#asib

Right at the beginning of ASIB, we learn that Moriarty decided to send Irene into Sherlock’s and John’s lives. At the pool, Moriarty receives a phone call from someone who indicates that they have something of value, and he then decides to call off the snipers, letting John and Sherlock go. After Moriarty leaves, Sherlock says to John that someone changed Moriarty’s mind about killing them that day, “but the question is, who?” The screen then immediately switches to a shot of Irene hanging up her phone, directly answering that question for the audience.

From what we learn later on, it seems that Irene probably called Moriarty to tell him that she had the Bond Air code but didn’t know what to do with it. She also didn’t really understand what it was at the time, since she didn’t realize it referred to a flight—she and Moriarty will need Sherlock to work that out for them later on. When she called Moriarty, then, Irene just knew that she had something important from the Ministry of Defense, because her client had told her that it would “save the world.” Moriarty promised to help her, so Irene decided to work with him and then immediately secured her photos of the princess as “protection.”

Moriarty decided to send Irene into Sherlock’s and John’s lives for the specific purpose of causing problems in their relationship, and he came up with this plan as soon as Irene called him at the pool—that’s why he let Sherlock and John go. Right before Irene called, Moriarty had just received direct proof of how much Sherlock loves John: he saw that Sherlock made no move to leave when John gave him the chance to do so, and then that Sherlock was prepared to die with John rather than leave him behind. So when Irene called to say that she had something of value, Moriarty probably put the pieces together right then and realized that he could use Irene to hurt Sherlock by disrupting his relationship with John.

Remember, this is what Moriarty literally just threatened to do. He also just told Sherlock that he didn’t want to rush things and wanted to have the chance to burn Sherlock’s heart out before he killed him. So rather than letting Sherlock kill them all right then by shooting the Semtex, having the opportunity to use Irene to disrupt Sherlock and John’s relationship is the “better offer” that Moriarty received over the phone.

The timeline of Sherlock is a mess, but we do know that John and Sherlock met for the first time on January 29 and that the events of TBB and TGG took place in a compressed span of time in late March and early April. After the resolution of the pool scene, ASIB shows us a montage of scenes that cover the rest of the spring and summer of that year, before Sherlock and John’s first encounter with Irene in September (going by the dates on John’s blog). Then we see the hiker case and Sherlock and John’s visit to Buckingham Palace right before they meet Irene.

There is something almost indescribably special about this period of Sherlock and John’s relationship. Sherlock and John have escaped Moriarty after agreeing to die together, and this sparks a definite change in their friendship from what we saw in S1 as their friendship solidifies into one of complete trust and admiration. Sherlock and John now seem to treat each other as true equals, and they’re comfortable around each other in a way that we didn’t see in S1. They’re solving case after case together as a seamless team, and they’re casually hanging out together in 221B like the best friends that they now undoubtedly are. They bicker when they’re out on cases like they’re a couple, but it’s light-hearted banter, not the uncomfortable tension that we often saw between them on the cases in TBB and TGG. John also doesn’t really get angry at Sherlock in ASIB the way he sometimes did in S1. Now, it’s clear that Sherlock and John are at ease around each other and are constantly making each other smile and laugh. They have great chemistry, like a return to what we saw during the chase scene in ASIP when they were first starting to feel drawn to each other. It’s beautiful. I would have loved to have seen more of this throughout the show.

The moment when Sherlock steals the ashtray from Buckingham Palace, just because John made a joke about stealing an ashtray and so Sherlock knew it would make John laugh…it’s just perfect. Perfect.

(gif from here)

In the early parts of this episode, we also see Sherlock casually eating around John in the flat, something that we’ve rarely seen him do before. Sherlock is eating a snack in one of the scenes from the spring-summer montage, when he complains about John’s blog post title “The Speckled Blonde.” Then in the scene between him, John, Mycroft, and Mrs. Hudson the morning after Sherlock and John first meet Irene, Sherlock has a half-eaten plate of food in front of him as he enjoys a leisurely breakfast with John and reads his newspaper.

(screencaps from here)

@asherlockstudy has a great meta about the meaning of food in Sherlock. She explains that food represents emotional intimacy, not sex. As she points out, ASIB is probably the episode in S1-S3 where we see Sherlock eating on-screen the most. He also seems to have put on a bit of weight since S1, which suggests that he’s eating more healthily and regularly than he was before. (I mean, it could be a coincidence if Benedict Cumberbatch gained a bit of weight for unrelated reasons, but reading it this way is more fun.) I really love asherlockstudy’s analysis of this. She explains that Sherlock’s interest in food in ASIB shows that he’s enjoying his newfound domesticity with John and feels emotionally intimate and comfortable with John in a way that we haven’t seen before in the show. Recall that in TGG, Sherlock told Molly that “domestic bliss” with her new boyfriend seemed to suit her because she’d gained a bit of weight. Here we see that Sherlock’s gained a bit of weight, too, so we can take it as evidence that he’s enjoying domestic bliss with John.

Overall, Sherlock is in a fairly good place during these months between the pool and Irene. Thanks to John’s blog, he has a steady stream of cases coming in and gets to pick the ones that he finds most interesting. His choices are so good that he doesn’t feel the need to leave the flat for anything less than a seven. He’s not desperate for cases and losing his mind over it, he’s eating like a normal human being, and he’s hanging out with John all the time. Bliss indeed.

As @thegildedbee pointed out to me, Sherlock and John’s improved caseload also shows that John is truly pulling his weight as a part of their team. John’s blog is what launches Sherlock’s consulting detective career to new heights, so John is contributing in a very real and important way even beyond what he does on the cases themselves. This offers more evidence of just how well Sherlock and John are now capable of working together as a team. Sherlock still directs their work on cases, but they’re operating on a more equal level as far as casework goes than they were before and they’ve successfully smoothed over the rough patches that they experienced in TBB and TGG.

It’s also notable that Sherlock and John’s relationship blossoms like this after John breaks up with Sarah. From John’s blog, we learn that sometime in April—so in the first month after the pool—John and Sarah went on vacation to New Zealand together and then broke up shortly afterwards. @loudest-subtext-in-tv has argued that the subtext of the hiker case indicates that John and Sarah broke up because John was pining after Sherlock…and accidentally said Sherlock’s name during sex. Yikes!  

Idk, that might be stretching things a bit too far, but it’s certainly a fun thought. In any event, it seems clear to me that after the pool, John had to face his feelings for Sherlock and realized that he had fallen in love with him. Because throughout ASIB, we get more evidence than ever before that John has fallen in love with Sherlock in earnest.

John writes about his breakup with Sarah on his blog on May 1 and even tells the whole world “Not sure my life with Sherlock is compatible with long-term relationships.” John now understands that for him, Sherlock will always come first. Sherlock sees this post and buys John beer as a nice little gesture to try to make him feel better about his breakup. And it’s then, after John has broken up with his girlfriend and recognized that he’s always going to put Sherlock first, that Sherlock and John’s relationship really takes off. The time stamps on John’s blog indicate that all the scenes from the opening montage of ASIB took place after John posted this.

John still tries to date women in the months that follow. We hear about two unnamed women (“the one with the spots” and “the one with the nose”), and then there’s Jeanette. But all of these relationships are fleeting. It’s clear that after Sarah, John decided to prioritize his life with Sherlock over his attempts to date other people because he knew that he cared more about Sherlock than any of these women. John is probably trying to date women in a half-hearted attempt to try to see if he can stop pining after Sherlock. He might also be feeling uncomfortable about the same-sex nature of his love for Sherlock and trying to hide from that, and perhaps he’s seeking a sexual outlet. But John really isn’t trying that hard. From his breakup with Jeanette at Christmas, we learn that John couldn’t even keep his five-minute girlfriends straight in his own head, and he was putting so little effort into his relationships that he was brought up short when Jeanette said “you’re a great boyfriend.” Even Jeanette can tell that John is really in love with Sherlock. So, John is dating these women only because he feels he has no chance with Sherlock, but Sherlock is always where his heart is.

Sometimes I wonder if in the months between the pool and Irene, Sherlock might have thought that this was the closest he could get to his ideal relationship with John as long as Moriarty’s threat was still hanging over them. John is still trying to date other people and he and Sherlock don’t share physical affection, but otherwise they’re almost able to act like a couple. Sherlock might have really treasured this.

Still, we also have evidence that Sherlock is pining for John during these months and feels frustrated that he can’t try to take their relationship further, especially now that John’s actions at the pool have given him a hint that John might care about him very deeply, too.

First, the motorist/hiker case shows that Sherlock imagines John is at home with him in 221B even when he isn’t. When the motorist comes in as a potential client, we get a shot of him sitting in the client chair while Sherlock stands in front of him and commands him to tell “us” his story. Over the client’s left shoulder, out of focus, we can see John sitting on the couch in the background:

(screencap from here)

But John isn’t actually there. In the next scene, we learn that John was in Dublin the day before, and it seems like he wasn’t back that morning for when the motorist showed up at the flat. Also, in all of the previous scenes where Sherlock and John interviewed potential clients together, John always sat in his red armchair in front of the clients, not on the sofa behind them, so his position in this scene gives us another hint that he isn’t actually there. Sherlock misses John so much when he’s gone and is so used to John being around that he imagines John is still there with him in 221B even when he’s not. (I first noticed this in ASIB because of this post by @asherlockstudy here, which is also where I got the screencap.) Sherlock is majorly attached.

(A very small note—John appears to be wearing what LSIT calls his “I’m-in-love-with-Sherlock-and-feel-hopeless-about-it cardigan,” which I’ll talk about more later. But just for now, this could be a small clue meant to reflect Sherlock’s desire for John to love him back—or a sign that John has been wearing it a lot recently.)

TSOT also contains a montage of flashback scenes that fit perfectly within these spring and summer months and that give us more information about Sherlock’s feelings during this period.

