#hlv

Before the wedding, Sherlock was able to cope with the pain of losing John to Mary by channeling his energies into the wedding planning, but now he doesn’t have that as an outlet anymore. Cigarettes aren’t strong enough to help him cope, like in S2, so Sherlock returns to using drugs, after apparently having been clean since before the events of ASIP. Sherlock later tells John that he purposely started using drugs in order to advertise a fake pressure point to Magnussen, but this is an outright lie. In the scene at Appledore, Magnussen tells Sherlock that he never believed the drugs were Sherlock’s pressure point for a moment, and Sherlock doesn’t seem surprised. He even inclines his head and quirks his mouth in agreement when Magnussen adds that Sherlock wouldn’t care if his drug habit were made public, which of course makes it absolutely useless as a pressure point since Magnussen operates by exposing people’s secrets through the media. The real reason Sherlock goes back to drugs in HLV is because of how deeply he’s missing John. Sherlock also apparently picks a drug den near where John lives, even though it’s super far away in the suburbs, perhaps because he wants any excuse to just be physically closer to John.

Meanwhile, John is obviously dissatisfied with his life with Mary and misses everything that he used to have with Sherlock.

The first time we see John in this episode, we learn that John is literally dreaming about Sherlock while he sleeps next to Mary. (*bangs head into a wall*) I still can’t believe they actually put this in the show. As many, many people have pointed out, John’s dream about Sherlock is also strikingly erotic. Sherlock’s voice sounds seductive and his pupils are dilated, and John throws Mary’s hand off of his own as soon as he wakes up. This suggests that he either can’t bear to have Mary touch him, or he feels guilty for emotionally cheating on her (in a sense) by dreaming about Sherlock.

(screencap from here)

The next scene demonstrates that John has been thinking about Sherlock constantly during his waking hours, too. John and Mary’s neighbor Kate Whitney comes over for help, and John assumes she’s looking for Sherlock before she’s barely said anything. Mary looks bitter and annoyed when John brings Sherlock up, as if maybe she’s been hearing a lot about Sherlock over the past month and is sick of having to put up with John blatantly pining for him.

Speaking of, Mary acts far less sweet and charming in this episode than she did in TEH and TSOT. She snaps at John and acts a bit belittling towards him in the early scenes with Kate, when she and John go outside, and when she and John go to the drug den. She’s also rude to and dismissive of Wiggins when he approaches their car, during the lab scene at Bart’s, and then again when she first walks past him at Leinster Gardens. Mary might have felt a need to play nice before the wedding, but not anymore. She thinks that between the wedding and the baby, John is safely hers and the gloves can come off now. It’s also obvious that unlike in TSOT, in HLV Mary hasn’t done anything to encourage John and Sherlock to hang out together since she and John got married and returned from their honeymoon. Mary doesn’t feel like she should have to accommodate John’s relationship with Sherlock anymore.

Later on, Wiggins reveals that John has started cycling to work and that he keeps all his shirts (all his shirts, not just some of them) folded and ready to pack. In TEH, the scene where John and Mary briefly talk and kiss before John tries to visit Sherlock after work implies that John and Mary typically left work together. That, in turn, suggests that they probably used to commute together in the mornings, too. But John has stopped doing that now—he’s pulling away from Mary. Wiggins’s pointed deduction that John keeps his shirts “ready to pack” also suggests that John might be considering leaving Mary—or even if he isn’t seriously considering it, he wants to. After a month of marriage, maybe some of John’s thoughts from the stag night have been creeping up on him again.

In short, after just one month of life in the suburbs with Mary and without Sherlock, John is completely miserable and desperate to escape. He’s extremely tetchy and he’s itching to get out on a case. As Sherlock says later on, John couldn’t even survive one month in the suburbs without storming a drug den and beating someone up. He’s not suited to the life that he’s trying to lead with Mary, and he clearly wants back everything that he used to have with Sherlock: both Sherlock himself and the life that they once shared together.

After John goes to find Isaac Whitney at the drug den, Sherlock and John are reunited once more. After this, there is so much subtext layered into their interactions for the first chunk of the episode.

First off, Sherlock and John treat each other much more coldly and harshly in HLV than in TSOT. The careful equilibrium they had found together before the wedding is gone now. Sherlock is heartbroken that John married someone else and is obviously hurt by John’s practical abandonment of him after the wedding. John, meanwhile, feels guilty for missing Sherlock so intensely when he feels that he’s supposed to be settling into his new life with Mary and preparing for the baby. And maybe he’s seriously thinking about leaving Mary and feeling awful and conflicted about it. For all of these reasons, Sherlock and John both seem to have been avoiding each other for the last month. Their feelings are just too intense to bear, and perhaps they were each unsure of what would happen if they saw each other again. Once they do see each other again, they take their pain and frustration out on each other, each essentially trying to punish the other for their part in preventing them from being together.

This becomes evident in the scene at Bart’s after John and Mary pick Sherlock up from the drug den. When John demands to know why Sherlock is using again, Sherlock hits back by retorting that he might as well ask why John has started cycling to work. Essentially, Sherlock is saying that their reasons are the same: they’re pining for each other. Sherlock is on drugs again because he misses John, and John is cycling to work instead of commuting with Mary because he’s distancing himself from Mary due to his feelings for Sherlock. In classic John fashion, John immediately gets defensive and tries to cut Sherlock off. (A few people have made some of the points that I’m building off of here.)

And Sherlock knows exactly what’s going on here. As I’ve said, I think Sherlock had doubts about John’s feelings for him after he first got back to London, but at this point he seems to be able to read John pretty clearly again. He knows that John is in love with him but has chosen not to act on it, and he’s starting to move on from being just heartbroken about this to being a bit angry about it, too. After a month of radio silence from John—after John promised him his marriage to Mary wouldn’t change anything about their friendship—Sherlock is tired of acting like a totally gracious angel the way he did before the wedding. He’s starting to act bitter and petty towards John instead.

Meanwhile, part of John’s anger towards Sherlock in this scene comes from a sense of shame, because John knows that Sherlock knows he’s in love with him, and he’s angry and embarrassed that Sherlock knows this and will even go so far as to acknowledge it in front of other people. John finds this especially hurtful because he thinks that his feelings are unrequited. From John’s perspective, it looks like Sherlock is just being a total jerk by intentionally using John’s feelings for him to get under his skin, seemingly just to cover his own ass about the drugs and not for any deeper reason. As a result, John is completely unwilling to engage with Sherlock’s comment about the cycling and he’s extremely tense when Wiggins starts deducing him.

Then Wiggins tells everyone that John keeps all his shirts folded and ready to pack, as if he’s considering leaving Mary and moving out. Which is even more humiliating for John.

HLV states on two separate occasions that John is “addicted” to Sherlock and the lifestyle that he provides, and this happens for the first time in this scene. When Wiggins says that “some guy” hurt his wrist, John says that it was probably just “some addict, in need of a fix.” Sherlock agrees, and we can tell from the glances that Sherlock gives Wiggins and John that Sherlock knows it was John. Earlier, when Sherlock first came back to London, John wrote on his blog about Sherlock, “I was hooked. He’s like a drug.” John just can’t keep away, but he feels that he should, because he thinks Sherlock doesn’t love him back. John thinks that chasing after Sherlock any longer is only going to get him hurt, so the powerful pull that he feels to Sherlock is a bad thing, like an addiction.

But John just can’t stay away. When Sherlock and John go back to 221B, Sherlock tries to draw John back to him with a case, just as he always does when there’s any kind of rift between them. And at first, it works. As soon as Sherlock mentions Magnussen and it becomes clear from Mycroft’s reaction that this is an important case, John wants in on it.

John: It’s for a case, you said? Sherlock: Yep. John: What sort of case? Sherlock: Too big and dangerous for any sane individual to get involved in. John: (a bit aggressively) You trying to put me off? Sherlock: God no. (smiles) I’m trying to recruit you.

(gif from here)

This is John at his most lovestruck.

Janine reveals herself, and John cycles through a range of emotions. When he first sees Janine, John looks shocked, lost, and hurt by the idea that Sherlock has started a relationship with someone other than him. Even if John doesn’t know that Sherlock is in love with him, he never expected this.

When Janine leaves to get dressed and Sherlock comes out from his bath, John switches to incredulity. He’s especially hung up on the fact that Sherlock has a girlfriend—apparently, John has at least figured out that Sherlock is gay. (Well done, John! That’s a start!) I also think this scene might offer some evidence that John still doesn’t know about Sherlock’s feelings. John’s incredulous faces are a bit smiley, and I don’t think John would be quite so smiley if he’d figured out that Sherlock was in love with him at the wedding and knew that they’re both avoiding their feelings for each other.

Sherlock keeps trying to explain the Magnussen case to John, but John clearly doesn’t listen to a word that Sherlock says about the case. He just wants to talk about Sherlock and Janine. I think this is the first time we’ve ever seen Sherlock’s strategy of trying to draw John back to him through a case fall flat. John is just so stuck on the apparent Sherlock/Janine situation that he doesn’t respond as he normally would, and even as he did just a few minutes ago. Now that John has realized that he can’t get over Sherlock and can’t focus on his relationship with Mary—and that he’s actually pretty miserable being married to Mary—he’s especially distracted by anything that has to do with Sherlock being in a relationship.

After Janine returns, settles herself on the arm of Sherlock’s chair, and starts flirting with Sherlock, John gets full-on jealous. When Janine gets up again, John even stands up and puffs out his chest like he’s showing off and attempting to reclaim his territory, lol. (I once saw a meta pointing out John’s body language in that particular moment, but unfortunately I don’t have the link.)

