpreted very individually. But as the recent discussion was mainly about subjective emotional reactions to the way their relationship is told, I thought I´d still show them to illustrate the point about the abrupt change of tone in her characterization.

@Vhanja, I think she only cries with relief in the Christmas scene, I was trying to show her characterization up to that point.

@the boss: I like that theory (especially as I read the original story "His Last Bow" was about Holmes acting as if he was on the side of a spy to finally bring him down, and I think that´d be a really neat reference..).. but I think it´d be veeeery hard to pull of without becoming repetitive or unbelievable. Yet another plot-twist in the Mary-conundrum.. but then if anyone could pull it off it´s them!

**Posted by Vhanja** February 10, 2015 10:23 am

Oh, sorry, I thought that last pic was from the fireplace scene.

**Posted by Lola Red** February 10, 2015 10:56 am

mrshouse thank you for the link, but I still fail to see the disgust. Maybe I’m just blind on that eye, entirely possible.
Do I understand you correctly that you say for a new beginning you would have preferred Mary not being around to see off the man who just killed someone for her and/or John keeping his distance from his wife? For me, that would have made the whole “new beginning” very unbelievable, so I’m actually glad they included Mary in that scene, even if the transition is a bit sudden. I do agree though that the red coat makes her stand out very sharply and I am very curious if we going to see some form of explanation for that costume choice in the future.

**Posted by mrshouse** February 10, 2015 11:44 am

Yes, personally I could have done with a bit more restrain, but maybe that's just me. Would have worked better for me, I felt partly a bit smacked over the head.

**Posted by SusiGo** February 10, 2015 12:07 pm

The red coat is quite intriguing. I have been thinking about the other scenes where it appears, the most conspicuous being the bonfire scene. Any ideas about a possible connection?

**Posted by Liberty** February 10, 2015 1:08 pm

Everytime somebody mentions the red coat I can't help thinking of the brilliant film "Don't Look Now" - don't want to spoil the film for anybody, but there was somebody wearing a red coat in it who was not what they seemed, and there are some parallels. I doubt that that's what's being referenced (partly because she wasn't wearing the red coat when she shot Sherlock, but who knows? If she had been wearing the red coat when she shot him, I'd have said it was a definite reference!) but that's what always springs to mind for me when the subject comes up.

**Posted by SusiGo** February 10, 2015 1:17 pm

Good point, Liberty, this was a big shock at the end of the film! And there is also the little girl in the red coat in "Schindler's List", the only spot of colour in the whole film. The girl of course represents all the Jewish victims. But the colour is used to draw attention to her and I think this is what they are doing with Mary in the tarmac scene as well. There are several ways this could go - the colour might represent love, blood, power, sacrifice, guilt …

**Posted by SolarSystem** February 10, 2015 1:18 pm

Vhanja wrote:
It seems to be a recurring technique used in Sherlock - whenever something happens that requires a prolonged period of emotional process, it's done off-screen (John's mouring after Sherlock's jump, John deciding to forgive Mary). And that makes sense - they only have three episodes per season, you can't spend the majority on those episodes focusing on stuff like that. (That is also the reason why I believe Mary will be killed off towards the end of one episode and the next episode will be set months, if not years, after that. Again, to do the mourning off-screen).

Of course it makes sense, but it has to be done convincingly. Maybe with Mary and John the problem is that we've only known Mary for a bit less than three episodes when all of this happened off-screen. Since you mentioned Sherlock's 'death' and John's mourning: They already showed some of that at the end of TRF, they also showed us John's immediate reaction to Sherlock's fall... for me that was enough, especially in connection with John's reaction to Sherlock coming back at the beginning of TEH. And during TEH they showed us in various scenes how John slowly comes to terms with Sherlock's return, we get various moments of that - when he's shaving, when he's at the clinic.
With John and Mary we get nothing like that. We see them in 221B and then we jump to Christmas. And that's basically it. In this case everything that has to do with an emotional process is done off screen here. Everything.

**Posted by SusiGo** February 10, 2015 1:19 pm

And let us not forget that we see a still mourning John in MHR.

**Posted by SolarSystem** February 10, 2015 1:23 pm

Oh, true. Those seven minutes basically deal with nothing else.

**Posted by SusiGo** February 10, 2015 1:28 pm

And his face at the very beginning of TEH. He is there with Mary in the cemetery but he looks worse than he did in the end of TRF.

**Posted by lil** February 10, 2015 2:53 pm

Agree@Susie .
@yes the very fast jump from John at the confrontations where the looks he gives Mary and his not even wanting to acknowledge her as his wife....to the - lets move on - scene come up so quickly that even though we know time has passed...it doesn't feel like it at all.

@yes I do think the red coat was chosen deliberately along with the occasions they chose for her to wear it.Simply put maybe a little reminder that she is still dangerous.Probably just me but I find the yellow wedding backdrop...kinda funny also now...a gialllo pastiche anyone?

IDK if other people were surprised @the Mary / Magnussen reveal...I along with the 6 people I watched HLV with and several people here posted...their suspicions of her actions since the skip code moment...maybe that skewered our perception of her a little...as a lot of us were watching for the other shoe to drop.