First, the flashback scenes from TSOT show Sherlock obsessing over John’s middle name. It really bothers him that he can’t figure out what it is, so much so that he actually steals John’s birth certificate to discover it. The opening montage in ASIB also indicates that Sherlock has been paying obsessively close attention to John’s blog (this, after the blog really annoyed him in TGG). Put those two together, and we know that at this point in the narrative, Sherlock has become obsessed with John and wants to learn everything about him that he possibly can.

The flashback scenes from TSOT also reveal that Sherlock started smoking again sometime after the pool, since we know that Sherlock was still on nicotine patches in TGG. LSIT has a meta that explains how Sherlock always takes up smoking when he’s pining for John especially intensely. In the months after the pool, then, Sherlock must be trying to figure out what it meant that John was willing to die for him. For Sherlock, offering to die with John at the pool was an expression of love, but Sherlock might doubt that it meant the same thing for John. After all, John was in the army, so perhaps Sherlock wonders if John’s willingness to die at the pool was a noble act of self-sacrifice similar to one that John might have been prepared to make in Afghanistan. If Sherlock isn’t sure, then his uncertainty must be driving him crazy, and he must be feeling immensely frustrated that he can’t just ask John and tell him how he feels. So he turns to cigarettes as a coping mechanism—and as we’ll see, when things get much worse for Sherlock in S3, he’ll turn to harder substances.

I have two more quick things to note about the opening montage and the months between the pool scene and the beginning of the case with Irene.

First, “The Speckled Blonde” case from John’s blog provides us with a bit of information about John’s past from before the start of the show. LSIT has a meta about this case here, which I recommend reading. In “The Speckled Blonde,” a homophobic stepfather attempts to poison and kill his two stepdaughters, Julia Stoner and Helen Stoner, because they’re both queer. The stepfather succeeds in murdering Julia, but Helen survives. Julia is a mirror for John and Helen is a mirror for Harry. So, this case tells us that John and Harry grew up with a homophobic father. Their father’s disapproval of queerness hurt both of them when they were younger, but John was hurt worse than Harry, because Julia died but Helen survived. Harry came out much earlier in life and has been able to pursue same-sex relationships, but John has stayed in the closet. The subtext in this case thus helps explain why John doesn’t have a history of male partners and why people who knew him before Sherlock always thought he was straight. Basically, John was held back more than Harry was. This case might also suggest that John continued to struggle with his sexuality longer than Harry did, but there are some details hinting that John will eventually stop caring what his father thinks/thought and will overcome that negative influence.

Second, the comic book case drops a hint that the subtext woven in throughout Sherlock is going to start “coming true,” and that conspiracy theories (read: TJLC) are sometimes real. In the episodes to follow, the writers will drop similar hints again and again.

All of that brings us up to speed on what’s been going on with Sherlock and John before Mycroft gives them the Irene Adler case in September.

In September, Sherlock and John go to Buckingham Palace and giggle together adorably. John makes a joke about stealing an ashtray, so Sherlock subtly steals one so that he can show it to John later to make him laugh again.

Mycroft shows up and tries to enlist Sherlock and John’s help with the Irene Adler case. There are a few fun things about this scene. First, we get a neat little hint that Mycroft has decided that he trusts John—specifically, that he trusts him with Sherlock.

Mycroft: This is a matter of the highest security, and therefore of trust. John: You don’t trust your own Secret Service? Mycroft: Naturally not. They all spy on people for money.

John gives Mycroft a slight smile at that, because he knows exactly what Mycroft has really just said. As we and John both know, Mycroft tried to get John to spy on Sherlock for money in ASIP, and John passed the test by refusing. So Mycroft knows that he can trust John around Sherlock. Keep this in mind, because it’s going to come up again at the end of the episode. (Here’s the post that first made me realize this. Thanks to @bbcsherlockgifs for that!)

Mycroft starts telling Sherlock and John about Irene’s photographs of the princess, and when Mycroft says that the photographs are of a “young female person,” John immediately looks deeply uncomfortable, but Sherlock smiles. A moment later, Sherlock says, “John, you might want to put that cup back in your saucer now.” (Here’s a gif of that second moment.)

John is immediately alarmed that they’ve started talking about lesbian porn, and to me, John’s discomfort in this scene reads like fear of being caught out. John is nervous about discussing homosexuality because it’s too close to home and he’s closeted. Sherlock, on the other hand, is totally cool with it and smiles cheekily because he loves the idea of a lesbian getting one over on the monarchy. When he tells John to put his cup back in his saucer, Sherlock is essentially telling John to get over himself and get with the program.

Sherlock and John leave Buckingham Palace, go back to Baker Street, and then head over to Belgravia to see Irene. Before going to Irene’s house, though, they take the opportunity to unnecessarily wrestle with each other in a side alleyway because they are VERY GAY.

Then, Sherlock and John’s first meeting with Irene at her house in Belgravia is…well, it’s also pretty gay. For a lot of reasons.

Sherlock observes Irene closely enough to figure out her measurements, but he doesn’t show any sexual interest in her. He seems genuinely annoyed when Irene stands over him nude, and especially when John walks in. Actually, when John walks in, Sherlock looks away from Irene and his mouth falls open in an absolutely appalled expression that is the exact same look he wore when Moriarty left his phone number for him under the petri dish right in front of Molly in TGG! In both of these situations, Sherlock is so annoyed at all these people trying to seduce him and is just so over it. He has no interest in them and wishes they would leave him alone.

Awesome gifs of the moment in TGG from @darlingbenny here, and of the moment in ASIB from @captainsjm here!

Although Sherlock is annoyed by Irene’s nudity, it doesn’t throw him off because he finds her attractive and therefore finds her nudity distracting. Instead, it bothers him because it prevents him from being able to deduce anything about her. Sherlock stares at Irene intently, but instead of the usual deductions that we’re shown when Sherlock does this, we just see question marks. Sherlock even looks over at John to confirm that he can still deduce things about John. But when he looks back at Irene, he comes up blank again, and that’s when he starts to frown and look troubled.

asherlockstudy has a meta that breaks down some of the dialogue in this scene. I’ll recap what I see as the most important points.

Irene: And somebody loves you. If I had to punch that face, I’d avoid your nose and teeth, too.

The camera immediately switches to John, who looks sideways at Sherlock uncomfortably, gives an extremely forced laugh, and tries to deflect. This show is so not subtle sometimes. 

John: Could you put something on you, please? Anything at all. A napkin?

As soon as John says this, Sherlock rushes to give Irene his coat. Obviously, Sherlock would feel more comfortable if John did not stare at a nude Irene Adler.

Sherlock: I don’t think John knows where to look.

Read: “He’s not interested. Stop trying to flirt with him.” Sherlock is jealous and doesn’t like Irene flirting with John. And hey, as an aside, remember a few scenes ago when Sherlock was near-naked in Buckingham Palace and John very conspicuously leaned over to try to stare at his crotch? John knows where he wants to look when it comes to Sherlock, definitely.

Irene: No, I think he knows exactly where. I’m not sure about you. (Read: “No, I think he’s into women. Maybe you aren’t, though.”) Sherlock: (irritated) If I wanted to look at naked women, I’d borrow John’s laptop. (Read: “I’m not into women. Leave me alone.”) John: (suspicious) You do borrow my laptop. Sherlock: (still irritated) I confiscate it. (“To prevent you from looking at naked women!”) Irene: (“Holy shit, are they seriously having a gay quarrel right in front of me right now? Damn it, showing up nude usually works.”) Oh, never mind.

Irene then quickly changes the subject. Sherlock and John are so focused on each other that they’re getting flustered by each other and not by her as she intended, so she has to try to come up with a way to steer the conversation around so that she can gain the upper hand.

After his initial annoyance, Sherlock remains calm and cool throughout this exchange. He’s confused by Irene because he can’t deduce anything about her, but he’s not impressed by her.

The only moment when Sherlock trips up comes as soon as John starts trying to hit on Irene. Irene and John are sitting next to each other on the couch when Irene says this:

Irene: (looking at John) I like detective stories—and detectives. Brainy’s the new sexy.

John is the one who writes up his and Sherlock’s “detective stories” on the blog, and John might think that Irene knows this, since Lestrade told us in the opening montage that John’s blog recently went viral. So John gives Irene an extremely suggestive smile, and Sherlock immediately panics and tries to draw John’s and Irene’s attention back to him instead. Sherlock garbles something unintelligible, then takes a breath and answers Irene’s earlier question about the hiker case. So although Sherlock was surprised by Irene’s nudity when she entered the room, it didn’t cause him to lose his composure—he only lost his cool when he saw John try to hit on her.

Sherlock gives John their prearranged signal to set off the fire alarm, and they look at each other like this. Before the mutual pining really kicks in in earnest, we sure are getting a lot of mutual flirting!

After John leaves the room to set off the fire alarm, Sherlock starts to explain the hiker case to Irene, and he’s fairly harsh and belittling towards her. There’s disgust in his voice when he says “you cater to the whims of the pathetic and take your clothes off to make an impression. Stop boring me and think.” Again, he isn’t impressed by her and doesn’t have a lot of respect for her based on what he knows about her so far.

Altogether, this scene emphasizes a few key things: (1) Sherlock once again clearly demonstrates that he’s not into women in general, (2) Sherlock shows that he’s jealous of the women whom John expresses interest in and that he’ll sometimes try to stop John from flirting with them, (3) Sherlock has absolutely no romantic or sexual interest in Irene specifically, and (4) within only a few minutes of being in a room with them, Irene can already see that Sherlock and John are hella gay for each other, even if she thinks that John is into women, too.

The rest of the scenes at Irene’s house bear all of this out. The American CIA agents arrive and try to get Sherlock to open Irene’s safe. Sherlock insists that he doesn’t know the code, but the agents don’t believe him. Sherlock continues to insist that he doesn’t know it until they threaten to shoot John. Just like in the pool scene, we can see and hear Sherlock’s demeanor change as soon as John is threatened and he realizes that he has to do something to save him.