Even though John won’t get off the topic of Janine, Sherlock keeps determinedly trying to talk about the case. In essence, Sherlock is trying to establish a professional relationship with John because he thinks that’s the best way to get John back into his life again after his marriage to Mary. Sherlock thinks that John has chosen distance, and he’s willing to give John that distance as long as he can have John back in some way.

Soon afterwards, Magnussen and his goons show up and John does something very interesting indeed. When one of Magnussen’s men searches John for weapons, he finds the tire lever that John tucked into his waistband earlier that morning and that John and Mary both agreed was “sexy.” As Sherlock looks on (in a bit of shock), John leans forward and says to the man suggestively, “Doesn’t mean I’m not pleased to see you,” echoing what Moriarty said to Sherlock at the pool in TGG.

John’s willingness to make a gay sex joke about himself, completely unprompted, indicates that he’s feeling far less defensive of his sexuality than he ever has before. John’s previous jokes about his sexuality have all been more like “no homo” jokes than what he says here; this seems like a shift. With this line, John is giving both the audience and Sherlock a hint that things he once thought were off the table—namely, a relationship and sex with Sherlock—might not be anymore. (My thanks to abrae’s meta for first alerting me to the significance of John’s joke here.)

This is quite an admission from John! He’s not drunk like during the stag night. John is starting to reach his breaking point; he seems to have realized that he’s completely incapable of performing heteronormativity in the suburbs with Mary, and he’s nearly desperate to get back to Sherlock.

But unfortunately, Sherlock and John’s relationship has now become painfully complicated.

After Magnussen and his goons leave, Sherlock acts as if John coming with him on the case can be taken for granted, which is true, of course. This pisses John off though, because to John it just feels like Sherlock takes for granted that John is in love with him and will do anything for him. Sherlock’s behavior really bothers John because it makes him feel like his feelings are just obvious. So that’s why we get the “I’ll text you instructions.” / “Yeah, I’ll text you if I’m available.” / “You are, I checked.” dialogue. Right after this, John is also upset when Sherlock points out that he’s gained weight in his first month of marriage to Mary, because it’s yet one more way that it’s obvious John is miserable with Mary.

Continuing his behavior from the lab scene at Bart’s, Sherlock also takes his anger out on John in the first two scenes with Janine by intentionally using his fake relationship with her to punish John for hurting him by marrying Mary.

As @ivyblossom has pointed out, Sherlock deliberately tries to make John jealous of Janine at 221B. He really lays it on thick with her when John is around because he’s purposely trying to needle him.

Sherlock then takes a dig at John for marrying Mary when he and John are riding the elevator up to Magnussen’s office after Sherlock’s fake proposal. I’m taking this idea from @sussexbound’s and @asherlockstudy’s great commentary here. Here’s the dialogue between Sherlock and John:

John: What are you going to do? Sherlock: Well, not actually marry her, obviously. There’s only so far you can go. John: So what will you tell her? Sherlock: Well, I’ll tell her that our entire relationship was a ruse to break into her boss’s office. I imagine she’ll want to stop seeing me at that point. But you’re the expert on women.

By saying “Well, not actually marry her, obviously. There’s only so far you can go,” Sherlock tells John that he crossed a line when he married Mary to run away from his feelings for Sherlock. Sherlock knows that John wasn’t truly in love with Mary, so here he states that it was dishonest and cruel of John to marry her just because he couldn’t face what he felt for Sherlock. Sherlock’s pointed “But you’re the expert on women” then emphasizes that John has a long history of using relationships with women to avoid the implications of his same-sex attraction to Sherlock. That was never fair to those women, and it’s something that Sherlock himself has never done: he’s never used women as a screen to hide his attraction to John.

This is all so carefully phrased and says so much, both about John’s behavior throughout S1-S3 and about how thoroughly Sherlock understands exactly what John has been doing all this time.

In the meta chain I just linked, asherlockstudy points out that the church scene in TAB shows Sherlock and John coming face to face with all of the women whom they wronged in S1-S3. The inclusion of the feminist plotline in TAB thus serves (among other things) to emphasize what Sherlock said to John in the elevator. And even though Sherlock has always been honest with himself about his attraction to John and has never tried to hide it through heterosexual relationships, he isn’t totally blameless here, either. Victorian!Janine’s pointed comments to Sherlock in the church emphasize that Sherlock treated her unfairly when he pretended to date her and then milked their fake relationship for all it was worth in front of John. Sherlock and John have both treated women unfairly while pining for each other.

Even though Sherlock takes his anger out on John in these early scenes, HLV also shows us over and over again that Sherlock will do anything for John. When it comes down to it, Sherlock’s love for John is something transformative and selfless, and it leads Sherlock to acts of extreme self-sacrifice. HLV also shows us again and again just how thoroughly John trusts Sherlock. John acts bewildered by Sherlock’s plans on several separate occasions in this episode, but he always goes along with what Sherlock wants him to do.

All of this really starts to come out when Sherlock and John go to CAM Tower. When they get there, Sherlock says they’re going to break into Magnussen’s office. John is surprised by this, but he immediately goes along with it anyway.

Sherlock and John go up to Magnussen’s office, and they find that both Janine and the white supremacist security guard have been knocked out. John stays to take care of Janine, and Sherlock goes upstairs and overhears Magnussen cowering in fear while someone threatens him. Before Sherlock has fully stepped into the room, he overhears Magnussen ask this person if they would really take things this far to hide the truth from their husband.

Sherlock enters the room, and Mary’s identity as an assassin is finally revealed. Sherlock is absolutely shocked, and we get this exchange:

Mary: Is John with you? Sherlock: He’s…um…. Mary: Is John here? Sherlock: He’s downstairs.

Sherlock sounds scared when he says this. That’s because as soon as Mary turned around, Sherlock started to fear that Mary is dangerous to John and started panicking internally as a result. If Sherlock seems slow to react to Mary when he first sees her, remember that Sherlock isn’t great at thinking on his feet when John is in danger.

Sherlock offers to help Mary, and Mary shoots him. I’m going to talk about Mary in more detail later, so for now let’s focus on Sherlock and the mind palace scene that unfolds right after Mary shoots him.

The mind palace scene is all about Sherlock being in love with John. As several people have pointed out, the architecture of Sherlock’s mind palace is based on locations from the case in ASIP. The staircase that Sherlock runs down and then later drags himself back up again when he’s coming back to life is from the building in Brixton where Sherlock and John examined Jennifer Wilson’s body (Sherlock and John’s first crime scene together), and the corridor with the large wooden doors is from Roland-Kerr Further Education College (the place where John saved Sherlock’s life by shooting the cabbie). Sherlock literally built his mind palace out of his memories of his and John’s first case together! If he had already developed his mind palace before he met John, which I think is likely, then this means that Sherlock redesigned his mind palace after he met John. Their relationship means absolutely everything to him.

Inside the mind palace, Molly, Anderson, and Mycroft all represent parts Sherlock’s own consciousness. Molly represents Sherlock’s medical knowledge and Anderson reinforces it; Mycroft represents logic. John, however, doesn’t appear in that early sequence alongside these other characters. He can’t show up there, because what he means to Sherlock is too important and complex for a mind palace version of John to represent any one single concept.

When Mycroft tells Sherlock that there must be something in his mind palace that can help calm him down, Sherlock goes running in search of John—but instead of finding John, he finds Mary, who shoots him in the heart while wearing her wedding dress.

(screencap from here)

Then Sherlock falls back screaming in agony.

They weren’t going for subtly with this visual. What more do I need to say?

As Sherlock struggles for control, he runs into a dungeon and finds Moriarty. Sherlock demands of him, “You never felt pain, did you? Why did you never feel pain?” It’s clear from Sherlock’s face that he’s not just talking about physical pain, and Moriarty confirms this when he answers by talking about pain, heartbreak, and loss.

Then Moriarty tries to talk Sherlock into just letting go and allowing himself to die. In that moment, Moriarty represents the part of Sherlock that finds death tempting: the part that believes death will finally offer him relief from the hell that his life has become after John’s marriage and his and John’s near estrangement.

As Moriarty keeps talking, however, he comes to represent Sherlock’s fears about John’s safety. This is quite fitting, since that was Moriarty’s narrative role all throughout S2!

Moriarty says that John is in danger, and that’s the turning point in the mind palace scene. Sherlock realizes that if he dies, he’ll be leaving John in danger from Mary, and that’s what compels him to come back to life after he flatlined on the hospital bed. Sherlock drags himself back up from death so that he can protect John.

Sherlock literally came back to life for John! This is one of the most important moments in the show! This is a love story! Insane stuff.

While this is, like, the most blatantly romantic thing in the whole show, there’s something about this moment that I also find kind of heartbreaking.

When Moriarty is talking about Sherlock dying, he says this:

Moriarty: Mrs. Hudson will cry, and Mummy and Daddy will cry, and the Woman will cry, and John will cry buckets and buckets. It’s him that I worry about the most.

Sherlock is still lying dead on the floor, unresponsive. Then Moriarty goes on:

Moriarty: That wife! You’re letting him down, Sherlock. John Watson is definitely in danger.

