god major sholto as a sherlock mirror is INSANE to me. the implications....
first of all, in the steve thompson version of the TSO3 script, they also have him do deductions (deduce sherlock, to be a violin player with an older brother and some other things as well), and he's supposed to look almost exactly like sherlock, height, weight, etc. to be honest i prefer the more elegant, less in-your-face mirroring in the released TSO3, but the intention is the same.
so what do we see of major sholto in the show? we see him being a recluse, all alone, despised, outcasted. i don't need to draw that parallel for you. we see the show cut from sherlock saying 'into battle' to sholto dressing up, putting on the uniform that would go on to almost kill him. (possibly a parallel to sherlock's uniform, the outfit he wears on a daily basis, to present himself to society as the brain without a heart with no regard for the emotions of anyone else and none of his own -- which is killing HIM.)
then there's the whole "there's a proper time to die, isn't there? and one should embrace it when it comes," quote. what are the writers trying to say with this? are they trying to foreshadow sherlock's sacrifice to john and mary in HLV? are they implying suicidality post-wedding? what actually prompted this was my reread of the script/rewatch of TSO3. i noticed that during the scene when major sholto goes back to his hotel room, in the script (i didn't notice it on screen before) he's holding a drink and a gun with the intent of killing himself. what do we know sherlock did after the wedding? (substances) (a lot of them if molly's reaction is anything to go off of) all in all, the implications are immense, and i can't quite figure out how many of them were intentional, or if i'm reading too far into it. of course the parallel is explicit, but to what end? another thing about the steve thompson script is sherlock's declaration in his best man speech that they're weren't gay and weren't dating, which never made it into the released episode. it was something like "[most people actually thought we were gay].... we weren't... aren't. never were." with a 'beat' in between the iterations of 'weren't,' 'aren't,' and 'never were'. like he's hesitating or thinking about it. which essentially goes to show that he thinks (subconsciously) he and john are a 'were.' that they are past. in the finalized script, after the deduction that mary is pregnant, the writers said "something just ended." not to mention the conversation on the bench.