Sherlock doesn’t seem to have worked out the code before the Americans threaten John—it’s only when the gun is literally pressed into the back of John’s head that he resolves to do some quick thinking and finally figures it out. I don’t think Sherlock had even processed what Irene’s measurements were beforehand, he’d just looked at her closely enough that he was able to figure them out from memory when pressed to do so. Irene told Sherlock that she had already given him the code; Sherlock knew that the code was a sequence of numbers that started with a 3 and that there was a very limited amount of information that Irene could have possibly given him, since she deliberately showed up nude to avoid giving him information. So, based on that, Sherlock thinks about what he does know about her and figures it out. But we can actually see Sherlock pause and bite his lip as he thinks about it. He wasn’t thinking about Irene’s measurements and wasn’t interested in them before he had to be.

It makes total sense to me that when Sherlock was trying to deduce Irene earlier, he observed her closely enough to be able to get a sense of what her measurements were even though he wasn’t interested in her sexually. After all, we know that Sherlock can assess fluctuations in people’s weights down to a few pounds, and he’s quite capable of viewing human bodies dispassionately for his work.

After they’ve dealt with the agents, Sherlock takes Irene’s camera phone and goes upstairs to check if there are any more Americans up there. Irene says to John “There’s a back door, better check it, Dr. Watson” because bottom!lock, and also to get John out of the way. Then Irene stabs Sherlock in the shoulder with a syringe and drugs him with something disabling so that she can take the phone back. Sherlock hits the floor, totally taken out. By the time John returns to the room, Irene has managed to take the phone back from Sherlock, and Sherlock is struggling to stay conscious. Then Irene asks Sherlock—rather maliciously—if she should tell John what the code to the safe was. From Sherlock’s expression, we can see that he does not want her to tell John. He doesn’t want John to think that he was checking out Irene! But of course, because Irene is a very mean person, she tells John anyway before escaping out of the window.

Later that evening, Irene breaks into 221B and looms over Sherlock threateningly after returning his coat. When Sherlock wakes up and realizes that this wasn’t a hallucination, he panics and immediately calls out for John. Let’s pause for a moment to think about this. In that moment, Sherlock had just been drugged and beaten, then witnessed Irene come back to gloat over him while he was still out of it due to whatever she’d injected him with and he couldn’t defend himself. Sherlock must be feeling incredibly vulnerable, and his first instinct is to call for John! This shows just how much Sherlock has come to trust John and to take comfort from his presence.

From pretty much here on out, things just get tense and sad. The rest of the episode portrays a really difficult period for both Sherlock and John as they both struggle with their feelings for each other, but do so separately.

The next morning, John hears Irene’s text tone for the first time while he and Sherlock are having breakfast together. John asks Sherlock about it persistently, and after this, his jealousy of Irene only intensifies. John is clearly bothered by the idea of Irene hitting on Sherlock, and it’s something he can’t let go. Here’s a gif set of lots of moments of John’s jealousy in ASIB!

Next up, the Christmas party scene is very important because we learn a lot about Sherlock’s state of mind from his interactions with Molly. When Molly first walks in, Sherlock acts exasperated and tries to distract himself from her awkward attempts to make small talk by looking at John’s blog. (Sherlock would rather look at John’s blog than talk to his other friends: obsessed.) Then Molly says, “John, I hear you’re off to your sister’s? Sherlock was complaining.” When she says this, Sherlock gives her a look out of the corner of his eye and then springs out of his chair to start ripping her to shreds with deductions.

This is very telling. First of all, Sherlock was apparently sad enough about John not spending Christmas with him that he complained about it to Molly. Then at the party, Sherlock panics when he thinks that Molly might clumsily reveal something that would demonstrate his feelings to John—that’s when he moves to cut her off. In his anger, Sherlock gets pretty nasty and deliberately tries to embarrass Molly. But once he picks up the gift at the top of Molly’s bag and realizes that it’s for him, Sherlock immediately deflates and appears genuinely sorry. There’s a huge change in his demeanor, and you can see him realize that he’s just been very cruel without even meaning to be—not to that extent, anyway.

(screencap from here)

Sherlock then asks Molly to forgive him, gives her a kiss on the cheek, and says “Merry Christmas, Molly Hooper” in a very gentle voice.

I think this is an important moment in Sherlock’s character development. Over the past few months, Sherlock has come to know what it feels like to be in love, to have other people embarrass you in front of the person you love, and to believe that the person you’re in love with is unattainable. He doesn’t seem to know that John is in love with him yet, so he also feels that he understands what unrequited love feels like. As a result of all that, Sherlock feels horrible for embarrassing Molly in front of everyone by exposing her feelings for him. That’s exactly what he wanted to prevent her from doing to him by revealing his feelings for John! It’s something Sherlock wanted to avoid because he knew it would hurt, so he feels awful when he realizes that he’s just turned around and done it to Molly. (I think that before this, Sherlock had already realized that Molly found him attractive, but he didn’t realize how deep her feelings were.)

Sherlock feels a newfound empathy for Molly after this moment, and he’s much kinder to her in the show after this scene. And in the Christmas party scene, we can see from the other characters’ surprised reactions to Sherlock’s apology—especially John’s—that this is a moment of transition and growth for Sherlock.

We also get more evidence of John’s jealousy in this scene. When Sherlock gets a text from Irene to tell him that she left him her camera phone on the mantelpiece, John says that it’s the fifty-seventh text from Irene that Sherlock has received. This means that for over three months between early September and Christmas, John assiduously counted fifty-seven separate instances of hearing Irene’s text tone. So. Much. Jealousy. John is really focused on this, but he can’t even remember which of his five-minute girlfriends has a dog. That shows where John’s priorities are.

After Sherlock and Mycroft go to Bart’s and Sherlock identifies Irene’s body, for the rest of the episode everyone around Sherlock becomes convinced that Sherlock has fallen in love with Irene.

This starts with the scene between Sherlock and Mycroft outside the morgue. Mycroft offers Sherlock a cigarette and when Sherlock accepts, John and Mycroft both take this as evidence that Sherlock is upset about Irene’s death. They even think Sherlock is upset enough that he might resort to drugs, something that we haven’t known him to do since he met John months ago.

There are several points I want to make about this to show just how terribly wrong everyone is about Sherlock.

1. Sherlock knew Irene wasn’t dead and that the body was a double; he purposely covered for her at the morgue because he knew that she was playing just one part in a much larger game, and he wanted to keep the game in play so that he could solve the case. Remember, Sherlock has known since the Americans showed up that Irene has something far more important than the photos of the princess on her phone. During his argument with Mycroft over breakfast the next day, Sherlock basically told Mycroft that he’s committed to figuring out what Irene has on her phone and why it’s so important. As a result, Sherlock falsely identified the body at the morgue as Irene’s; he knew she was faking her death and he covered for her. I think we know this because (a) Sherlock would have been able to recognize Irene’s real body, and (b) later on at 221B, Irene hints at the fact that Sherlock knew she wasn’t dead and acknowledges that he covered for her (I’ll point that out when we get there).

2. Sherlock takes the cigarette because he’s pining for John, as he pretty much always is at this point. Remember that Sherlock started smoking again months ago, over the summer—we know that from the TSOT flashback scenes—so he’s been smoking as a way to cope with his feelings for John for quite some time now. Moreover, Sherlock came directly to the morgue from the Christmas party, so he’s just had that painful exchange with Molly that left him feeling very raw about his feelings for John. I think that as he stands outside the morgue with Mycroft and watches a family mourn the death of a loved one, Sherlock is thinking about his inability to confess his love to John. He’s thinking about the pain of being separated from someone you love when it feels like they should be so close. So he takes the cigarette from Mycroft.

3. In reference to the grieving family, Sherlock says to Mycroft: “See how much they care. Do you ever think there’s something wrong with us?” Characters on this show lie and obfuscate all the time, and Sherlock is not being genuine with Mycroft here. This is a deliberate attempt at deflection. Sherlock is trying to act cool and detached, but it’s an act. The context for this scene is significant. Again, Sherlock has just been at the Christmas party right before this, where he panicked when he thought Molly was about to reveal something that could hint at his feelings for John. In this scene at the morgue, Sherlock is probably starting to think that he needs to be much more careful about what he lets on if he wants to hide his feelings from John in order to keep John safe. He knows that Mycroft is sharp and might figure things out, so he intentionally tries to appear cool and detached in front of Mycroft by suggesting that the two of them are alike and are both uncaring. This isn’t about hiding feelings for Irene. It’s about hiding feelings for John.

4. I also have to point out how utterly ridiculous it would be for Sherlock to have romantic feelings for Irene. Honestly, it’s kind of incomprehensible to me that John and Mycroft both jump to this conclusion so quickly. They have pretty much no evidence for this besides…heteronormativity, which, as we know from Sherlock’s mistake about Harry in ASIP, is not a particularly good way to make deductions. Sherlock’s interactions with Irene thus far have consisted of (1) the first meeting in her sitting room, where Sherlock was obviously not impressed by Irene or her profession and was worried about John’s reaction to her; (2) the confrontation where Irene viciously stabbed Sherlock with a sedative, whipped him with a riding crop to get him to relinquish her camera phone, gloated that she was “the woman who beat you,” and then told John the code to her safe against Sherlock’s wishes; (3) Irene creepily sneaking into Sherlock’s bedroom while he was still drugged out and standing over him mockingly, after which Sherlock freaked out and called out for John; (4) Irene sending Sherlock flirtatious and sexually suggestive texts that he never responds to. Not really sure which part of this is supposed to endear Irene to Sherlock, especially since much of this can be pretty easily classified as sexual harassment.

