Possible Sherlock & Co spoilers
I'm tired and I'm rambling but I'm still not really getting Moriarty in this, I'm not getting what Moriarty's angle even is. It doesn't feel really like he's just obsessed with getting Sherlock to notice him because he's practically romantically infatuated with him which is the way so many people seem to assume he is canonically, and it is good that they don't seem to be doing that. But it's starting to feel like he is focusing on them (Sherlock & co) too much still and it's just not really making any sense to me.
I liked the idea of him toying with them for his own amusement for all that time but I think it's become detrimental to his character now, this focus he has on them, because he keeps drawing attention to himself and Moran, then he's suffering the consequences for that (losing the bank, losing the trafficking victims/access to the tunnels, getting Moran arrested, etc etc) and then he seems to be annoyed about that. Like they lost the bank and Moran got arrested essentially because they drew attention to that plot and to him. It mostly wasn't actually Sherlock being brilliant and solving the case, much of it was just because Moran used a shitty pseudonym that was barely different to his real name and he was going round telling people his real name and he essentially even told them about part of the scheme while pretending to be a possible client. But everything Moran is doing has got to be with Moriarty's knowledge, this isn't just Moran being stupid, it's Moriarty too.
The Moriarty concealing his own identity part is good but why is Moran being made to be so obvious in this and Moriarty is apparently fine with this? Moran too should be largely above suspicion, effectively leading a double life where barely anybody realises he's a criminal also but instead he's just openly committing these major crimes. And why is Moriarty drawing attention to his crimes like this, like having Moran feed information to them, when it's just making Sherlock more focused on him yet he doesn't actually seem to want Sherlock focused on him? Also, remember the professor at the door who they never let in? We never did get an explanation for that, so presumably that was Moriarty and he was pretending to be a client back then. Was he going to draw attention to one of his crimes back then too?
And Moriarty does retaliate to this attention being put on him or on Moran, which implies he doesn't want the attention, but he's the one who started it off so...??? And he goes to all that effort of getting Moran released, only to put him in danger of being arrested for John's attempted murder a very short time later (something which he has to know is being recorded).
And then Moran not actually killing John feels like a fuck up not just on Moran's part but on Moriarty's too, because the way Moran talked, he was trying to kill John not just injure him. This wasn't just him injuring John to warn Sherlock off. He said, "I would have rather liked being the last man you ever see". He's not referring to himself not being the last man John sees because he's not actually going to kill him, he's referring to the tunnel being too dark to see him. Moran trying to kill John doesn't feel like it's just a 'warning shot' to scare Sherlock off, yet now we have Moriarty saying "Moran sends his love" to mock them, but it also makes it sound like he wasn't intending to actually kill John. Even though it seems pretty certain he was? It doesn't feel consistent. Just hurting John but in a way that was clearly intended not to be fatal maybe would make sense to me but not any of this. And Moriarty threatening to harm John in itself feels believable but in this firstly he made the vague threat to John (on John's phone), not to Sherlock. And now it feels like Moriarty's gone to an extreme here way too early by targeting John like that. If he wanted Sherlock to back off wouldn't he have only injured John in a relatively minor way just to prove what he's capable of? Or else he would have targeted someone else first (like Moriarty in AGoS kills Adler before he threatens Watson, and Adler just doesn't seem to mean as much to Holmes as Watson does). Surely trying to murder John or injuring him this badly is pretty obviously going to make Sherlock more focused on hunting him down, and if he'd actually killed John then Sherlock would surely have very little left to lose (because there still hasn't been any real indication in this there's someone else who matters even more to Sherlock. He loves Mariana but not more than John. And we still haven't had any indication he's that close to Mycroft for instance) and if Sherlock feels like he's got little left to lose won't he be even more ruthless in hunting both Moran and Moriarty?
And are we actually going to get more evidence of Moriarty's real criminality here apart from the bank thing, which was good yes but it's only one big criminal scheme. Sure there was Milverton's murder, Eccles' death, but most of the other stuff they've referenced, beating up a guy, trafficking a few women (though apparently doing so fairly incompetently. Sure yes using underground tunnels is a neat touch and beautifully symbolic but one of the women escaped, people up on the surface can hear the noises below; it's horrible stuff but it's nothing special in terms of criminal behaviour, there are probably thousands and thousands of criminals in the world doing stuff like that and doing it more competently than they are), these crimes are nothing major really. They're small scale things or fairly mediocre crimes really. Are we actually going to see anything else that proves Moriarty is truly a dangerous master criminal or are they still just going to rely on feelings of revulsion over the human trafficking thing and now in particular the outrage over him having shot widely beloved 'Jonk' Watson to make us view him as this really dangerous enemy and 'nemesis' figure?
And Sherlock too, he seemed to be really interested in 'the spider' before, with trying to investigate him, then they think Moran is 'the spider', he gets arrested and nothing happens. I'd get it maybe if they had wanted to talk to him and were prevented from doing so (not allowed by the police or whoever or he refused to talk) or they had actually talked to him and couldn't record that or the recording got wiped by Moriarty but literally nothing seemed to happen at all. They helped arrest him and then the only time anyone seemed to show any curiosity about him after that was when John talked about going to his trial (when he still seemed to know nothing much about the trial or Moran) but didn't actually sound that interested in it even then (and they clearly didn't know who the star witness in the trial was cos they could have helped that family way sooner if they had known). And now Sherlock only does seem that interested again in hunting 'the spider' or Napoleon because Napoleon's "lieutenant" almost killed John. It's all way too personal and also Moriarty's characterisation does feel kind of... all over the place. He wants attention from Sherlock but no he wants Sherlock to back off, he desperately wants Moran back with him but he'll risk Moran being arrested again like a week later basically just over a petty grudge.
And now with John badly hurt Sherlock is probably going to be hunting 'Napoleon' (and Moran) for almost entirely personal reasons. Not because Moriarty is some kind of master criminal, not because Moran is 'the second most dangerous man in London', just because, essentially, 'Napoleon' via Moran tried to kill John and Sherlock loves John so much and he's pissed off about this. I'm not saying John isn't important or that there was never any element of Holmes trying to protect Watson or fearing for his safety in the canon but it doesn't really feel like brilliant detective versus genius criminal mastermind behaviour if basically the biggest 'evil' thing Moriarty has done now is just he harmed John and that's the only thing that truly sets Sherlock off in pursuit of him.