This is the moment when Sherlock’s eyes fly open and he starts to struggle to come back to life. It’s not when Moriarty says that John will cry over his death, it’s when he says that John is in danger from Mary. I can’t help but wonder if this means that at this point in the show, Sherlock doesn’t put much stock in his knowledge that John is in love with him. Sherlock has watched John struggle with his feelings for him for years and he knows that John chose to marry someone else, so at this point, maybe he’s concluded that no matter what John feels, John is never going to act on it. John might love him in some capacity and he might cry over his death, but he chose someone else, so clearly he doesn’t care that much and he’ll get over Sherlock’s death again. But the idea that John is in danger matters deeply to Sherlock, and it’s enough to get him to come back to life for John. For Sherlock, then, dragging himself up from death is an entirely selfless act. It’s not about any hope that if he comes back, John will leave his evil assassin wife and he and John can actually be together. It’s about protecting John, even after John rejected him and broke his heart. (*sobs for days*)

The mind palace scene also includes the fall music from the rooftop scene in TRF. As I noted in the ASIB section of this meta, this music first gets introduced in the scene where Mrs. Hudson is held by the CIA agents in 221B, which suggests that we’re supposed to associate it not just with peril, but with one of Sherlock’s loved ones being threatened. This makes sense because the mind palace scene is about Sherlock realizing that John is in danger from Mary and struggling to come back to life so that he can protect him.

Also, when John finally gets upstairs, finds Sherlock lying on the floor, and says his name, the sound of John saying “Sherlock” echoes in Sherlock’s mind palace. Further evidence that this is all about Sherlock’s love for John.

John, however, sees none of this. John stays with Sherlock in the ambulance and then stays with him at the hospital all night; we know that because he’s wearing the same clothes the next morning when Mary arrives. John might have even been in the room when Sherlock came back to life after flatlining. He knows that Sherlock’s first word when he woke up was “Mary,” and Sherlock gasped that out right when he first pulled through—you can hear it in that scene if you’re listening carefully. John isn’t visibly there in the room when that happens, from what we can see, but he might have been there outside the frame. If so, that would mean that John stayed in Sherlock’s room even after Sherlock flatlined and seemed dead. (*continues sobbing*) It’s also possible that John just learned about Sherlock’s first word upon waking up from the doctors or nurses afterwards. Either way, though, John has no idea what just went through Sherlock’s head. He has no idea that Sherlock came back to life for him.

Before we move on, I need to give a little disclaimer. I feel like there’s a shift in the writing after the mind palace scene in HLV, and at that point the characters’ actions get much harder to explain. Personally, I think that for the most part, TEH, TSOT, and the first third or so of HLV mostly make sense. These episodes have some writing choices that I disagree with, sure, but the narrative mostly hangs together and can be explained. (That’s the goal of this meta project, anyway.) After that, though, things get harder to decipher. I think this is probably because either (a) the writers were doing EMP Theory, so nothing that happens after Sherlock gets shot is actually real (although some of it might offer distorted versions of events that are happening in real life), or (b) the writers just got messy. Either way, there are a lot of narrative threads left hanging at the end of S3 that are very hard to explain without knowing what was ultimately supposed to happen in the story. I very firmly believe that the S4 that we got was not the writers’ original plan for how to end the story. Either they changed their minds after S3, or S4 is somehow fake and we never got the reveal because they never made S5. As I explained in the introduction to this stupidly long meta project, for now I’ve decided to write this without EMP Theory, so I’m assuming that everything that happens after Sherlock gets shot is still real—I think it’s useful to at least try to map out what that would mean. After I get this project out into the world, I’m hoping to spend some time reading and thinking about EMP Theory so that I can decide how I feel about it and whether I’m convinced. So! The rest of this meta offers one possible reading of the show, but it’s just one, and I might change my mind about it later. I think that without knowing the real/original ending to the show, we can theorize about what the writers were trying to do in HLV, but it’s hard to know for certain.

So. Sherlock regains consciousness in the hospital. John might be with him when he wakes, since he knew that Sherlock’s first word when he woke up was “Mary,” but he might not be. Either way, at some point John leaves and Mary enters the hospital room and threateningly tells Sherlock not to tell John that she was the one who shot him.

At this point, Sherlock knows a few things. He knows that Mary is a well-trained assassin and that she has a past that she’s actively trying to hide from John. He knows that she came to threaten Magnussen in his office and that she was prepared to kill Magnussen because he has information on her. More than that, Sherlock knows that Mary is committed enough to keeping the truth from John that she chose to shoot him (Sherlock) when he discovered her instead of accepting his help. Now that Mary has threatened Sherlock again in the hospital, Sherlock also knows that he won’t be safe from her if she’s worried that he might tell John what happened.

But of course, Sherlock is scared that Mary is a threat to John, and there’s no way he would ever keep this from John. So, Sherlock decides that he needs to trick Mary into revealing the truth to John herself—after that, he and John can try to figure out what to do. Sherlock comes up with a plan to make this happen and escapes from the hospital to set it in motion.

After Sherlock escapes, John and Lestrade go looking for him while Mary searches separately. It makes sense that Mary would want to confront Sherlock on her own, but it’s sort of interesting that John doesn’t automatically assume that he and Mary should look for Sherlock together, even though he did call her to tell her that Sherlock had escaped. John must be feeling really distant from Mary at this point for it to not occur to him that a life-or-death situation like this should bind them together. He doesn’t think of the two of them as a team.

Strangely, though, John and Lestrade don’t seem very worried and aren’t acting as if finding Sherlock is all that urgent. We later learn from Sherlock that this took place only a week after he was shot, so you’d think John and Lestrade would be freaking out that Sherlock will die if they can’t get him back in hospital quickly. Messy writing, I guess.

John and Lestrade go to 221B, and John says that given where Sherlock was shot in the chest, he must have been facing his killer and must have seen who it was. (John didn’t think to ask Sherlock about this anytime in the past week, apparently?) John then asks why Sherlock didn’t tell them who the shooter was, and Lestrade suggests that Sherlock might be protecting someone. John says “Why would he care? He’s Sherlock. Who would he bother protecting?” and then sits down in his own old armchair in the sitting room.

For God’s. Fucking. Sake. The fact that John doesn’t immediately realize that he is the person Sherlock is trying to protect is what convinces me that John still hasn’t figured out that Sherlock is in love with him and can’t have had a true epiphany at the end of TSOT. It’s incredibly frustrating, because after witnessing Sherlock’s behavior in TSOT and hearing that best man speech, John really should have figured it out by now. He’s not stupid. But the plot requires that he still not know, I suppose, so he doesn’t. (Moffat, when I catch you, etc. etc.)

Although John doesn’t get it immediately, he then rubs the arms of his chair thoughtfully and asks aloud why Sherlock thinks that he’ll be moving back in. Then he sees the Claire-de-la-Lune perfume bottle that Sherlock left for him on the side table next to his chair, and he stares at it for a very long time. At CAM Tower, Sherlock said out loud that he could smell that perfume, so John probably makes the connection and realizes that this is a hint about who the shooter was. I think that in that moment, John might put the pieces together and realize that it was Mary. He might also realize that Sherlock thinks she’s a danger to him, and therefore that John might want to move back to 221B to get away from her. Even if John figures it out then, though, Sherlock wants John to see and hear the truth for himself, so he calls John on his phone and asks him to come to Leinster Gardens.

Before calling John, Sherlock somehow got everything ready for the confrontation with Mary. Presumably he enlisted the help of Wiggins and other members of his homeless network so that he could (1) have someone move John’s chair and its round side table back to their usual places in the 221B sitting room, (2) have someone go to Chiswick Cemetery to find the real Mary Morstan’s grave site, and (3) have someone set up a projector in front of the façade of the empty house that he owns in Leinster Gardens. Lol.

Interestingly, the Leinster Gardens scene subtly hints that Sherlock didn’t fully trust Mary even before she shot him. Before Mary enters the empty house, she and Sherlock talk on the phone about how she correctly identified Leinster Gardens as one of Sherlock’s hiding places.

Mary: How did you know I’d come here? Sherlock: I knew you’d talk to the people no one else would bother with. Mary: I thought I was being clever. Sherlock: You’re always clever, Mary. I was relying on that. I planted the information for you to find.

Mary got the information by talking to Anderson and his friend Benji (I don’t know that we ever hear anyone say her name onscreen, but it’s in the final shooting script). Benji told Mary that Anderson only knew about Leinster Gardens because he stalked/followed Sherlock one night. There’s no way that could have happened between when Sherlock got shot and when Mary talked to Anderson and Benji, so that means Sherlock deliberately planted the information with Anderson at some point before Mary shot him.

When Sherlock first met Mary in TEH, he deduced that she was a liar. For months, though, Sherlock chose not to act on that deduction. He deliberately pushed it aside, since he believed that John had chosen Mary and he wanted John to be happy. Sherlock wasn’t about to pull at any loose threads that could unravel John and Mary’s relationship. This scene shows, though, that Sherlock still never trusted Mary completely. He planted the information about Leinster Gardens for her to find just in case he ever needed to confront her in a discreet location. (What if Sherlock feared she might be a cheater, and that’s why he intimidated David in TSOT? And he thought he might one day have to confront Mary quietly, to try to convince her to go back to John? Absolutely awful. If Sherlock thought that was what “liar” meant, though, it would explain why he didn’t suspect that Mary was an assassin, even after he started to worry that he’d missed part of Moriarty’s network.)

There are several aspects of the Leinster Gardens scene that are extremely important. For one, this scene proves that Mary is absolutely a villain: specifically, she’s Sherlock’s version of the Sebastian Moran character from ACD canon.