When Sherlock arrives back at 221B, we have one of the many, many incredibly sad scenes between Sherlock and John as they both fail to act on their feelings for each other. Having just been dumped by his girlfriend Jeanette because even she can tell that he is hopelessly in love with Sherlock, John is sitting in his chair reading the Holy Bible to try to get over his gay feelings for Sherlock. (Okay, okay, I know that we don’t know for sure that it’s a bible, but it looks like it could be a bible, and it makes sense that John might be feeling especially guilty and conflicted about his feelings for Sherlock around Christmastime if he was raised in a religious and homophobic household. But yes, I admit that he could be reading a different book. Whatever.) Upon entering the sitting room, Sherlock realizes that John and Mrs. Hudson have searched for drugs, and thus that they both think he is in love with Irene and grieving her death. This could have been a moment for Sherlock to explain the situation to John and reveal his true feelings, but Sherlock chooses not to. Instead, incredibly crushed, he just says that he hopes they didn’t mess up his sock index this time and retreats to his bedroom. Sherlock is left feeling hurt and sad that John thinks he’s in love with Irene, and John is left feeling hurt and sad because he thinks Sherlock is in love with Irene. Ack!

The next scene takes place on New Year’s Eve, where we see that Sherlock has become laser-focused on trying to figure out the passcode to Irene’s phone. He’s started composing to help him think, and he isn’t eating. John misinterprets this as evidence that Sherlock is heartbroken over Irene, but this is actually very consistent with all of Sherlock’s normal behavior when he’s working on a case; Sherlock told John in their very first meeting that he plays the violin when he’s thinking, and he told Molly in TBB that he never eats on a case because he thinks it slows him down. As confused as John is, even he admits in the next scene at Battersea that Sherlock usually does all this stuff anyway.

Moreover, Sherlock basically tells John that he’s composing because he’s trying to figure out how to unlock Irene’s phone.

John: You composing? Sherlock: Helps me to think. John: (pained) What are you thinking about? Sherlock: (whirling around and speaking rapidly) The counter on your blog is still stuck at one thousand eight hundred and ninety-five. John: Yeah, it’s faulty. Can’t seem to fix it. Sherlock: (taking out Irene’s camera phone) Faulty—or you’ve been hacked and it’s a message.

John asks Sherlock what he’s thinking about—fearing that he’s thinking about Irene—and Sherlock immediately responds in a way that clearly shows that he’s trying to figure out how to unlock the phone.

John is struggling, though, and his “I’m in love with Sherlock and feel hopeless about it” cardigan makes an appearance in this scene. That’s what LSIT calls John’s maroon cardigan in her meta about the hiker case, and gosh, it’s so true. John was wearing this cardigan during the pool scene, the turning point that pushed him to realize that he was in love with Sherlock, and now it shows up again on the morning when John has started to believe that Sherlock has fallen in love with someone else and will never love him back. We’ll see this cardigan again in moments when John is feeling particularly hopeless about his feelings for Sherlock.

John isn’t wrong about Sherlock composing because he’s heartsick, though. The theme that the soundtrack calls “Irene’s Theme” and that we just heard Sherlock composing is a love song that Sherlock wrote for and about John because he’s heartbroken and pining for him. We know this not just because it fits with everything else that we’ve learned about Sherlock up until this point, but also because when John steps out of the flat a few moments later and closes the door to 221 behind himself, we can still hear Sherlock playing the violin piece, even though we shouldn’t be able to now that John has left the flat. The music is deliberately overlaid so that we associate this piece with John—Sherlock is writing sad music because he’s thinking about John. (I think I saw a meta once that explained this.) This moment also tells us that when we hear the “SHERlocked” track that contains variations on this theme during the final confrontation with Irene, we should understand that what’s happening on screen is about Sherlock’s love for John. More on that later, but for now, don’t get fooled by all the sad romantic music that appears throughout this episode whenever Irene shows up. The sad romantic music is always about Sherlock and John.

John steps out of the flat, and he’s feeling so sad and hopeless that he’s ready to throw himself at the first woman who looks at him the right way. So John flirts with Irene’s henchwoman, and then he gets embarrassed and frustrated when he thinks she’s one of Mycroft’s employees. Then they go off to Battersea.

The Battersea scene is one of the most important scenes in the entire show, in my opinion. It’s incredibly important for John’s character development and his journey of recognizing his feelings for Sherlock, as well as for Sherlock’s perception of John’s feelings for him.

Let’s walk through several points here.

1. John absolutely treats Irene as a rival. He acts aggressively towards her and almost everything he says to her is dripping with either anger or jealousy. He seems to want to shout at Irene, “Sherlock is mine, and you’ve interfered!”

2. John insists that Irene tell Sherlock she’s alive. This demonstrates that even though John sees Irene as a rival who has come between him and Sherlock, he still wants Sherlock to know that she’s alive because he thinks Sherlock is heartbroken over Irene’s death. Above all, John wants Sherlock to be happy, and he’s willing to sacrifice his own feelings in order to protect Sherlock’s own. John loves Sherlock so much, and it’s a selfless love. This is such a touching thing for us to learn about John.

3. Irene says that Sherlock never replies to her texts, and John immediately and confidently replies by saying that Sherlock always replies to texts. Irene asks if that makes her special. But John is totally wrong here! We saw in TGG that Sherlock habitually ignores texts from Mycroft, and in one of the early scenes in TRF he ignores several text alerts until John finally checks his phone for him. Sherlock’s interactions with Lestrade have also never given me the impression that Sherlock is particularly diligent about keeping other people in the loop, so it makes complete sense to me that Sherlock would often ignore texts if it suited him. What John has really told us in this exchange is that Sherlock always responds to him. It’s John who is special. To really drive this home, after Sherlock overhears this conversation between John and Irene, he texts Irene for the first time that night precisely to prove that she isn’t special.

4. The exchange between John and Irene right after this includes some of the most important dialogue in the entire show.

Irene: Are you jealous? John: We’re not a couple. Irene: Oh yes you are. (Holding up her phone to show John the text she’s about to send) There. “I’m not dead. Let’s have dinner.” John: Who the hell knows about Sherlock Holmes, but, for the record, if there’s anyone out there who still cares, I’m not actually gay. Irene: Well, I am. Look at us both.

READ: “Neither of us is usually into men, but we’ve both fallen for Sherlock.”

What Irene is saying here is that people can experience fluidity in their sexuality: a woman who usually thinks of herself as only attracted to women can fall in love with a man, and man who usually thinks of himself as only attracted to women can fall in love with a man, too. It doesn’t really matter what you think your sexuality is if you meet the right person.

John shakes his head and lets out a sound that’s half a sad laugh and half a sigh. He doesn’t deny it. John’s reaction is one of such genuine sadness and frustration, and it beautifully reveals his agreement with what Irene has just said. Maybe John didn’t think he was usually into men, or maybe he’s long known that he’s attracted to men but still doesn’t think of himself as gay. It doesn’t matter. He’s fallen in love with Sherlock.

Gifs of this moment here and here.

This is a turning point in the audience’s understanding of John’s feelings, and I think there’s a chance that it might be a turning point for John, too. Perhaps it’s during this conversation that John realizes just how true it is that he really has fallen for Sherlock. Or maybe John knew it beforehand, and this is just when it gets revealed to the audience—I think that’s quite likely, based on what we’ve seen from John in this episode so far. But either way, by this point in the show, John certainly knows that he’s in love with Sherlock. John might not have fully come to terms with it and embraced it—his sad little half laugh, half sigh indicates that he’s heartbroken and struggling with it—but he knows that this is what he’s feeling.

Right then, Sherlock’s text alert goes off, and Irene and John realize that Sherlock overheard everything.

John’s face after realizing that Sherlock just heard him admit that he’s in love with him:

(screencap from here)

This moment is so important that it even made it into the updated opening title sequence for S2. The show’s creators wanted to beat us over the head with it so that we would understand its significance for Sherlock and John.

Here it is in the opening title sequence:

(screencap from here)

(Also, Sherlock didn’t put his phone on silent while eavesdropping on John and Irene? Even after Irene said that she was about to text him? What kind of a detective is he? Sherlock must have been fully distracted by his desperation to hear everything that John would say!)

Sherlock has now heard the critical dialogue in the show where John’s feelings for him are revealed. I’ve seen some people argue that this is the moment when Sherlock fully realizes that John is in love with him, and that for the rest of the show Sherlock always knows this. I think this is mostly true, but not entirely. I think that for the rest of S2, Sherlock thinks that John is probably in love with him and desperately hopes that this is true. But after his return to London in S3, Sherlock starts to have real doubts that John still feels that way about him. Stay tuned for more on that later.

Before I move on to Sherlock’s reactions to the Battersea scene, let’s talk about something else that we learn about Sherlock from this scene. On his way to meet with Irene, John told Irene’s minion that Sherlock doesn’t follow him everywhere. But Sherlock actually did follow him to Battersea. Moreover, we learn from Mrs. Hudson that Sherlock left Irene’s camera phone in the pocket of his dressing gown when he left the flat. Sherlock apparently left to follow John in such a hurry that he didn’t even bother to properly secure the all-important camera phone that he knows a bunch of people are after and that he’s been obsessed with unlocking. Um. Sherlock is majorly attached to John! Maybe he was watching John from the sitting room window, saw John get into an unfamiliar car with a woman he didn’t recognize, and was worried that John was getting kidnapped by Moriarty again.

Back to Sherlock struggling with the fact that John might reciprocate his feelings. As Sherlock makes his way back to 221B, we get a close-up shot of his face. Sherlock is lost in thought, but it’s not the intense look of concentration that we usually see on his face when he’s making deductions, the one where his eyes zip around rapidly and he appears clearly focused. Instead, Sherlock seems far more distant, and the shot itself is even unfocused in order to visually emphasize his confusion. He’s so floored by John’s revelation that John seems to have literally broken his brain. Apparently, Sherlock was not prepared for the idea that John might return his feelings. There’s a great gif set of this moment here, which highlights the scene’s transition from John to Sherlock to point out that this transition emphasizes that Sherlock is thinking about John.

