So when Sherlock deduces Mary is pregnant, he bases it on three symptoms: increased appetite, change in taste perception, vomiting. One theory is that Mary could have easily faked those symptoms.
But another option I haven’t seen (and if someone has written this up already, please help me out with a link!!) is that those symptoms were genuine but Sherlock deduced pregnancy when in fact they are symptoms of something else. Something possibly deadly? And that’s why Mary looks so worried in TSoT, because she knows for sure she isn’t pregnant.
And maybe now Sherlock is working that out? Because this whole consumption thing in TAB is pressed so hard on us. And this is a really heavy moment, there’s a pause like this is a VERY important revelation…
The bride was dying. For awhile I kept wondering if this meant Jim was dying, because Jim is the bride. But it’s not Jim’s whose symptoms Sherlock has deduced. And the bride is also a mirror of Mary.
There were clear signs…she wasn’t long for this world. // All the signs were there. The signs of three.
Mary is very not pregnant in that mind palace. Sherlock doesn’t even think about the baby. He goes through a fast-forward Victorian version of everything from meeting John through the tarmac and says “the stage is set,” but it’s not, because while he set up to the point where the Watson’s marriage was obviously in trouble, but there was NOTHING about the pregnancy. Maybe here, finally, Watson’s saying she’s dying is his brain telling him that this is because he deduced wrong?
So she decided to make her death count.
TAB: She was already familiar with the secret societies of America.
HLV: All those wet jobs for the CIA.
Then there’s the whole Moran thing, and/or the idea that Mary is carrying out the Moriarty legacy, that Moriarty really is “more than a man,” that it’s a GROUP.
ASiP: You’re not the only one to enjoy a good murder. There’s others out there just like you, except you’re just a man … and they’re so much more than that. What d’you mean, more than a man? An organization? What?
TAB: A legend to strike terror into the heart of any man with malicious intent. A league of furies awakened.
And there’s also the planting of an idea, the technique Jim uses in TRF to get people to think Sherlock’s the liar.
TRF: You can’t kill an idea, can you? Not once it’s made a home in there. Moriarty is playing with your mind, too – can’t you SEE what’s going on?
TAB: Once the idea exists, it cannot be killed. This is the work of a single-minded person…
Ack. Crap. I don’t know…this is definitely a cracky crack theory, but….Mary as a dying vigilante. Adding it to my list of maybes.
NO BUT I HAVE FEELINGS because okay, what if Mofftiss took this two dimensional female character who served as a wife for Watson and then wasn’t even granted the dignity of an on-page death and were like “Well Mary, you have to die but we will give you a REASON, YOUR DEATH WILL COUNT”