In ACD canon, “The Adventure of the Empty House” is the first story set after “The Adventure of the Final Problem,” the one where Holmes confronts Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls and dies/fakes his death. In “The Adventure of the Empty House,” Holmes returns to London after being gone for three years. Holmes enlists Watson’s help in taking down Sebastian Moran, the sniper who was Moriarty’s right-hand man before Moriarty’s death and who is now the last remaining obstacle standing in the way of Holmes being able to reveal himself to the public and fully resume his life with Watson. To take down Moran, Holmes creates a wax statue of himself and positions it in front of 221B’s sitting room window, hoping that Moran will believe the dummy is him and will shoot at it. Moran falls for the trap, and Holmes, Watson, and the London police capture him. With Moran arrested, Watson moves back in with Holmes at 221B and the two of them resume their crime-solving adventures together as best friends and partners.

The Leinster Gardens scene recreates the scene with the dummy, with John taking the place of the wax figure and pretending to be Sherlock. Mary, of course, plays the role of Moran.

By naming TEH “The Empty Hearse” and making Lord Moran the villain in that episode’s central case, the writers created a red herring for Sherlock viewers who had read the original stories and were expecting a Moran plotline upon Sherlock’s return to London at the beginning of S3. With the Leinster Gardens scene in HLV, they reveal that in this show, Mary is actually the Moran character. She’s an assassin who works for Moriarty and who is now a major obstacle to John being able to fully reconcile with Sherlock and move in with him again.

Mary being an assassin who works for Moriarty also makes perfect sense based on everything that we know up to this point. We already know that Moriarty has used snipers twice before, so he has people working for him who have Mary’s skillset. And if Mary works for Moriarty, then her presence in John’s life makes so much more sense than it ever would otherwise. I mean, it’s ridiculous to think that John started dating a nurse at his clinic and then later she just happened to turn out to be an assassin who was totally unconnected to Sherlock and John, because there are just that many hidden assassins running around London. It’s equally ridiculous to believe that John was attracted to her because he’s somehow really good at unconsciously identifying dangerous people. Get real. But the idea that Mary was deliberately planted at John’s clinic and ordered to get close to him, so that she would be in an ideal position to wreak havoc upon him and Sherlock after Sherlock’s return? That makes perfect sense. ALSO, given Moriarty’s plan with the rooftop in TRF, it makes perfect sense to think that Moriarty planted another sniper on John to keep an eye on him long-term, to make sure that Sherlock didn’t contact John! Sherlock actually believed that Moriarty would do something like that, and that’s the whole reason why he thought he had to take down the whole network. It’s just that when Sherlock got back to London, he thought he’d succeeded and didn’t realize that there was still a hidden assassin watching John’s every move. Maybe there actually was another assassin in London who Sherlock took out and who Moriarty had placed there as a red herring, and that’s why Sherlock doesn’t think to suspect Mary.

But Mary isn’t just a hidden sniper, she’s also a love interest for John. And that, too, makes perfect sense for Moriarty’s plan. As we saw in ASIB, Moriarty was absolutely willing to push Irene into Sherlock’s and John’s lives in order to cause problems for them. He probably did the same thing with Mary—he deliberately planted Mary as a love interest for John to make sure that when Sherlock returned, it would be even harder for him and John to have a relationship together. That makes complete sense within the context of Moriarty’s plan to “burn the heart” out of Sherlock. Relatedly, I think it’s likely that Mary doesn’t have genuine feelings for John, and she pursued a relationship with him only because she was ordered to; as I’ll talk about a bit later, there’s a good amount of evidence that Mary was cheating on John with someone else.

So, the Moriarty plotline is still in play and Mary has a key role in it. And I think that given everything we know about how Moriarty operates, we should believe that Mary still works for Moriarty, not that she’s a former assassin genuinely trying to escape her past.

On the topic of Mary being a villain, @221beemine has done an interesting meta about how Mary is lit in HLV. Starting with the scene where she shoots Sherlock, Mary is frequently lit so that her face appears half in shadow, or she’s shown in a dark profile with bright edge lighting. These are unusual methods for lighting female characters, and they make Mary appear both mysterious and sinister. I think this matches perfectly with an interpretation of Mary as a villain whose identity as such has finally been revealed, but who we still don’t know very much about. And I don’t think these lighting choices would make any sense if we were actually meant to forgive Mary for shooting Sherlock and were actually meant to believe that she really has left her past as an assassin behind.

Returning to Leinster Gardens. Mary acts completely unrepentant in this scene, which offers more evidence that she’s a villain. There’s a sneer in her voice and expression when she tells Sherlock “You were very slow.” Mary also threatens to shoot Sherlock again and to actually kill him this time. It’s only when Sherlock reminds her that her face is projected onto the side of the building outside that she backs down from that threat. MARY IS A VILLAIN AND WE ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO THINK IT’S OKAY THAT SHE SHOT SHERLOCK.

Mary also has one piece of dialogue in this scene that’s very important to Sherlock and John’s love story.

Sherlock: Why didn’t you come to me in the first place? Mary: Because John can’t ever know that I lied to him. It would break him and I would lose him forever. And Sherlock, I will never let that happen. Please understand. There is nothing in this world that I would not do to stop that happening.

Sherlock lied to John when he faked his death and it did break John, but Sherlock did not lose John forever. John is still inextricably tied to Sherlock because of how deeply he loves him; they’re still wrapped around each other’s lives. John loves Sherlock in a way that he doesn’t love Mary, and this line shows that Mary knows this. She’s seen all of this happen between Sherlock and John, and she knows that she is replaceable in John’s life in a way that Sherlock is not.

After Mary delivers this line, Sherlock gives her a look that is scorching with contained anger. All of Mary’s actions and dialogue throughout this scene have shown Sherlock that she’s determined to hang on to John while still deceiving him about who she really is and what she’s done. Mary’s version of love for John (if she does have any feelings for him) is selfish and possessive, and it’s not at all like what Sherlock feels for John. Sherlock sees this, and it makes him furious. He’s furious that she, of all people, is the person who got to marry John Watson, and that she’s now acting like she’s entitled to him, especially while Sherlock himself has been acting so selflessly for John this whole time. Sherlock isn’t feeling sympathetic towards Mary in this scene, and it shows.

But as I’ll talk about in just a moment, Sherlock also knows that he can’t abandon Mary, at least not yet. He knows he has to take her case.

Sherlock gives Mary that scorching glare, then flips on the lights to reveal that John was sitting at the end of the passageway the whole time. Mary looks genuinely upset—she seems shocked and devastated that John has found out the truth about her. She’s likely terrified that now that John knows the truth, she won’t be able to continue keeping Sherlock and John apart romantically for Moriarty, and Moriarty will kill her. She’s trapped.

After this, Sherlock, John, and Mary all go to 221B to discuss things further. I think this scene at 221B might be one of the saddest Johnlock scenes in the entire show.

Let’s talk about Sherlock’s side of the story first. In this scene, Sherlock tries to push John back to Mary and insists that John can trust her. Sherlock’s decision to do this is extremely difficult to understand, since the writers changed course after S3 and we never got to learn what they’d originally planned for Mary’s character. I’ll try to explain my best interpretation of Sherlock’s actions, though.

By this point, Sherlock knows that Mary is bad news. But he still doesn’t actually know that much about who she is and what she’s involved in. Sherlock isn’t stupid enough to think that out of all the women in London, John just happened to date and marry a secret assassin. And ever since John got kidnapped and put in the bonfire in November, Sherlock has been worried that he might have missed some part of Moriarty’s network. So, even if Sherlock still believes that Moriarty is dead, he probably suspects that Mary was originally planted by Moriarty or by someone else sinister and that she has some ulterior motive for getting close to John. Furthermore, we should remember that even though he sometimes messes up and jumps to conclusions prematurely, in general Sherlock believes that it’s a mistake to try to act before you have enough information.

As a result, Sherlock thinks that he needs to learn more about Mary before he can figure out what to do about her. That’s one reason why he thinks he needs to keep Mary close and acts accordingly. Remember, Sherlock did something similar with Irene in ASIB when he intentionally misidentified the doppelgänger’s body as hers and then accepted her as a client when she showed up at 221B. Even though he didn’t trust Irene, Sherlock didn’t kick her out because he knew that she was part of something bigger and he wanted to solve the larger case.

Second, Sherlock knows that Mary is extremely dangerous and that she’s fiercely committed to holding onto John. I think that based on that, Sherlock concludes that for the time being, the best thing he and John can do to keep John safe from Mary is to convince her that John has forgiven her and is going to stay with her. If John seems like he’s going to leave her, then there’s no telling what Mary will do. As we’ve seen again and again and again, Sherlock cares about John’s safety above all else. Sherlock will do anything to keep John safe, and that includes lying to him.

Third, if Mary is indeed part of some larger game with other dangerous players, then Sherlock might be thinking that if John stays with her, Mary will work to keep John safe from those other actors, too. Mary just told Sherlock in Leinster Gardens that there is nothing she wouldn’t do to stop herself from losing John. Since Sherlock thinks that Moriarty is dead, he might fear that there are other people who he doesn’t know anything about and who could be a threat to John. He still doesn’t know who put John in the bonfire in TEH—it could be people from a remnant of Moriarty’s network, but it could be someone else entirely. (We don’t know when Sherlock figured out that it was Magnussen, but I doubt it was this early on. It’s even possible that Sherlock didn’t figure that out until Magnussen showed him the video, and he was just faking confidence in front of Magnussen when he acted like he already knew.)

