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”
Has anyone gone through this yet? Because the fact that Mary didn’t get to be a bride on screen has been plaguing me for the last 24 hours.
Sherlock has that moment at the end, before Moriarty raises the veil, where he’s mirroring that moment in His Last Vow.
Mary is the only one of the women that we didn’t get to see as the bride–and we know Lady Carmichael didn’t kill her own husband because she was literally in the room with Sherlock when John saw the bride, yes? Sherlock assumes later that it was Molly who climbed out the window–but why couldn’t that have been Mary?
That particular bride even crops up scaring John in the editing when Sherlock’s “the women we have lied to, betrayed, ignored” line is delivered. John and the bride are on screen for “ignored.” Who has John been ignoring?
The fact that there was a “Miss me?” note on the corpse would support this theory, as well, if you’re of the belief that Mary is the “new” Moriarty. None of the other corpses had notes–why this one, if it wasn’t someone trying to send a message to Sherlock Holmes? (Like the Study in Pink suicides, there was only one note–and it was the one that started Sherlock on the path to Moriarty.)
So Sherlock is asking the Moriarty-bride, who has come specifically out to see him, why she engaged him in the case when she intended to commit the murder herself. He’s so sure it’s Lady C., but at the same time, he’s confused–he says it doesn’t make sense.
And the way he delivers this line is very similar to his delivery of the Lady Smallwood line in HLV. His reaction is similar, as well–he’s shocked. He says explicitly “It can’t be you.” He’s thrown the same way he was when Mary turned around and revealed herself as the person training a gun on Magnussen. Then that string of his mind palace starts to come undone and he “wakes up.”
But Sherlock’s subconscious is starting to put it together–it had to be Moriarty who committed the murder, but not Moriarty as Sherlock knows him.
Even when Sherlock starts to “wake up,” Moriarty’s line “You’re dreaming” is immediately said by Mary. Sherlock’s brain is connecting Mary to Moriarty–especially given the fact that we now know he was still in the mind palace when he heard Mary/Moriarty say “You’re dreaming.”
None of it makes sense to his brain because Moriarty is the “virus in the data.” He’s infiltrating in places where Sherlock’s brain seems too afraid to actually see the truth, the same way Sherlock saw Moriarty in Hound. Almost all the other episodes had direct parallels in this one, but Hound didn’t get one beyond the short mention at the beginning (”the dog one”) and the “once you’ve eliminated the impossible” bit with the ghost. But in Hound, Sherlock saw Moriarty in place of the scientist fellow whose name I can’t remember.
Here, he sees Moriarty in place of Mary.
And then, just like in Hound, he blinks it away and sees the person he’s meant to see. Sherlock “wakes up” and sees Mary.
I’m going to agonize over this for the next year, aren’t I?
I think you should be really proud of this, actually. Nicely done.
Yes, great point. Totally agree.
Also (and I have no spot to back myself up, so I could technically be wrong): I’m pretty sure everyone on the plane gets a mirrored line with their 1985 counterpart except Mary.
Sherlock has one, John has “morphine or cocaine?”, and Mycroft has “Did you make a list?”
Mary’s mirrored line is “You’re dreaming.” And it’s a mirror of Moriarty.
I’m more than ready and willing to believe that Mary was the one following Sherlock and John around during TRF and shooting those other assassins whenever they got close to the boys.