Sherlock simply does not know how to handle the emotions that he’s experiencing after learning about John’s feelings, so much so that it unbalances him. In the scene with the American agents at 221B, Sherlock totally loses it and takes out his frustration at not being able to take his relationship with John further—especially now that he knows John returns his feelings!—by throwing the lead American agent out of the window several times. I certainly think that Sherlock is fiercely protective of Mrs. Hudson and was furious at the agents for hurting her, but his behavior seems out of proportion even to that, so it’s probably also in response to his frustration about his situation with John. This is the unhinged behavior of someone who’s just experienced an emotional upheaval.

The scene where Sherlock walks into 221B and realizes that Mrs. Hudson has been hurt also introduces the fall music for the first time, the same music that plays during Sherlock’s showdown with Moriarty on the rooftop and fake suicide in TRF. This seems like a clue that we’re supposed to associate this music not just with peril, but specifically with Sherlock trying to protect someone he cares about.

After the American agents are dealt with and Sherlock and John take care of Mrs. Hudson, John and Sherlock go back upstairs to their sitting room together and we get an absolutely heartbreaking scene between the two of them. John knows that there’s no way he can pretend that he didn’t realize Sherlock was there at Battersea, so he decides that they need to talk about it. He pours himself a drink and tries to steel himself to bring it up, but he’s clearly struggling.

Throughout the show, John often drinks right before he thinks he’s about to make himself vulnerable by revealing his romantic feelings. This is almost always about Sherlock, but John also drinks right before attempting to propose to Mary in TEH. This is one more subtextual clue that serves to emphasize how much John struggles to consciously face and express his feelings.

Here’s a gif of John in this scene. Just, cause, you know. We need to stop and really just sit with the heartbreak here.

(gif from here)

This happens:

John: So she’s alive, then. How are we feeling about that?

John is in so much pain as he says this. There’s a long pause, and then Sherlock takes a deep breath before saying this:

Sherlock: Happy New Year, John.

Perhaps this is Sherlock’s way of saying that this conversation has to wait for later—that although they can’t talk about their feelings for each other now, they have the hope of something else in the future.

In any case, John doesn’t reply to that. Instead, he says this:

John: Do you think you’ll be seeing her again?

Sherlock says nothing. He begins to play his violin as he makes eye contact with John, and then he turns his back on him to face the window. John resigns himself to the fact that Sherlock won’t talk to him about what happened at Battersea and sits down in his chair to quietly listen to Sherlock play. More gifs of this devastating moment here.

John looks so heartbroken when Sherlock decides not to open up to him. Note that he’s wearing his “I’m in love with Sherlock and feel hopeless about it” cardigan.

(gif from here)

Just like when Sherlock came back to 221B from the morgue, this was a moment when Sherlock could have told John the truth by telling him that he was in love with him. John is clearly searching for some kind of signal from Sherlock—he’s desperate to know what Sherlock is thinking after Battersea, but he also seems terrified of what he might learn and of the possibility that Sherlock might reject him. But Sherlock doesn’t open up. Instead, he remains convinced that he can’t tell John how he feels because of the threat from Moriarty, and he closes himself off from John.

I think this is a pivotal moment in the show, a moment when Sherlock makes a huge mistake in his relationship with John. For the rest of S2, we never see Sherlock and John get as close to talking about their love for one another as they do in this scene. As a result, neither one of them ever tells the other how much they love them before Sherlock is forced to jump in TRF. If one of them had, things could have been so very different after Sherlock’s return.

The thing is, Moriarty already demonstrated at the pool that he was willing to have John killed. So if Moriarty has already threatened to kill John, how much more danger could Sherlock really put John in by trying to move their relationship to something romantic? This is why I think that Sherlock’s decision in this scene is a mistake. I don’t think Sherlock has nearly as much to lose as he thinks he does. And it’s because Sherlock and John never confess their love to one another that Moriarty is able to manipulate the two of them and their feelings so easily. So much of the heartbreak that Moriarty brings upon Sherlock and John in later episodes might have never happened if Sherlock had been brave in ASIB and told John the truth.

It’s so heartbreaking to me that in this scene, Sherlock is clearly hurting, but he believes that he’s actually protecting John by neglecting his own feelings and closing himself off from him. I think Sherlock’s tone and body language in this scene—and the deep breath that he takes before saying “Happy New Year, John”—demonstrate that Sherlock felt the weight of the decision that he was making when he chose not to open up to John. He knew he was making a decision that would be intensely painful for them both, but he thought it was the right one because he was keeping John safe. In reality, though, he’s making a mistake that will ultimately make things far worse for both of them later on.

Whew. I think ASIB is one of the saddest episodes.

The very next day, Irene shows up at 221B to ask for Sherlock’s help. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out exactly when Irene returns, and I’m pretty much convinced that it’s the next day. On New Year’s Day, John posts on his blog that Sherlock has gone to Bart’s to X-ray Irene’s phone, so that must have happened the next day. We see Sherlock scan the phone and talk to Molly at Bart’s, and then when Sherlock returns to the flat to find Irene in his bedroom, he’s wearing the same shirt that he was wearing in the lab scene. So those two scenes are probably meant to take place on the same day. This means that most of the remaining action in ASIB occurs the very next day after Battersea. And that timing fits, because John makes his final post about Irene on March 12, indicating that he had his meeting with Mycroft in Speedy’s around that time. At Speedy’s, Mycroft told John that Irene was captured in Karachi “two months ago,” which places Irene’s capture in mid-January. If Irene came back on New Year’s Day, then that means that after the final confrontation in Mycroft’s study, she was on the run for about two weeks before she got captured. I think that seems plausible.

But wait! Before we talk about Irene coming back, there are, like, three seconds of screen time that are important for Sherlock and John. I’m talking about the few seconds right between the Bart’s scene and when Sherlock sees Irene. My discussion of this scene is indebted to a conversation that I had with LSIT, so thank you to her for talking this through with me 😊

After the New Year’s Eve scene between Sherlock and John, we know that Sherlock went off on his own the next day to scan Irene’s phone at Bart’s. But apparently later that day, Sherlock and John went shopping and returned to the flat together. We know this because Sherlock and John enter the flat at the same time. We don’t literally see them walk through the door together, but Sherlock walks through the flat as if he’s just come in, and then John comes in after him and immediately heads into the kitchen to put a bag of shopping down on the table. They’ve both clearly just come in from being out, and they’re not surprised to see each other, so it seems that they got back to the flat together and Sherlock was just the one who stepped through the door first.

Sherlock twigs that something is wrong, so he goes to investigate and finds Irene in his bedroom. As Sherlock is walking into his room, John calls out for him and starts walking down the hallway towards him while holding a bottle of wine. John seems to be in a really good mood as he does this.

What! This brief scene seems to indicate that Sherlock and John actually bounced back from all the tension of the night before very quickly. After they both had a night to sleep on it, and after Sherlock had taken some time at the lab to work through some of his anxiety, the two of them were apparently back to feeling very comfortable around each other, went shopping together, bought a bottle of wine together, and then returned to the flat in good spirits. John was walking towards Sherlock and holding the bottle of wine right before he saw Irene, so John was probably about to suggest that they drink it together right then. And he seemed confident.

So…it seems like Sherlock and John both loosened up considerably after New Year’s Eve and were quite possibly about to split a romantic bottle of wine together in, like, the middle of the afternoon. (It’s still light out during this scene, and this is January 1 in London, when the sun sets around 4pm.) And they went shopping and bought the bottle of wine together. Maybe after thinking about it a bit longer, they were both almost ready to confess their feelings. Note that the wine offers a return of the John-and-drinking subtext that we just saw the night before; since John drinks when he thinks he’s about to make himself emotionally vulnerable, this gives us an extra push to recognize that John might have been planning to make a move on Sherlock.

God, were they flirting with each other at the grocery store right before this as they picked out the wine?? Also, I love the fact that Sherlock and John apparently go grocery shopping together? That’s actually very sweet.

So, John was heartbroken the night before, but given some time to reflect on it, he became much more confident and was ready to try again at getting Sherlock to open up. As for Sherlock, I really do think that throughout most of S2, Sherlock tries very, very hard to stop himself from making a move on John. But this brief scene on New Year’s Day seems to indicate that there were at least some moments when Sherlock came close to snapping. He just loves John so much, and he wants to have something more with him so badly. So maybe Sherlock’s mistake from the night before really wasn’t so final. Maybe the very next day, Sherlock was considering saying something, or making a move, or just letting the two of them slide into something more.

But then Irene shows up and quickly ruins everything.

Interestingly, John smiles when he sees Irene. (It took me a long time to notice that.) I talked with LSIT about it, and we figure that in that brief moment, John probably felt grateful to Irene for getting his feelings for Sherlock out into the open at Battersea. John is still holding the bottle of wine as he stands next to Sherlock and looks at Irene peacefully asleep (or pretending to be asleep or whatever), so he’s probably still feeling confident—he’s got this. If John thinks that he and Sherlock might be about to have a breakthrough, and that Sherlock overhearing his conversation with Irene at Battersea will be what prompted it, then perhaps for a brief moment he feels grateful to Irene. But unfortunately, John’s confidence doesn’t last (and whatever gratitude he might have felt towards Irene certainly doesn’t, either).

Irene, Sherlock, and John go into the sitting room, and Irene asks for Sherlock’s help. Remember, ever since September, Sherlock has known that there is something more significant than just the photos of the princess stored on Irene’s phone, and he’s been determined to unravel the mystery. That’s why he’s been composing to help him think, and that’s why he just went to Bart’s to scan Irene’s phone before coming back and going grocery shopping with John. So when Irene shows up, of course Sherlock doesn’t send her away. He wants to figure out what’s going on, so he accepts Irene as a sort-of client—even though she’s treated him like absolute shit ever since he met her. 