Finally, Mary is carrying John’s child—or, at least, Sherlock thinks she is (more on that in a moment). So Sherlock also probably thinks that he and John can’t do anything that might risk prompting Mary to disappear with John’s baby. They need to keep her close for a few more months, at least.

Put all of that together, and Sherlock knows that he and John can’t just try to drop Mary now that they know she’s evil. They need to keep her close for now so that they can try to learn more about her and what she’s involved in, and so that John and the baby will be safe from her (and perhaps other dangerous actors) in the immediate future.

Sherlock, however, still hasn’t overcome his main character flaw: his inability to be fully honest with John. It’s a repeat of TRF all over again. Here, Sherlock believes that John’s decision to take Mary back won’t be convincing enough to her unless John actually does decide to take her back. So Sherlock tries to manipulate John into doing it.

It gets worse. The revelation that Mary is an assassin and has been lying to John about her identity this whole time gives John the clearest possible chance to leave her that he’s had since Sherlock first came back in TEH. In light of how thoroughly Mary lied to him and the fact that she shot Sherlock, John could absolutely take this as an opportunity to leave her for Sherlock. Sherlock must realize that John might see this as an option, but he doesn’t try to push John in that direction at all. Instead, Sherlock tries to get John to do the exact opposite because he believes that it’s what’s safest for John. Of course, Sherlock should have explained his thinking to John and just been honest with him about why he needed to stay with Mary for the time being. But Sherlock’s decision to try to push John back to Mary still shows that Sherlock cares about John’s safety above all else and will always choose to sacrifice his own feelings to keep John safe.

From John’s perspective, all of this is pure hell.

John’s dialogue in this scene offers perhaps the most important piece of evidence in the entire show that he was never in love with Mary the way he is with Sherlock.

Sherlock: John, you are addicted to a certain lifestyle. You are abnormally attracted to dangerous situations and people. So is it truly such a surprise that the woman you’ve fallen in love with conforms to that pattern? John: (his voice shaking with barely suppressed tears) But she wasn’t supposed to be like that. Why is she like that? Sherlock: (after a pause, slowly and very sadly) Because…you chose her.

There’s a heartbeat sound right after that, indicating that this is a moment of monumental emotional significance for both Sherlock and John.

In this exchange, Sherlock starts by making a clear reference to John’s attraction to him and the lifestyle that he has tried to provide John with ever since ASIP. John can barely contain his fury and hurt at this, and he immediately insists that Mary wasn’t supposed to be like that. John chose Mary after Sherlock died because he wanted to find someone who wasn’t like Sherlock, someone who wouldn’t remind him of Sherlock, someone he didn’t feel attracted to in the same way. John’s vehement insistence that Mary wasn’t supposed to be like Sherlock reveals that his truest and deepest feelings are for Sherlock and not for Mary. He wanted to find someone he wouldn’t have the same intense feelings for, someone it would be safe to have a relationship with because he wouldn’t be opening himself up to heartbreak with them the way he did with Sherlock by falling so deeply in love.

It absolutely destroys Sherlock to hear this. Remember that I don’t think Sherlock is a very good actor, so his “you chose her” and the way he has to pause and look away from John before he says it aren’t him acting. On one level, this line is a lie. Sherlock knows that John doesn’t have some magic sixth sense for dangerous people, but he tells John that he chose Mary because he hopes it will convince him to go back to her. But on a deeper level, this isn’t a lie at all. In this moment, we can see on Sherlock’s face that he’s honestly expressing his real, genuine heartbreak over the fact that before Mary’s past was revealed, John did choose her over him.

The acting in this scene is absolutely insane.

(gifs from here)

After Sherlock says that John “chose” Mary, John bursts out, “Why is everything always MY FAULT?” And when Sherlock insists that he and John treat Mary like a client, John agrees, but he’s furious about it. He chokes out at Sherlock, “Your way. Always your way.”

John’s dialogue here reveals two crucial things about how he feels at this point in the narrative. First, John’s words express his intense anger at Sherlock for implying that John’s actions are the reason why the two of them aren’t together. John just admitted that he chose Mary as a romantic partner because he was trying to get over Sherlock and everything that Sherlock represented to him. When Sherlock responds by saying that John “chose” Mary, John gets furious at the implication that this is all his fault. From John’s perspective, the only reason why he was ever in a relationship with Mary at all is because Sherlock faked his death and disappeared for almost two years, leaving John to believe he was dead. John accepted Mary into his life because she gave him a way to try to overcome his grief while he mourned Sherlock. Moreover, John thinks that Sherlock has never given him any indication that he’d be interested in a relationship with him. Even worse, he also believes that Sherlock has known about him being in love with him for years, and has always just let John suffer through that without returning his feelings. So when John says “Always your way,” it indicates that John feels that he’s been forced to follow Sherlock’s lead all these years because he’s the one in unrequited love. From John’s perspective, it’s not his fault that he and Sherlock have ended up in the twisted and terrible place where they are now.

I think that with these lines, John is also expressing anger at himself for still being in love with Sherlock when he thinks that Sherlock will never love him back. John probably feels that no matter what he does, he can’t escape his attraction to Sherlock. Even when he deliberately tried to find a romantic partner who wouldn’t be like Sherlock, he failed and somehow ended up with a secret assassin. So when John chokes out “Always your way” at Sherlock, he’s expressing his frustration that no matter what he tries to do, he always finds himself drawn back to Sherlock and everything that he represents. At this point in the show, John seems to resent his love for Sherlock because of how much pain it keeps causing him. And once again, John takes this out on Sherlock.

The next bit of dialogue offers us even more proof that John doesn’t love Mary the way he loves Sherlock.

John: Sit. Mary: Why? John: Because that’s where they sit. The people who come in here with their stories. The clients—that’s all you are now Mary, you’re a client. This is where you sit and talk, and this is where we listen, then we decide if we want you or not.

As @formerprincewille writes here, John makes it clear to Mary “that Sherlock is a permanent fixture in his life and she is not.” He and Sherlock are the inseparable unit. They will be the ones who decide whether or not Mary gets to stay in their lives.

Notably, Mary looked very upset in Leinster Gardens after Sherlock revealed that John had seen and heard everything. But in this scene, she appears entirely unrepentant, both when Sherlock and John are having their argument and when John turns to her and yells at her in anger. At first Mary was shocked and upset that her cover had been blown, but now that she’s regained control of herself, she’s steely once more and she certainly isn’t about to apologize for anything that she’s done.

Mary, John, and Sherlock all sit down. Mary reveals the flash drive and Sherlock tries to relate the events of the night when Mary shot him in a way that will make Mary seem as forgivable as possible.

When John angrily says “Oh, look at you two. You should have gotten married,” Sherlock looks at John like this:

(gif from here)

@ivyblossom has a great meta about this here. There is so much pain and regret in that expression. Since this comes right after they’ve been talking about Sherlock and Mary both deceiving Janine, John has just aligned Sherlock with Mary as someone who has lied. Sherlock deeply regrets that he ever had to do that to John, and he regrets that it’s still what he’s doing right now to try to protect him. I think that in this moment, Sherlock wants more than almost anything to be able to tell John the truth. But that almost is still there, because Sherlock prioritizes John’s safety above everything else.

Then this happens:

Mary: (harshly) People like Magnussen should be killed. That’s why there are people like me. John: Perfect! So that’s what you were, an assassin? How could I not see that? Mary: You did see that. And you married me. (Tilting her head at Sherlock) Because he’s right. It’s what you like.

Sherlock looks deeply uncomfortable and unhappy when Mary says this; just take a look at the gifs here. That’s because Sherlock doesn’t really believe it’s true. When he said the same thing to John a few minutes ago, he was feeding a lie to John. And Sherlock isn’t happy about having to do this.

Mary continues to act unrepentant as they talk. In this scene as a whole, she sometimes casts her eyes down and stands or sits quietly as if ashamed, but she never apologizes for any of her actions—not for being an assassin who killed people, not for lying to John, and not for shooting Sherlock. She’s more than willing to take the opportunity for reconciliation that Sherlock is offering her, because it’s her best chance to stay alive and safe from Moriarty for the time being. But Mary seems to harbor no remorse for her violent past, and she doesn’t make any promises to act differently in the future. Her dialogue to John basically says, “This is who I am, and I think you like it. I don’t intend to change.”

Honestly, Mary is a terrible person, and not the sort of person who Sherlock and John would usually have any sympathy for. Their whole job is to catch people like her. But in this scene, Sherlock keeps lying to try to make Mary seem more palatable so that John will stay with her. Sherlock even lies by saying that Mary saved his life, saying that she shot him in a way that let him live and that she phoned the ambulance.

Both of these are lies. Mary absolutely meant to kill Sherlock, which we know BECAUSE SHE DID. HE FLATLINED, HE DIED. Sherlock only came back to life because of the intense power of his passionate, unbreakable love for John. Also, Magnussen was the one who phoned the ambulance, and Sherlock even saw him do it! Sherlock deliberately lies about both of these things because he’s trying to make Mary seem as forgivable as humanly possible so that John will stay with her for the time being.

Let’s talk some more about how we know that Mary intended to kill Sherlock. I’ve been trying not to get too deep in the weeds about what the minor characters are doing in this meta because I want to stay focused on the romance arc between Sherlock and John, but I think this is worth getting into for a bit here because it’s an important part of Moriarty’s plan for Sherlock.