I will be disappointed if the whole point of Mary....was to contrive the shooting Sherlock moment only..and everything about her is to be laughed off and forgotten as irrelevant for SO4.. I fear thats the way they meant it.

**Posted by SusiGo** February 10, 2015 3:31 pm

I must admit I only knew something was really off the moment Sherlock smelled the perfume in Magnussen's office. This in connection with the woman from behind threatening Magnussen.

OT: Strangely enough, my 15-year-old son said about ten or fifteen minutes into TSOT "she is pregnant". I still do not know how he deduced this. I think it was even before the wine tasting.

**Posted by Liberty** February 10, 2015 7:23 pm

This is kind of off at a tangent, sorry, but one thing I'd have liked more of is Sherlock's deductive process about Mary - as we got with his first deductions about John. Maybe it would have seemed too light-hearted, but I'd have loved one of those fast-talking speeches he does. We get a little bit of it at the showdown at 221B when he talks about the shooting, but it's not very explicit (for instance, when I first watched it, I thought Magnussen could have phoned the ambulance, and it was only later that I realised that Mary had knocked him out). Maybe they want to make the audience work.

But it's not just the shooting. I'd like to hear how Sherlock came to his conclusions about Mary - not just in HLV, but in TEH (the words that he sees around her). What told him that she was a liar, but not that she had a completely false identity? How did he know about the scar, etc? I hope we see him explaining in the next episode(s).

**Posted by Schmiezi** February 10, 2015 8:35 pm

@swanpride:
I am trying to relate your post to the fact that the colour of Mary's coat does not fit in at the tarmac. Actually, I like the idea that she is fully back into her "role" (as you called it) and now doesn't fit in. But that is surely not the interpretation you had in mind when posting.

**Posted by tonnaree** February 11, 2015 12:47 am

SusiGo wrote:
Lola: I very much agree with you that there is simply something missing that could explain how John came to forgive Mary. Or maybe we will get further information? What made me think twice was the link I posted in the special thread.

http://www.denofgeek.us/tv/sherlock/241667/111-things-you-might-not-know-about-sherlock-season-3

No. 69 is quite interesting in this respect. I put a further link in the special thread because of spoilers so I am not going to post it here. But it is fact that they shot far more material for HLV than they could use. I mean, 5.5 hours in the first cut instead 1.5 make an enormous difference. The deleted Magnussen scene is only a few minutes long. Think of what they have and chose not to include in HLV. Which means the material is there and can used for any future episode.

I can't stop thinking about this. I would trade a kidney and my first born child for a look at that footage.

**Posted by SusiGo** February 11, 2015 7:55 am

Who knows, maybe they also have additional information about the relationship (or non-relationship) between Mary and Mycroft in there, which for me is one of the biggest mysteries of series 3.

I am quite convinced that there is something going on we have not seen so far. I know we have been over this more than once but throughout series 3 we get next to no contact between those two. However, in TEH we learn at the beginning that Mycroft has kept observing John and knows about his relationship with Mary. After that - nothing until the tarmac scene where Mary and Mycroft do not interact in any way. There are several ways this could go:

- Mycroft does not know anything about Mary's past which is highly incredible and out of character.

- Mycroft is in some way connected to Mary but does not let it show. He could even have planted her next to John to protect him, a theory I do not like but which is not completely incredible. Of course it would mean that he severely miscalculated as John gets married to her and she later shoots Sherlock.

- Mycroft knows about her being a potential danger but his hands are tied in some way.

Just some thoughts. I am sure there is more.

Last edited by SusiGo (February 11, 2015 7:57 am)

**Posted by Lola Red** February 11, 2015 11:17 am

I was just re-watching HLV and I could not shake the feeling that Mycroft knew a lot more about what was going on than he showed (Mycroft not knowing Sherlock is taking drugs again, even as it is about to hit the papers? Mycroft not knowing about several of Sherlock’s bolt holes? Seems unlikely to me.). CAM’s commend that Mycroft has been waiting for an opportunity to get to him had me thinking. Lady Smallwood turns out to work with Mycroft, she is also the one putting Sherlock on CAM in the first place. Mycroft does let his laptop (on which the security of the free world depends) lying around where Sherlock has easy access to it (and apparently Sherlock knows the password). Finally, his comment that maybe “there was something in the punch”. Was Mycroft in on it? Did he manipulate his brother to go after CAM (also using reversed psychology)? Mycroft seems to do very thorough background checks on people close to Sherlock (e.g. John in ASIP). If Mycroft knew about Mary’s past, he would also know that he could not act against Magnussen. Mary is Mycroft’s pressure-point-per-proxy. Mycroft is rational enough to know that his hands are bound, so he subtly guides Sherlock’s actions instead. It would work with either theory about Sherlock (and John) truly forgiving Mary. Sherlock may have acted out of love for John and Mary or maybe he had figured out the chain of pressure points and knew he had to keep Mary safe in order to keep Mycroft from “falling”.