The first part of the conversation between Irene, Sherlock, and John also demonstrates that Sherlock already knew Irene was alive before Battersea.

Sherlock: So you faked your own death in order to get ahead of them. Irene: It worked for a while. Sherlock: Except you let John know that you were alive, and therefore me. Irene: I knew you’d keep my secret. Sherlock: You couldn’t. Irene: But you did, didn’t you?

That last part indicates that Irene has figured out that Sherlock knew she was alive before Battersea—he kept her secret even when she didn’t.

After this, Irene convinces Sherlock to decipher the email with the Bond Air code for her. Irene thinks she’s achieved this by getting Sherlock to show off for her—but no, of course not. Sherlock is showing off for John, as always. Remember what I said in the TGG section about how Sherlock always explains his deductions in full for John, but is often reluctant to do so for other people? That’s exactly what happens here. When Sherlock starts making his deductions about the plane, his eyes are totally focused on the screen of Irene’s phone until he finishes—then he immediately looks up to lock eyes with John. Please see the excellent gifs of this moment from @thatswhyhestays here.

Sherlock then stands up and tells Irene that there’s no need for her to praise him, because John already has, taking the opportunity to remind us all that it’s John’s praise that he cares about and no one else’s. He was showing off for John, and this show is just not subtle about it sometimes.

As unsubtle as this is, John is not so great at picking up on these kinds of hints from Sherlock. Here is actual footage of John watching Sherlock and Irene interact in the sitting room of 221B. This kind of makes me want to cry. (Also, my thanks to @incurablylazydevil for her truly invaluable gif sets of moments like this from the show.)

(gif from here)

John also gets extremely jealous as he watches Sherlock and Irene, even blurting out his middle name as a suggestion that they name a baby after him. Sherlock looks at John like he is completely and utterly disgusted by the idea of having a baby with a woman, lol.

But John doesn’t catch that, either. As he watches Sherlock and Irene, John slides right back into wrongly fearing that Sherlock is into Irene and not him. John must feel humiliated and devastated about this, because he leaves the flat, unable to stand being around Sherlock and Irene.

Of course it’s true that Sherlock was watching Irene very carefully all throughout their conversation—except for that glaringly obvious moment when he deliberately tried to impress John by working out the Bond Air code. But of course Sherlock watched Irene carefully! She stabbed him with a syringe during their first confrontation and injected him with whatever the hell that sedative was. Of course Sherlock wouldn’t want that to happen again. But John completely misinterprets the attention that Sherlock pays to Irene, and apparently sees it as “evidence” that Sherlock is interested in her romantically or sexually. So there go whatever thoughts John had of trying to get Sherlock relaxed with a bottle of wine and then kissing him, or confessing his feelings, or whatever else John (and Sherlock) had planned.

Sometime before John walks out, Sherlock gets lost in his thoughts ruminating on the case. When he rouses himself from his reverie a few hours later, he seems surprised and unsettled to find Irene sitting across from him and not John. Irene sexually harasses Sherlock some more, which visibly makes Sherlock uncomfortable, but Sherlock is still clear-headed enough to take Irene’s pulse. (You can see him do it in a couple of different shots in this scene, not just in the flashback later. Which is pretty cool.)

Mycroft’s minions show up to take Sherlock away to the Flyaway Airlines (lol) plane with all the dead people. On the plane, Mycroft accuses Sherlock of having fallen for Irene and having deciphered the email to show off for her. In response to this, Sherlock says “Don’t be absurd” and stares at Mycroft in absolute astonishment, apparently shocked that Mycroft could have possibly read him so wrongly. I mean, Sherlock stares at Mycroft like this for, like, a full minute or something while Mycroft is talking, not just a few seconds. He’s genuinely shocked that Mycroft—who is supposed to be so much cleverer and so much better at deductions than he is—could have possibly thought that he had fallen for Irene, and not seen that it’s John he’s been pining for this whole time.

(screencaps from here)

Mycroft is like, “I drove you into her path. I’m sorry. I didn’t know [you were heterosexual].” And Sherlock is like, WHAT.

After leaving the plane, Sherlock, Mycroft, and Irene go to discuss matters in Mycroft’s office/study/sitting room. (Idk what this room is supposed to be. It’s not Mycroft’s chessboard office from S3, so I guess it’s at Mycroft’s residence, or maybe somewhere in the Diogenes Club.) This is the denouement of the episode, where Sherlock finally unlocks Irene’s phone and everything becomes clear.

This scene is so important for understanding Sherlock and John’s love story!

At the start of this scene, Sherlock is sitting in an armchair facing away from Mycroft and Irene with an expression on his face that shows that he’s crushed by all that has happened. Sherlock is devastated by the fact that everyone—everyone!—has somehow convinced themselves that he’s in love with Irene. And he feels like there’s nothing he can do about it, because he doesn’t want them to know the truth. Sherlock also probably feels bad for having accidentally wrecked Mycroft’s Bond Air plans just because he was eager to impress John.

The absolutely crucial switch comes when Irene says that she had help from Moriarty. When Irene reveals that she’s been working with Moriarty, Sherlock’s expression immediately changes and his eyes start to move back and forth rapidly the way they always do when he’s concentrating on figuring something out. Finally, Sherlock realizes the truth—that Moriarty purposely did this to him by sending Irene into his and John’s lives.

Irene then adds that Moriarty didn’t even ask her for anything in return. She’s probably lying, though; Irene paid Moriarty back for his help in blackmailing the British government by manipulating Sherlock and John for him, and she probably knew that that was what Moriarty wanted her to do. I think this fits well with a few of Irene’s actions. For one, it’s possible that Moriarty might have directed Irene to call him at a certain time at the pool; the timing is a bit too good otherwise, and it also would have been strange for Irene to interrupt her session with the princess to call Moriarty unless he’d told her to, since she wasn’t calling him about the photos of the princess. If Moriarty told Irene to call him at a certain time and Irene knew that the call was connected to Moriarty’s dealings with Sherlock and John, then she could have easily figured out that Moriarty was interested in messing with the two of them. (Thanks to @thegildedbee for this idea.) 

Even if the timing of Irene’s call at the pool was a coincidence, though, some of Irene’s other actions are more telling. First, right before she drops into their lives in September, Irene was looking at press clippings about Sherlock and John when she called Moriarty to say “I think it’s time, don’t you?” That pretty clearly indicates that Irene and Moriarty had some plan involving Sherlock and John, and Irene was in on it, not just getting manipulated by Moriarty. Notably, we’re shown a scene of Irene looking at her phone and smiling at photos of Sherlock and John together, so it seems like she knows she’s supposed to mess things up for the two of them; she’s not just supposed to manipulate Sherlock into a position of deciphering the Bond Air code. Second, Irene shows up at 221B the day after Battersea. Although she could have had her own reasons for showing up when she did, she also might have shown up then because she knew that Sherlock had overheard her conversation with John and she inferred that Sherlock and John might confess their feelings to each other after that. If Moriarty had directed her to prevent them from getting together, then it makes sense for her to have turned up right after Battersea to keep messing stuff up. It’s Irene’s appearance that stops whatever was about to happen with the bottle of wine, after all.

thegildedbee made another good point to me: Moriarty threw away quite a lot of money and resources in TGG by letting Sherlock solve his five pips. We know Moriarty blew his cut of the 30 million quid that the fake Vermeer paining was expected to garner at auction, since he directly said as much to Sherlock at the pool. And it would have cost money arrange the bombs and whatever else so that Sherlock could solve the crimes. But more importantly, once thegildedbee reminded me of the money/resources issue, I realized that in addition to whatever money Moriarty directly spent or lost in TGG, Moriarty probably threw away a lot of his credibility as a consulting criminal in TGG by letting Sherlock expose several of the schemes that he’d arranged for his clients. Moriarty even acknowledges that at the pool, too: “I’ve shown you what I can do. I cut loose all those people, all those little problems, even thirty million quid just to get you to come out and play.” I just can’t imagine that any of that made Moriarty look very good to his clients or potential clients. I mean, Ian Monkford’s wife and the people at Janus Cars must have been prosecuted for insurance fraud after Sherlock solved that crime, and of course we saw that Raoul de Santos got arrested for his murder of Connie Prince. The fake Vermeer painting was in the news everywhere in TGG and Raoul’s arrest also got splashed all over the news, so other clients and potential clients would have seen that stuff and known that Moriarty was unreliable. Maybe this is part of why Moriarty went “advertising” in TRF by breaking into the Tower of London, the Bank of England, and Pentonville Prison all at once.

What I’m saying here is that after TGG, Moriarty probably wasn’t in a position to work for free, and Irene wouldn’t have thought that he was. Irene would probably have been very suspicious of Moriarty if he’d tried to offer to help her extort the British government without asking for anything in return. So I think we can assume that Moriarty and Irene both understood that Moriarty wanted something from Irene, and that something was that he told her to cause problems for Sherlock and John’s relationship.

It’s also just easier for Moriarty and Irene to wreck havoc together if they’re on the same page about what they’re trying to do. And if Moriarty gave Irene direct instructions, then that way, he left less to chance—which makes sense given how obsessed he is with destroying Sherlock, and given the fact that he expended a lot of resources and credit on the first stage of his Sherlock masterplan in TGG.

In any case, after Irene reveals that she’s been working with Moriarty, Sherlock seems to finally understand the core of what’s been going on here from the beginning—that Irene was the person who called Moriarty at the pool, and that Moriarty did all of this on purpose to hurt him and John.