Moriarty’s plan has always been to break Sherlock’s heart and then kill him. And at this point in the story, Moriarty has very successfully broken Sherlock’s heart. Because of the consequences of Sherlock’s fall, Sherlock has had to watch John marry someone else. He’s learned that Mary is pregnant, which makes him think that there’s truly no chance of him and John getting together now. Given Sherlock’s morals and his behavior in TSOT, I think it’s extremely unlikely that Sherlock has even thought about the possibility of trying to start an affair with John. But if he has, he knows it would be incredibly messy and painful, and they’d both feel guilty and terrible about it. It definitely wouldn’t be the romantic happy ending that he’d once dreamed of. All in all, Sherlock is so distraught that he’s on drugs.

So in Moriarty’s plan, it’s time for Sherlock to die. To make that happen, Moriarty arranges for Sherlock (and John) to go to CAM Tower on the specific night that they do because he knows that Mary is going to go after Magnussen that night and that she’ll intercept them there. Moriarty probably doesn’t actually order Mary to kill Sherlock—he probably doesn’t tell her anything—but he expects her to do it. Then he plans to dispose of Mary himself, because he isn’t the type to leave loose ends lying around.

For an explanation of all of this, you can check out @loudest-subtext-in-tv’s recent meta, “Whether Mary meant to kill Sherlock” here and then our replies to that meta here and here. Here’s a basic summary, though.

At the start of HLV, Mary started to get worried that Sherlock and John were about a hair breadth’s away from finally confessing their feelings to each other. Sherlock was on drugs, and to an outside observer he probably seemed like he was pretty much ready to throw caution to the winds. Meanwhile, John was so anxious and desperate that Mary was literally holding onto him in their sleep to stop him from leaving. At Bart’s, Mary heard Sherlock directly needle John about being in love with him, and even Wiggins could tell that John was thinking about leaving her. Based on all that, Mary realized that she might not be able to keep Sherlock and John apart for much longer, which meant that her usefulness to Moriarty would be at its end. That meant she needed to escape and restart her life again somewhere else. However, Magnussen knows about Mary’s past and can expose her. So, Mary decides that she needs to neutralize him before she can run.

Mary gets information from Janine about when Magnussen will be in his office. Unbeknownst to Mary, however, Janine is also working for Moriarty and is a bit higher up on the totem poll than Mary is. (For more on Janine, see LSIT’s M-Theory.) Janine figures out that Mary intends to go after Magnussen the specific night that she does, so she feeds that information to Moriarty. Moriarty thinks that’s great, since it offers him a prime opportunity to have Sherlock killed now that his heart has been shattered. So, Moriarty tells Janine to tell Sherlock that Magnussen won’t be in his office that night. Moriarty expects Sherlock to walk in on Mary trying to kill Magnussen, and he expects Mary to respond by killing Sherlock.

That’s exactly what happens. And after Sherlock survives through the power of gay love, Moriarty decides that’s fine, and he’ll just keep messing with Sherlock a little bit longer before killing him because for Moriarty that’s a lot of fun.

So, yeah. Mary intended to kill Sherlock. She’s a crack shot, and she was standing six feet away from him. She didn’t miss—she shot him in the chest, in a place where no one expects to survive getting shot, and Sherlock actually did flatline and die. Mary didn’t call the ambulance because she didn’t want Sherlock to survive. Magnussen called the ambulance because he did have a reason for wanting Sherlock to survive—Magnussen needs Sherlock alive so that he can use him in his chain to get to Mycroft. Sherlock only survived getting shot because of his love for John, and because he was in hospital and could receive immediate medical attention when he woke up. 

Before we move on, now is also a good time to talk about the baby and Mary’s implied infidelity. Even before we learned that Mary is an assassin, TSOT offered us a few hints that the baby isn’t John’s. First, that episode went out of its way to introduce David as Mary’s still-attached ex. (@abitnotgood has a nice meta about this here.) Second, as I explained in the TSOT section, Mrs. Hudson’s story about Mr. Hudson indicated that Mr. Hudson cheated on her. This suggests that Mary has cheated on John, because Mr. Hudson is a mirror for Mary. It’s the only piece of Mrs. Hudson’s story about her relationship with Mr. Hudson that we don’t yet have a direct parallel for in John and Mary’s relationship, so it seems likely that this piece maps onto Mary and John, too, and it just hasn’t been explicitly revealed yet. Third, during this scene at 221B in HLV, Mary is shown wearing cuffed jeans with the legs turned up. Back in TGG, Sherlock said that a character on TV couldn’t be “the boy’s father” because of the turn-ups on his jeans. This likely indicates that John isn’t the father of Mary’s child. (This comes from LSIT and @incurablylazydevil here.) Finally, LSIT also recently pointed out to me that Jennifer Wilson (the pink lady from ASIP) is a mirror for Mary. Mary is blonde and clever, like Jennifer, and she wears a bright red coat that looks like the pink one Jennifer wore. We know that Jennifer was cheating on her spouse and had a daughter who was stillborn. The cheating and the daughter’s stillbirth could be clues that the baby either isn’t John’s or isn’t real/won’t survive.

All this seems to indicate that raising Mary’s daughter is not in John’s future. Either the writers decided to go in a different direction when they made S4, or S4 isn’t real.

After Sherlock tries to tell John that Mary saved his life by calling the ambulance, he collapses in pain and tells the paramedics who arrive just then that they might need to restart his heart on the way to the hospital. All of this is literally killing Sherlock.

Frustratingly, we see nothing of Sherlock’s, John’s, or Mary’s lives between this scene at 221B and the events of Christmas Day several months later. If John and Mary’s wedding was in May and HLV started about a month after the wedding, then we’re dealing with a gap of around six months. We only get hints about what the characters were doing and thinking during that time. Mrs. Holmes implies that Sherlock was in hospital for several months and was only released a bit before Christmas. From another scene, we know that Sherlock met with Magnussen at some point before he got out of the hospital. Mary says that she and John haven’t been speaking for “months,” so presumably they weren’t living together between the 221B scene and Christmas. We don’t know what might have been going on between Sherlock and John during that time, though.

I think this is because in HLV, the writers deliberately arranged these scenes so that they would raise new questions for the audience and would leave us with a cliffhanger, just as they always do at the end of a series. We were probably eventually meant to learn more about what happened during that gap, especially between Sherlock and John.

In any event, Christmas arrives and Sherlock invites John and Mary to his parents’ house to spend the holiday with his family. As TEH established, Mrs. Holmes is a mirror for Sherlock and Mr. Holmes is a mirror for John. This comes into play again at Christmas, giving us more information about Sherlock, John, and Mary.

From the Christmas scenes, we learn that Mrs. Holmes is an absolute genius, but she gave up her career in academia to raise her children. If the baby is real, then this might be foreshadowing, demonstrating that Sherlock will be willing to make compromises and to scale back his work to accommodate raising John’s child with him. Alternatively, it could simply be another indication that Sherlock is willing to make monumental sacrifices for the people he loves, which is something that we’ve already seen and are about to see again. (LSIT makes these observations in her M-theory meta.) After all, we saw in TSOT that Sherlock has moved far beyond his initial “married to my work” stance, and that he’s more than willing to scale back his work for John’s happiness. So even without John having a baby, it makes sense that Sherlock’s mirror gave up her career for her family.

On a lighter note, we also learn from Mr. Holmes’s conversation with Mary that Mr. Holmes thinks Mrs. Holmes is “unbelievably hot.” We already knew John thinks Sherlock is hot, but that’s fun.

After Mr. Holmes says this, we get this little exchange that’s very telling:

Mary: Oh my God. You’re the sane one, aren’t you? Mr. Holmes: Aren’t you?

Good on Mr. Holmes for realizing that John is actually insane! But what’s more important here is that when Mr. Holmes says to Mary “Aren’t you?” we as the audience are immediately supposed to scream with one voice “NO!” because we know that Mary is a sociopathic assassin. Mr. Holmes gets this wrong subtextually because Mary is not mirrored by either of the Holmes parents. Attempting to compare her to one of the partners in that relationship is futile, because the Holmes parents are mirrors for Sherlock and John. The Holmes parents have a happy, stable relationship, and Mary is not in this picture as one of the partners in that endgame couple.

John later says to Mary that Sherlock must have brought them there to see “his lovely mum and dad, a fine example of married life.” John is right. That’s exactly why we, the audience, are seeing Sherlock’s parents again in HLV—because they’re a fine example of married life for Sherlock and John, an example that doesn’t include Mary.

For now, though, John decides to “forgive” Mary. He tells her that no matter what she did in the past, he’s ready to move on from it and doesn’t need to know about it. He’s choosing to build a future with her so that they can raise their daughter together.

John’s forgiveness is almost certainly fake. He hasn’t forgiven Mary and he doesn’t trust her, but he’s come around to Sherlock’s way of thinking and decides that he needs Mary to believe that he’s forgiven her for now. Perhaps in the months between the 221B scene and Christmas, John figured out on his own that Mary is part of some larger game and that he needs to keep her close. Maybe he and Sherlock talked about it once they had a chance to talk without Mary in the room with them. Or maybe it’s simply that John has decided to trust Sherlock and to play the role that Sherlock has given him. Shortly after this, we see that John brought his gun to Sherlock’s parents’ house when Sherlock asked him to, even without knowing why. Maybe it’s the same thing—John pretends to take Mary back because he knows Sherlock wants him to, even if he doesn’t understand why.

In any event, at Christmas John pretends to forgive Mary and to take her back. There are multiple reasons to believe that John is pretending here.

