:/

Closest match: Psylliodes chrysocephala genome assembly, chromosome: 4 Common name: Cabbage Stem Flea Beetle

Oh, boy, okay.

Listen you can like Mary all you want – I loved her too before the fucked up her entire story arc – but her entire arc was building up to be a villain, and a badass one that was going to go down with a fight. 

I’m REALLY not trying to be pedantic here, Nonny, but asks like this force me to pull out receipts, all of which I’m sure you’re not going to read, because who likes to be proved wrong, but I digress. I always end up sounding more harsh than I am when all I want to do is educate you on my perspective and what the narrative is teaching us.

THESE ARE THE FACTS (Mary in S4)

Mary is a Femme Fatale

Mary’s Possessiveness

The Problem with John x Mary

Mary’s Brand of Abuse

Mary Made Herself Unpredictable

Mary and the Liar Deduction

Sherlock at the Window

Mary is Moran

Mary Meant to Kill Sherlock

She Went to Finish the Job

“I Swear I’ll Kill You”

Sherlock Died!

Why Did She Kill Him if She Meant to Keep Him Alive?

Mary Chose the Chest Over the Head to Delay John 

Law Student: Magistrate Says She Killed Him

She Shot Him in the Chest

Funny How Mary Says “kill” instead of “shoot”…

There’s Something About Mary…

Sherlock Did Not Forgive Mary

Sherlock Doesn’t Like Mary 

Sherlock is Scared of Mary

No Really, He’s Terrified of Her

John the Dummy

What if Mary had Shot John?

Mary Surely Can Tell When John is Lying (Mary Underestimates John)?

John Did Not Forgive Mary

“I Choose the Baby’s Name”

Was John Mary’s Mission? 

Does Mary Love John?

TAB

Mary Humiliates the Boys in TAB

The Opening Credits Literally Tell Us What Mary Is

The Titles get Larger as John Steps on Them

John to Mary: Shut Up!

Blog Entry in TEH

Horns of Infidelity

Why Is She So Eager for Sherlock and John to Go On a Case?

All About David

AGRA

Mary Since TGG? 

Is She the Sniper in TBB?

A Red Target

Was it Mary in MHR? 

Is Mary the Russian Assassin in TRF? 

Mary and Lady Smallwood: Girl Power?

Was Magnussen a Freelance job for Mary?

Is there a Link Between Her Flashdrive and the one in TGG? 

Mary’s Passport

Mary’s Timeline

Ammo vs Amo

THAT’S Why she’s a villain. When a character kills the title character of a show, they are coded as the bad guy unless they do a redemption arc that actually is a redemption.

Mary had NO redemption arc AT ALL. Even in S4, Mary is STILL manipulating and emotionally abusing Sherlock and John against each other with her fucking creepy-assed DVDs and her belittling of John in T6T. She still runs off to go do her little assassin things and still lied and manipulated everyone. And I know the argument is going to come up, but Mary’s gunshot was NOT a redemption. A redemption arc has the ex-villain doing a good deed and being genuinely sorry for their past actions. Not ONCE Mary has ever apologized for any of the shit she put everyone through. All of it was a plan, especially if she had creepy DVDs made FAIRLY RECENTLY (you can tell because of the hair style) to send out to people. Also:

YOU ARE EVIL IF YOU ACTIVELY OR POSTHUMOUSLY TELL SOMEONE TO GO KILL THEMSELVES.

That and Mary’s entire death scene was RIDICULOUS and completely contradicted EVERY rule that was established in this universe only 2 episodes prior on how characters die.

Nonny, Mary’s character arc is one I have been passionate about for many years, even before I was a Johnlocker, because her character was fascinating to me, and helped me understand the psychology and make sense of events that were happening in my life at the time. Right up until TAB, Mary was being coded as the next Moriarty. For some reason or another, Mofftiss decided to turn her into an “assassin with an heart of gold” and failed spectacularly.

If Mary truly was good, she WOULD HAVE TOLD JOHN FROM THE BEGINNING WHO SHE WAS, OR AT LEAST TOLD SHERLOCK SHE NEEDED HELP. HLV would have not played out as it did. Instead deciding that killing Sherlock was her only option so that she could continue to manipulate John, since she knew he was most malleable when he was grieving Sherlock.

You can read Mary’s character however you want, I could care less… well okay apparently I do because of this reply… But please, seriously consider that what became of her character really made no goddamned sense to the narrative arc the built for her and quite frankly really lazy writing. Just because she is a woman, doesn’t mean that she is nice and sweet and not abusive. Excusing her of her brand of emotional abuse and manipulation is really sexist.

Mary is absolutely a villain and what makes the not-redemption suicide even more ridiculous is how she died in the exact same way that Mind-Palace Molly had said was impossible.  It is also interesting on how the whole interactive case on “twitter live” with BBC featured a villain that -killed themselves- so as to keep two people apart so… take that as you will.  The twitter live event was written by another person but it was sanctioned by BBC, was done after S4 was made and ready to air (so the contents were known).  The way it reflects Mary having died by leaping in front of the bullet (and really, how did she have enough time to do that?) and then how she left CDs to continue to keep a wedge between the characters deserves to be noted.  

I, too, loved Mary as a barely-covert villain up until S4, because I was excited to see our heros confronting her. But (even though I think everything in S4 is not to be taken at face value, and that there’s so much going on that we’ve been banned from witnessing) seeing Sherlock and John STILL seemingly oblivious to her true manipulative and venomous nature became SO frustrating for me, I started hating her. Hell, her sly maliciousness makes Moriarty look like a Saint. Every single interaction she’s had with the boys from day one was poisonous. She managed to have them both under her control even after her death, while remaining innocent in the eyes of everyone.

Re: @tali-zora‘s comment on Moran. I just have to add that there’s a reason why the “Moran” we saw on-screen didn’t utter a word. They muted that man, because the REAL Moran was already being adapted in the show. ;)

So yes, the creators crafted Mary’s character as a true Wicked Bitch –and I’m glad it’s canon that she’s described as such. But it’s not just Mary herself; it’s what she now represents thanks to that horrible narration at the end of TFP, when she has the audacity to turn to the audience trying to manipulate us as well. She breaks the fourth wall not just to ask us to erase Sherlock’s and John’s character development altogether and to stay blind to their true identities, but she wants us to believe that ‘who WE really are doesn’t matter’. They turned this on us. We are being confronted with the same ultimate evil our heros must defeat in order to finally be together within the story.

Mary’s become the personification of that “invisible enemy that hovers at OUR elbow on a daily basis, undetected and unstoppable”. She’s a symbol of the threat that “passes unnoticed” (yes, like the first villain of this show, the cabbie), yet is responsible for murdering innocent people. She’s the silent killer audiences must be aware of in order to overpower –because “information is the power to change”. She’s the figurative drug nobody asked to be injected with; heteronormativity, queer erasure, and all of the internalized oppressive ideals that this show encourages us to struggle against. She represents everything that kept Sir Doyle’s hand from making his love story explicitly gay in the first place, and the 130 years of adaptations that still had to keep it hidden under subtext as well.

At least that’s how I see it. To me, Mary’s villainy is at the heart of the subversive nature of BBC Sherlock. It’s no wonder we hate her so much. Everyone should. That’s the point of this.

and then. My partner started it. And the SAME THING happened to him.

The Fall (2006) dir. Tarsem Singh