It’s at that exact moment that Sherlock turns absolutely savage on Irene. He’s vicious to her in this scene because he’s furious about what she and Moriarty have done to him and John. Sherlock nearly spits out his words at her as he forcefully punches each key on her phone to unlock it. And crucially, Sherlock gives Irene a whole speech about the dangers of sentiment, about how “love is a chemical defect found on the losing side,” and about how she should never have let her heart rule her head. I think Sherlock gave this speech with Moriarty as its intended audience, hoping that it will get back to him through Irene. Sherlock wants to tell Moriarty that he has sworn off love, that he’s above it all, and that Moriarty should stop trying to get to him by hurting John. As I mentioned earlier, this scene is when we hear the “SHERlocked” track, which is a dramatic and emotional variation on the love theme that Sherlock composed for John. This indicates that Sherlock’s actions in this scene are all about his love for John. In this moment, Sherlock isn’t swearing off romance—he’s making an angry and desperate attempt to protect John by spinning a lie for Irene to take back to Moriarty.

At some point after this, Irene gets captured by a terrorist cell in Karachi and Sherlock travels to Pakistan to save her. Sherlock’s decision to save Irene is critical to his character development, and like many of Sherlock’s actions in ASIB, it has everything to do with his love for John and actually very little to do with Irene.

Sherlock’s decision to save Irene reveals that he does not actually believe what he said about love being “a chemical defect found on the losing side.” Sherlock saves Irene because after falling in love with John, he has experienced the pain of unfulfilled love—the pain of being in love with someone who you can’t be with in the way that you want to be. When Sherlock figured out the code for Irene’s phone in Mycroft’s office, he realized that Irene felt that way about him. Even though he was furious at her in the moment for what she did to him and John, once he’d left Mycroft’s office and cooled down a bit, he was actually able to empathize with her. He understood how she felt. Sherlock always wanted to solve the case surrounding Irene, so he was perfectly willing to unlock her phone for Mycroft (especially since there were potentially a great deal of British citizens’ lives at stake), but he didn’t truly believe that she deserved to die or to be destroyed for having fallen in love. That’s exactly what Moriarty wants to do to Sherlock—to use his love for John to destroy him! Sherlock understands what it’s like to fear that, so he doesn’t want it to happen to other people. And so that’s why he decides to save Irene. And Sherlock’s decision to save Irene shows that he does not believe what he said in Mycroft’s office about the danger and futility of love. Sherlock wanted to send a message to Moriarty with that speech, but it was just posturing. His actions reveal what he truly believes, and that’s that people don’t deserve to die or to be destroyed for falling in love.

I think Sherlock probably saw a little of himself in Irene. Irene played everything very well until the very end, when, as Sherlock said, she let her heart rule her head. This is exactly what Sherlock fears will happen to him. He’s terrified that at some point, his love for John will lead him to make a mistake that will end up bringing John into harm’s way.

Sherlock’s decision to save Irene is basically Molly all over again. In both the scene with Molly at Christmas and the final confrontation with Irene, Sherlock hurt someone else by using their love for him against them. But in both situations, Sherlock soon realized that he’d done to someone else the exact same thing that he fears Moriarty will do to him, by using their love against them. As a result, in both situations, Sherlock finds himself empathizing with the person he hurt, and he thus tries to make amends to them.

I think this is so important because it shows the depth of Sherlock’s feelings for John and how his love for John brings out the best in him. Sherlock saves Irene for very meaningful reasons: his deep sense of empathy, his desire to avoid causing harm to someone else (even someone who has done terrible things to him), and his belief that people don’t deserve to be destroyed for falling in love. Because of his love for John, Sherlock is very closely attuned to these aspects of himself and chooses to act on them. This is very moving, really, because it shows that Sherlock is able to learn from his love for John and that he allows it to guide his actions even as he still continues to fear the full implications of that love.

(In response to this, thegildedbee suggested that Sherlock might have even had these moments with Irene and Molly in mind when he said “It’s always you, John Watson, you keep me right” at the wedding reception in TSOT. Which is a neat thought!)

About two months later, Mycroft comes to Baker Street to talk to John. Then John goes up to 221B to talk to Sherlock with Irene’s file and the camera phone in hand. These two scenes are both told from John’s perspective, and they show just how thoroughly Moriarty has managed to mess things up for John.

John’s statements and actions in these two scenes are in conflict with one another. In the scene at Speedy’s, John tells Mycroft that he doesn’t believe Sherlock feels love: “He doesn’t feel things that way…I don’t think.” And yet, when John goes up to 221B to talk to Sherlock, he seems genuinely concerned that Sherlock will be devastated if he learns that Irene is dead. As a result, John chooses to tell Sherlock what he believes is a white lie: that Irene is in a witness protection program in America.

Irene actually is in a witness protection program in America. There’s absolutely no way that Sherlock could have learned that Irene had been captured by terrorists in Karachi, traveled there, infiltrated a terrorist cell, and saved Irene from the terrorists without Mycroft and MI6 knowing. Sherlock probably did all of that with Mycroft and MI6’s help, because seriously, how else would he have managed it? MI6 also seems very eager to recruit Sherlock in HLV, so it makes sense to infer that Sherlock, Mycroft, and MI6 were all involved in Irene’s rescue and were all on the same page about it; since Sherlock helped with that mission, MI6 thought he might work for them again. We also know that Mycroft was working with the CIA agents earlier in the episode. If Mycroft and the British government had a hand in helping save Irene, then it makes sense to imagine that she’s in a witness protection program in America and that Mycroft helped arrange that. Mycroft’s file isn’t wrong, and he lied to John by telling him that Irene had died. And since Sherlock was working with Mycroft and MI6 on this whole operation, Sherlock knows that Irene is safe in America, too. (I first started thinking about this after reading LSIT’s M-theory meta, where she also concludes that Irene is in a witness protection program in America and that Mycroft must have known that Sherlock saved her.)

A side note. As I mentioned in the TBB section of this meta, I headcanon along with LSIT that Sherlock used to work for Mycroft at MI6 before the start of the show, but he quit and decided to set up shop as a consulting detective instead because he was uncomfortable with the morally gray nature of the work. The idea that Sherlock has a history of working for MI6 and that he briefly worked with them again in ASIB to save Irene helps explain why Sherlock had the necessary skills to go after Moriarty’s network after TRF. It seems likely that Sherlock got help from MI6 to do that, so the fact that Sherlock had worked for them before and then teamed up with them again to save Irene in ASIB explains how he was able to secure their help after TRF. All of this also explains why MI6 wanted Sherlock to work for them for that eastern Europe mission in HLV—they wanted him back, basically, and they hoped he might say yes because he’d helped with the Irene mission and they’d helped him out before, even after he’d officially retired. All of this is just kind of funny, too, because John likes James Bond movies and makes Sherlock watch them with him but doesn’t realize (as far as we know) that Sherlock is a former MI6 agent.

Back to John. Even though John claims to Mycroft that Sherlock doesn’t feel love the way most people do, John knows this isn’t true. John doesn’t think Sherlock is asexual and aromantic, because he thinks that Sherlock has fallen in love with Irene: that’s why he’s so reluctant to tell Sherlock that Irene is dead. John really does see through Sherlock’s mask and knows that Sherlock is a deeply emotional and empathetic person, and he believes that he’s capable of falling in love. John tells Mycroft otherwise, though, because he’s falling back into the pattern of behavior that I pointed out in the TGG section. John feels devastated that Sherlock seems to have fallen for Irene, and whenever John is hurting because of his love for Sherlock, he tries to tell himself that Sherlock is a sociopath who will never love him back. He’s not very good at convincing himself of this, though.

Interestingly, by the time of the scene in Speedy’s, Mycroft seems to have figured out that Sherlock is in love with John and not Irene. LSIT analyzes Mycroft’s perspective and motivations in this scene very thoroughly in her M-theory meta. She argues that Mycroft is actively trying to push John to pursue Sherlock romantically, and I agree. Mycroft absolutely knows that Sherlock saved Irene in Karachi, but by telling John that she’s dead and trying to guide John’s reactions to this information, Mycroft hopes to convince John of two things: (1) that Sherlock is capable of love, and (2) that Irene is permanently out of the picture, so John shouldn’t see her as a romantic rival.

Mycroft seems to have realized not just that Sherlock is in love with John, but also that Sherlock’s happiness depends on John and that John is very good for Sherlock. As I noted earlier, in the Buckingham Palace scene, Mycroft subtly told John that he trusts him. So by the end of ASIB, Mycroft wants Sherlock and John to get together because he thinks this will be the best thing for Sherlock, and he trusts John to treat Sherlock well.

When John says “He doesn’t feel things that way…I don’t think,” Mycroft purses his lips, showing that he disagrees. Mycroft then attempts to gently correct John by posing a question: “My brother has the brain of a scientist or a philosopher, yet he elects to be a detective. What might we deduce about his heart?” It’s telling that Mycroft uses the word “heart” here. As I noted in the TGG section, this is Mycroft’s way of telling John that Sherlock has a firm sense of justice and that he wanted to forge a career where he could help other people, not just pursue knowledge for the sake of knowledge. When John says that he doesn’t know, Mycroft adds, “Initially, he wanted to be a pirate.” Altogether, Mycroft is trying to tell John that Sherlock cares about other people and that he’s a bit (or maybe more than just a bit) of a romantic. In other words, Sherlock definitely feels love. He’s not detached and purely logical.

John, however, doesn’t seem to get this. If John thought about it a little longer, he’d probably realize that he does know what he can deduce about Sherlock’s heart. He really does understand Sherlock, after all. But even so, John doesn’t seem to understand what Mycroft is trying to do in this moment, and he doesn’t get that Sherlock loves him.