First, John’s actual words throughout his and Mary’s conversation don’t communicate real forgiveness. Here’s what he actually says:

John: I’ve thought long and hard about what I want to say to you. These are prepared words, Mary. I’ve chosen these words with care. The problems of your past are your business. The problems of your future are my privilege. It’s all I have to say. It’s all I need to know.

John never says “I forgive you” or something even remotely akin to that. Hey, unlike:

(gif from here)

John’s little speech to Mary is also stiff and rehearsed. He even tells Mary “I’ve thought long and hard about what I want to say to you. These are prepared words, Mary. I’ve chosen these words with care.” This shows that John’s forgiveness and willingness to return to Mary are not genuine. He’s walking a careful line with her; if he’d truly forgiven her, then he wouldn’t feel like he had to be so careful with his words. John is clearly still holding back from Mary, and it’s not because he’s feeling overwhelmed by his emotions, like he did when he spoke to Sherlock in the train car. It’s because he doesn’t trust her and doesn’t want to be open with her. John has had months to figure out what to say to Mary, and he chose his words with such care because he wanted to say something that would make it seem like he was forgiving her and was ready to move forward without actually forgiving her.

Here’s a gif set from @incurablylazydevil that lines up the scene where John forgives Sherlock in TEH and this scene with Mary in HLV. It shows some really important differences. Sherlock begs John for his forgiveness, while Mary starts the conversation by being snarky and rude. John gets emotional and genuine when he speaks to Sherlock, but he’s stilted, practiced, and reserved when he speaks to Mary. John actually tells Sherlock that he forgives him, but he says something far less direct to Mary. And finally, John smiles and laughs along with Sherlock after their conversation, but he still looks extremely unhappy when he hugs Mary.

Indeed, John’s expressions in this scene with Mary don’t communicate forgiveness or acceptance. He barely smiles at all, even after he’s said his piece and Mary starts crying and they hug. Look at his face while they’re hugging. John does not look happy about this. He looks like something just died inside him. This is a task that he has to force himself to get through.

Here’s another reason why I think John’s forgiveness is fake. The forgiveness scene gets interrupted by HLV’s non-linear storytelling, just like how the train car scene and Sherlock’s explanation of the fall to Anderson were mixed together in TEH. In TEH, I think those scenes are scrambled in part to distract us from the fact that Sherlock lied about the snipers to Anderson. Since we’re supposed to be eager to find out what happens in the train car, we’re meant to be a bit distracted during Sherlock’s explanation to Anderson, and therefore less likely to realize that important parts of it are untruthful and that Sherlock is lying to protect his heart. The same thing happens here. Just like how Sherlock lied to Anderson, John is lying to Mary by appearing to take her back, and the structure of the episode is meant to communicate this. The tension and sadness that we see on John’s face are there because he hasn’t truly forgiven Mary and he doesn’t want to have to pretend to. But he pretends anyway, either because he understands that he has to or simply because Sherlock asked him to.

Interestingly, John’s maroon “I’m in love with Sherlock and feel hopeless about it” cardigan doesn’t make an appearance in this scene. If John had actually given up on Sherlock and decided to take Mary back because he thought she was the best he could do, then this would be the perfect moment for him to be wearing it. (And it wouldn’t even look out of place at Christmas, given the color.) But he’s not wearing it. Maybe at this point, John is actually feeling more hopeful about him and Sherlock. After learning about Mary’s past, John might be starting to think that this will eventually give him the opportunity to leave her once and for all, and in circumstances that will even leave him guilt-free. He just has to get through this nightmare first.

During all of this, Sherlock has decided that the next step to figuring out what the hell to do about Mary is for him and John to get their hands on Magnussen’s files on her. They need more information, and this is one way to get it. Sherlock decides to pretend to sell Magnussen Mycroft’s laptop in exchange for the files, but he doesn’t tell John about this plan. John had no idea that Sherlock was planning anything for Christmas Day, let alone that he intended to set up a fake deal with Magnussen.

Before this, Sherlock and John probably did read Mary’s flash drive but found that Mary had lied about what was on it. The flash drive was probably either blank or contained partial or incomplete information, so of course Sherlock and John still need to learn more. I mean, would a highly-skilled assassin actually carry around an easily-stealable flash drive with “everything about who I was” conveniently stored on it for anyone to access? I mean, she didn’t even give John a password. Come on. That would be even less clever than the British government putting the Bruce-Partington plans on an easily-stealable flash drive...especially because that flash drive actually did get stolen.

Proving just how much he trusts Sherlock, John immediately runs off to Appledore with Sherlock after Sherlock and Wiggins drug everyone else in the Holmes household. John even brought his gun with him to Christmas dinner when Sherlock asked him to, even though that request made no sense to him at the time. (I think John was being a bit stupid on that one, though. He definitely should have realized something was up when Sherlock asked him to bring his gun to Christmas dinner. But maybe John just thought it was because Sherlock didn’t trust Mary, and John brought the gun because he didn’t trust her, either.)

Just as a side note, this is more evidence that John has always cared a lot more about Sherlock than about Mary. John is literally a doctor, but he leaves his drugged pregnant wife for Wiggins to look after and goes running off with Sherlock. Of course he does, lol.

After Sherlock and John go outside the Holmes parents’ house to meet the CAM helicopter, we get this exchange:

Sherlock: Coming? John: Where? Sherlock: Do you want your wife to be safe? John: Yeah, of course I do. Sherlock: Good, because this is going to be incredibly dangerous.

If any of this is real, then this seems to suggest that Sherlock and John probably didn’t have an honest, heart-to-heart conversation about The Mary Situation in the months between the 221B scene and Christmas. Sherlock is operating on the belief that he’s successfully convinced John to take Mary back and to trust her, and John plays into it because he thinks it’s what Sherlock wants. Sherlock actually wants to get the files on Mary so that he and John can figure out what to do about her, but he’s telling John that it’s to protect her because he—very foolishly—doesn’t want to reveal his true plan to John until he has more information to go off of. Stupid, stupid, stupid, Sherlock!

Obviously, a lot of important things happen at Appledore.

First, John learns that it was Magnussen who put him in the bonfire in TEH and sees footage of Sherlock running into the bonfire to save him. This is important because it’s a moment when John comes face to face with visual proof of how much Sherlock cares about him and how willing he is to disregard his own safety in favor of John’s. It’s hard to tell what’s going on in John’s head as he watches that footage, but let’s hold onto that thought for now and come back to it in a bit.

Then Magnussen reveals that there are no vaults; all of his information is simply stored inside his head. Sherlock has made the exact same mistake that he made at the end of S1 and the end of S2. Once again, Sherlock underestimated his opponent and fell into their trap, just as he did when he believed the Bruce-Partington plans were the final pip but didn’t anticipate that Moriarty would take John as a hostage, and just as he did when he believed that Bach’s Partita No. 1 was Moriarty’s secret computer keycode. More importantly, Sherlock once again tried to come up with his own plan for confronting his enemy without confiding that plan in John, and in doing so, he led John straight into danger. Now it looks like Sherlock and John are both going to be arrested for attempting to commit treason by selling government secrets, and Sherlock doesn’t know what to do. Sherlock should have told John the truth!

For several awful minutes, Sherlock just stands there in front of the empty room with no vaults, staring ahead of himself and looking horrified at what he’s done by bringing John into danger like this.

Once the shock wears off, Sherlock realizes that the only way he can get John out of this is if he kills Magnussen himself. It’s the only way to permanently neutralize Magnussen as a threat to Mary, and therefore to John, Sherlock, and Mycroft so that Magnussen won’t have any leverage over any of them. Just as importantly, killing Magnussen gives Sherlock a way to take all of the blame, sparing John from prosecution and prison. Crucially, Sherlock deliberately waits to shoot Magnussen until after Mycroft and the police have arrived, thus ensuring that multiple witnesses see him aim the gun and pull the trigger. Sherlock wants to make sure that there will be no doubt that he was the one who killed Magnussen and John wasn’t responsible.

Sherlock’s decision to shoot Magnussen in full view of witnesses like this is an incredible act of self-sacrifice, and maybe the strongest evidence of all that Sherlock will do absolutely anything for John. Sherlock must have understood then that he would face life imprisonment or exile for this. He knew he was giving up his whole life for John.

Sherlock steeling himself to shoot Magnussen by looking at John:

(gif from here)

I honestly think the expression on Sherlock’s face in this moment might be one of the single strongest pieces of evidence for TJLC.

Before Sherlock shoots Magnussen, he asks Magnussen to confirm that the Appledore vaults exist only in his mind and nowhere else. Magnussen does, and then after Sherlock shoots him, he says to John “Give my love to Mary. Tell her she’s safe now.” Here’s what I think is going on with that.

When Sherlock realized that there were no paper files at Appledore and that he’d made a terrible mistake by bringing John there, I think he saw that this was the end of the game for him. When Sherlock decided to shoot Magnussen, he chose to sacrifice himself to save John, and he decided that the situation that he’d once hoped would only be temporary will now have to be permanent: John will have to stay with Mary not just temporarily, but permanently, so that he can stay safe from her and won’t be separated from his child. Moreover, since Mary has already proven that she’s willing to take desperate measures to keep John, Sherlock decides that he’ll have to trust that if whatever is going on with her extends beyond Magnussen, then Mary will do her best to keep John safe from any other dangerous actors who might be out there. Sherlock thinks Moriarty is dead and he just saw that it was Magnussen who put John in the bonfire, so Sherlock might now think that he actually did eradicate all of Moriarty’s network. That means that Sherlock probably hasn’t made the Moriarty-Mary connection, or that he’d considered it but has now ruled it out. So Sherlock thinks that if Mary is involved with other unknown dangerous people, he’ll have to count on Mary’s assassin training and her determination to keep John safe to protect John.

This was never what Sherlock wanted for John. Sherlock had hoped that by solving the mystery surrounding Mary with the files from Appledore, he could give John a real choice once they both had full information. But Sherlock failed to solve the mystery. He got outplayed, so this will have to be enough. At least with Magnussen out of the picture, John will have a shot at the future with Mary and their daughter that he’d once wanted, right? And after all, Sherlock might reason, Mary is dangerous and exciting, just like he is. She can keep John safe and happy the way Sherlock used to, and she can even provide John with the heteronormativity that John has always seemed to want, but that Sherlock would never have been able to give him.

And so, Sherlock tries to tell John that this is what has to happen now, in just a few words. “Give my love to Mary. Tell her she’s safe now.”

On the topic of Sherlock’s undying love for John and his willingness to do absolutely anything for him, by the end of S3, Sherlock has now, in order: (1) agreed to die alongside John at the pool rather than live without him, (2) refrained from telling John that he loved him even when holding back broke his heart, because he believed that saying something would put John in even greater danger from Moriarty, (3) faked his own suicide in order to save John’s life, even though lying to John and hiding his survival from John hurt Sherlock terribly, (4) respected John’s choice to remain with Mary even after Moriarty was gone and he and John could have had a relationship, (5) planned John’s wedding to someone else in order to make him happy, (6) come back to life for John after getting shot in the chest, (7) pushed John back to Mary even when John had an out and could have left her for him, because he believed that doing so would keep John safe, and (8) sacrificed his own life and freedom by killing another man in order to protect John from suffering the same fate.

This is true love.

Now we descend to Tarmac Hell, featuring probably the most devastating scene in the entire show.

At some point before the tarmac, Mycroft convinced his colleagues to give Sherlock the option of accepting the suicide mission in eastern Europe from MI6 as an alternative to spending the rest of his life in prison. Sherlock agreed. Now, Sherlock is preparing to leave the country forever. He knows he won’t survive more than six months and he believes that this is the last conversation he’ll ever have with John.

Sherlock steels himself to finally say “I love you” to John. He’s been through so much for John, he’s given him so much, and now he’s about to leave him forever and then he’s going to die. So he has to say it, he just has to.

It’s obvious that Sherlock is planning to finally make a love confession. Even Mycroft sees it! When Sherlock asks Mycroft if he and John can have a moment alone, Mycroft looks at him in shock, his expression saying, “Now? You’re seriously going to do this now? Well…okay.”

Sherlock and John step aside to have their conversation. It’s halting and terrible and they’re both struggling so much. Finally, Sherlock gets ready to say it. 

(gif from here)

Sherlock: John, there’s something I should say, I’ve meant to say always and then never have. Since it’s unlikely we’ll ever meet again, I might as well say it now.

There’s a long pause. Sherlock hesitates and looks down.

Then he draws in a deep breath and raises his eyes to look into John’s face.

Sherlock: Sherlock is actually a girl’s name.

You can see the progression of Sherlock’s expressions before and after here. It’s clear that Sherlock was making a difficult decision about what to do, and in the end he decided not to say what he wanted to. Instead he just tried to make John laugh one last time.

I’m struck by how different Sherlock’s and John’s body language and expressions are in this scene. Sherlock stares straight into John’s face throughout much of their conversation, as if he’s trying to take in everything that he can before they part forever. John, in contrast, keeps averting his eyes and looking off to the side instead of looking Sherlock in the eye. When John does look at Sherlock directly, his expression isn’t at all inviting. Sherlock said to Mycroft in front of John that this is likely the last conversation they’ll ever have together, and he says to John that it’s unlikely they’ll ever meet again. Yet although John must recognize the heavy sense of finality in those words, his body language and tone in this scene are very, very different from what he displayed in the train car when he thought he and Sherlock were about to die. Instead of letting himself be overwhelmed by his emotions, John seems to be intentionally using his body language and facial expressions to signal to Sherlock that he isn’t prepared for an emotional goodbye. He doesn’t want Sherlock to go there. 

John also doesn’t take the initiative to say anything kind or meaningful to Sherlock in this last conversation. That’s very different from how he behaved both during their phone call in front of Bart’s in TRF and in the train car. By opening their conversation with “Actually, I can’t think of a single thing to say,” John is trying to tell Sherlock that he doesn’t want to do this. He just can’t.

Why is John so closed off here? I think it’s because he’s finally figured it out—he has finally realized that Sherlock is in love with him. At Appledore, John saw the recording of Sherlock yelling “John!” and diving into the bonfire to save him. Then right after that, he witnessed Sherlock shoot Magnussen. This gif set shows John’s reaction after Sherlock said “Give my love to Mary. Tell her she’s safe now.” I think that in those frames, you can see John come to the realization that Sherlock did it for him, not for Mary. Between Appledore and the tarmac, John had at least a week to reflect on everything that happened at Appledore, and he seems to have finally figured it out. (Mycroft says in TAB that Sherlock was held in solitary confinement for a week before the tarmac.)

John gets it now. He knows that Sherlock is in love with him, and now it’s too late. They’re never going to see each other again, and there’s nothing John can do about it. So in these last moments, John can’t bear to hear Sherlock finally say it out loud. That’s too much for him, so he gives Sherlock signal after signal that he doesn’t want him to go there and isn’t prepared for an honest and heartfelt goodbye.

And Sherlock takes the hint. Sherlock wanted to tell John that he loves him, but when John’s posture remains uninviting, Sherlock backs down out of respect for John’s feelings. At the last moment, he decides that telling John that he loves him would be more of a burden to John now than a relief. So Sherlock switches to humor instead—just like he did in the train car when he realized that John felt overwhelmed and wasn’t prepared to say anything more about his feelings.

It must have taken so much courage for Sherlock to finally steel himself to tell John that he loved him, after we’ve seen him back down from showing or telling John this so many, many times before. And Sherlock even said that it’s something “I should say, I’ve meant to say always and then never have.” That he’s meant to say always! ALWAYS! Ahhhhh!! Sherlock’s decision not to say it here is so heartbreaking, but in a way, it’s also very brave and selfless. Once again, Sherlock has chosen to respect and protect John’s feelings, regardless of what he wants for himself.

Sherlock’s parting “to the very best of times” with that stiff, distanced handshake breaks my heart. The way S3 played out, Sherlock and John were never able to go back to what they had together when they were flatmates, never able to go back to those “very best of times” from before Sherlock’s fall. Those times are far in the past for them now, and neither of them ever realized that they weren’t going to last.

It also hurts that Sherlock doesn’t tell John that this is a suicide mission. When John asks him how long the mission will be and what comes after, Sherlock pauses before just saying “who knows” with a little shrug. Sherlock still seems unable to bring himself to tell John how far he’s willing to go for him.

Once Sherlock is on the plane, we see him staring out of the window with one hand raised to his mouth—the same hand he just shook John’s hand with before leaving him behind. Sherlock also looks like he’s been crying.

Then everyone sees Moriarty’s “Miss Me” broadcast. Oh no! Maybe Moriarty isn’t actually dead! Sherlock isn’t going to die in eastern Europe, apparently, and now he will have to figure out how Moriarty could possibly still be alive and what to do about it.

Before moving on to TAB, I want to talk about two other scenes from HLV that I couldn’t find a good place for before this without interrupting the flow too much. In both these scenes, the characters talk about the fact that Sherlock is gay about as directly as is humanly possible without literally saying that he’s gay.

First, Janine and Sherlock implicitly talk about Sherlock being gay during their conversation in Sherlock’s hospital room. This scene really popped out at me when HLV first aired because it’s just so clear.

Janine tells Sherlock “just once would have been nice,” implying that she would have liked to have had sex with him at least once during their fake relationship. Sherlock says “oh” as if he hadn’t even thought of that before, then dodges by replying “I was waiting until after we got married.” Janine laughs disbelievingly and says incredulously, “That was never going to happen.” This exchange tells us that Sherlock and Janine never had sex and that having sex with Janine is something that Sherlock would never have been willing to do.

As Janine is on her way out, she says to Sherlock “You shouldn’t have lied to me. I know what kind of man you are. But we could have been friends” and gives him a soft, slightly sad smile. I’ve always interpreted this as Janine saying to Sherlock, “I know you’re gay. If you hadn’t tried to lie to me, we could have been friends.” Sherlock looks a bit sad and regretful after she leaves, as if he agrees.

The scene where Sherlock and Mycroft talk while smoking behind their parents’ house also jumped out at me when the episode first aired. Mycroft asks Sherlock why he hates Magnussen so much, and Sherlock immediately and vehemently replies, “Because he attacks people who are different and preys on their secrets. Why don’t you?” I always took this to be Sherlock saying that he’s gay. (The hat deduction scene in TEH backs this up, too, because Sherlock talks about “being different” in the context of him missing John.) @nyxneon has a great meta that breaks down Sherlock’s hatred of Magnussen and Sherlock’s comments in this scene in more detail. Because of Magnussen’s role in the story as a master of blackmail, and specifically because of the history of this in the Victorian era, Sherlock’s comments are very queer-coded, and nyxneon’s meta makes some great points about how this is basically Sherlock saying he’s gay.

That’s it for HLV! If anyone read all of this, then thank you so, so much <3 <3