The scene between Sherlock and John further illustrates John’s complete misinterpretation of what’s been going on in Sherlock’s heart. When John goes up to the flat to talk to Sherlock, he makes his decision: he tells Sherlock that Irene is in America because he still thinks Sherlock is in love with her and that this will protect Sherlock’s feelings. John’s behavior in this scene is both heartbreaking and incredibly moving, because it’s so similar to his behavior at Battersea, when he demanded that Irene tell Sherlock she was alive. John is willing to sacrifice his own feelings in order to spare Sherlock’s, even though it’s obviously breaking his own heart to do so.

And it’s so very clear that John is feeling torn up and insecure in this scene. Right before he goes down the stairs again to give the file back to Mycroft, John draws a breath as if he’s about to say something, but then he doesn’t. He wants to say more to Sherlock—maybe to ask Sherlock the truth about how he feels, maybe to say something true about his own feelings—but he just can’t bring himself to do it. John is left thinking that everything with Irene just proves that Sherlock will never love him back in the same way that he’s now realized he loves Sherlock.

Maddeningly, Sherlock still keeps quiet about how he feels. If Sherlock worked out the fact that Moriarty purposely sent Irene to him and John to cause problems for them—and I really do think he figured this out in Mycroft’s office—then it seems like he should also realize that he’s playing into Moriarty’s hands by keeping quiet from John. It’s only because Sherlock and John don’t talk to each other about their feelings that Moriarty is able to manipulate them so thoroughly. But Sherlock still seems to believe that revealing his feelings to John would put John in further danger. Sherlock might also be keeping quiet in this scene because he (correctly) suspects that a big confrontation with Moriarty is coming, and therefore (incorrectly) assumes that he’ll soon get a chance to square Moriarty away for good. Maybe Sherlock thinks that a post-Moriarty future is in sight for him and John, so he thinks he just needs to hold out a little longer and that he and John will have time to figure things out once Moriarty is out of the picture. (*thinks about S3 and sobs*)

I also think that Sherlock often becomes very emotional and far less rational when he feels that his loved ones are in danger. We see this in the finale for every series—Sherlock freaks out and loses his cool to varying extents in all three of the pool scene in S1, the rooftop scene in S2, and the Appledore scene in S3. It’s quite possible that Sherlock’s desperation to keep John safe prevents him from thinking about this rationally.

It’s also possible that Sherlock still doesn’t feel ready to take that next step with John for his own reasons, anyway. Sherlock hasn’t had sex and probably hasn’t had a serious relationship with anyone before, so perhaps he would feel quite nervous about trying to take things further with John anyway, even without the threat of Moriarty introducing so much life-or-death danger and stress. Maybe he gained a bit of confidence around New Year’s with the bottle of wine, but that confidence didn’t necessarily last.

In any case, Sherlock decides to keep quiet, and Sherlock and John are both left pining for each other.

John also asks Sherlock if he’d like to look at Irene’s file. Sherlock declines but asks to keep the camera phone. John doesn’t want to give it to him, though. John insists that he can’t give it away—it belongs to the government now, and there are rules about this sort of thing. But Sherlock asks again, and John can hardly ever say no to Sherlock. He gives him the phone.

What if we applied the phone equals heart metaphor to this scene? The camera phone is currently in John’s possession, which sets it up as a metaphor for John’s heart. Sherlock asks for John’s heart, and at first John refuses to give it to him—he’s reluctant and uncertain about giving it away. But Sherlock asks again, and John can’t say no to Sherlock. He gives him his heart.

At the conclusion of the Irene Adler case in the ACD canon story “A Scandal in Bohemia,” Holmes asks his client to let him keep a photograph of Irene Adler as a reminder of the case, and the client agrees. This scene between Sherlock and John is a modern update of that part of the story, and it seems to me that the writers deliberately used the phone equals heart metaphor when they decided how to translate this scene.

The phone equals heart metaphor has been in play since ASIP. Right when they meet, John gives Sherlock his phone, signifying that it’s inevitable that he will fall in love with Sherlock and will give him his heart. Then in TBB, there’s a moment where John runs after Sherlock while they’re investigating the Black Lotus gang’s graffiti and yells at him “Answer your phone, I’ve been calling you!” Within the wider context of S1, I read this to mean that John is interested in Sherlock and thinks that he’s been sending Sherlock signals, but that after their dinner at Angelo’s, from John’s perspective Sherlock appears aloof and disinterested, so John doesn’t feel that he’s been let into Sherlock’s heart. ASIB then establishes the phone equals heart metaphor in the very text of the show, not just the subtext: in Mycroft’s study, Sherlock says to Irene “This is your heart, and you should never let it rule your head” while holding up her phone. This clues the audience in to the metaphor and tells us that we should keep an eye out for it when analyzing the show.

By having John hand over a phone to Sherlock in a moment that beautifully mirrors their first meeting in ASIP, this scene at the very end of ASIB reinforces the idea that John has fallen in love with Sherlock and that Sherlock now has his heart. In this scene, John is clearly conflicted and cut up about it, but he still can’t resist letting Sherlock have his heart.

This covers the most important developments in ASIB, but I have three final thoughts before we move on.

First, there are two different moments in this episode where characters taunt Sherlock for being a virgin. At Buckingham Palace, Mycroft responds to Sherlock’s indignant “Sex doesn’t alarm me” with a very smug “How would you know?” Then in the final showdown between Sherlock, Mycroft, and Irene, Irene says that Moriarty calls Sherlock “the virgin.” Regardless of whether or not Sherlock has had sex before (I think it’s fair to assume that these characters are right and he hasn’t, but it’s not really a big deal if he has), these two comments are there to emphasize Sherlock’s inability to take his relationship with John to the next level.

Second, Irene’s behavior towards Sherlock throughout this episode is sexual harassment. Irene exposes herself in front of him in their very first meeting, drugs and beats him with a riding crop without his consent, breaks into his bedroom to taunt him while he’s still drugged and not in control of his own body, sends him sexually suggestive texts for months, breaks into his bedroom a second time and sleeps in his bed, threatens to take him on a table until he begs for mercy, and interrupts him when he’s trying to talk to her about something else by asking him about his sexual history and then suggesting that they have sex. Irene does all of this even though Sherlock never reciprocates any of her advances. He’s clearly not interested, but she keeps pursuing him anyway. This is the very definition of sexual harassment. I’m not the first person to point this out, but Irene’s behavior is truly awful, so I do want to call it what it is. Irene treats Sherlock terribly, so the fact that Sherlock still forgives her and saves her life is a really important testament to the strength of his empathy. Or he’s just a doormat. But I think we’re supposed to think it’s the former.

Also, Irene’s behavior towards Sherlock contrasts very sharply with John’s. Even though John is now in love with Sherlock and clearly aware of it, John never pushes Sherlock to go further than he’s ready to go when it comes to sex and romance. At two different points in this episode, there are moments when John backs down and refrains from pushing Sherlock to talk about his feelings because he feels that Sherlock doesn’t give him positive signals to proceed. This happens in the New Year’s Eve scene after Battersea, and then again in the final scene between Sherlock and John in 221B. John backs off even though it’s clear that he really, really wants to know what’s going on in Sherlock’s head. Part of this is because of how nervous John is himself, but John is ultimately very respectful of Sherlock in both these instances. Unlike Irene, John is very careful not to make Sherlock uncomfortable in ASIB. It’s worth pausing to appreciate this.

Finally, ASIB introduces the heartbeat sound effect, which is often included in the background of scenes that carry emotional significance for either Sherlock or John. Sometimes they accompany specific moments and are meant to tell us something about how Sherlock and John are feeling about each other. More broadly, though, ASIB is threaded through with heartbeats all over the place, and I think this is meant to emphasize that at this point in the narrative, Sherlock and John are very much in love with each other. Here are some of the especially significant/meaningful heartbeats that I caught on my last two rewatches, although I know there are many more.

1. When Sherlock wakes up after being drugged by Irene and panics, there’s a heartbeat right as he calls out for John. This emphasizes how much Sherlock trusts John and how close he feels to him.

2. The scene outside the morgue. Sherlock complains that the cigarette Mycroft gave him is “low tar” and Mycroft replies, “Well, you barely knew her.” Then there’s a heartbeat and Sherlock gives a rueful laugh. Sherlock laughs because Mycroft is wrong—he’s smoking for John, not Irene, and he knows John very well. The heartbeat serves to emphasize this and to show how intensely Sherlock is pining for John.

3. There’s a heartbeat right when John sees Irene for the first time during the Battersea scene and realizes that she’s alive. This indicates that John is heartbroken that Irene is back, because he thinks that Sherlock is in love with her and that her survival will take Sherlock even further away from him. A moment later, when Irene says that she needed to disappear, John replies with “Then how come I can see you, and I don’t even want to?” This line highlights that John didn’t want to see Irene in this scene, a.k.a. didn’t want to know that she’s still alive, reinforcing the message from the heartbeat.

4. There’s a heartbeat when Sherlock is getting ready to enter the plane with the dead people, right when the American agent tells Sherlock that he’d get a medal if he shot Sherlock in the head. I think this is a clue that Sherlock has messed things up massively by deciphering the code on Irene’s phone in an attempt to impress John. Sherlock has allowed his love for John to lead him to make a big mistake, and he’s about to face the fallout from that. 

5. There are also heartbeats right after Irene walks past Sherlock on the plane and when the scene changes to Mycroft’s office. I think these are meant to indicate Sherlock’s devastation at the idea that he’s messed everything up so badly for Mycroft by trying to show off for John, as well as his devastation over the fact that everyone thinks he’s in love with Irene.

6. There’s another heartbeat right when Irene first says that she got help from Moriarty! I’m telling you, that is the critical moment in that scene.

7. There’s another one when Irene says that Moriarty calls Sherlock “the virgin.” Another indication that this comment is there to taunt Sherlock for his inability to take his relationship with John beyond friendship.

8. There’s another heartbeat right before Sherlock starts ripping into Irene.

See what I mean? There will be more heartbeats in future episodes, always indicating moments that are significant for Sherlock or John emotionally.