"Sherlock, episode 4x03: The Final Problem“

Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman, Rupert Graves, 
Mark Gatiss, Una Stubbs, Louise Brealey, Amanda Abbington

Guest starring: Andrew Scott as the husk that used to be 
Moriarty, and Sian Brooke as a cartoon character who should 
never have existed

Before I begin this recap, I feel I should make something 
clear. I am not enjoying this. Not anymore. I used to love 
watching this show and these recaps have been quite possibly 
the most fun I’ve ever had recapping. And being that this 
season – and this episode especially – aired just before the 
worst president my country has seen in recent memory officially 
took office I was really looking forward to this being quite 
possibly the only good thing to happen in my life for the 
foreseeable future. Instead, I watched with horror as one of 
the best written shows on television devolved into an 
incoherent mess, half of which seemed to have been swiped 
directly from some teenager’s terrible fanfic. This was 
followed by some bullshit in my real life including a cancer 
scare that could have jeopardized my ability to get insurance 
now thanks to the previously mentioned president so I went into 
a really dark place where I couldn’t fathom even facing this 
recap as I figured it would be as enjoyable as going over all 
the details of a horrific car crash (or, more appropriately 
given this episode, a plane crash).

Chrissy has been doing an admirable job so far in these recaps 
of encouraging me and keeping me from sliding completely into 
bitter crankiness while still letting me vent about the fact 
that this show has suddenly turned into garbage slapped 
together by people who are in too much of a hurry to care about 
all the details they spent the past three seasons and a special 
obsessing over. She and Emilio (who will be joining us for this 
recap again as I need all the help I can get) have spent the 
past few months reeling me back in whenever I threaten to leave 
the fandom because I just can’t take being screamed at by girls 
who are clearly young enough to be my daughters (although I 
suspect this is partly for selfish reasons as they want to see 
me finish that fic I started). They have listened to my rants 
about this episode and assured me that I am not crazy every 
time I get accused of not being a “real fan” because OMG THAT 
EPISODE WAS AMAZING!!!!!111!!!
   Chrissy: I believe I said you were not WRONG for 
    questioning their taste in entertainment. I would never 
    say you aren’t crazy.
   Emilio: I do want to see the rest of that fic, actually.
   Diandra: I’m so lucky to have you guys as friends. 
    Really. You’re going to make me cry over here.
   Chrissy: Are you done with the mushy nonsense now? 
    Should I start pouring? Or getting beers or something?
   Diandra: I still think it was a mistake letting the two 
    of you be in the same room.
   Emilio: Eh. What’s the worst that can happen?
   Diandra: We both know that nothing good ever comes from 
    someone saying that exact phrase.
   Emilio: We’re not in a horror movie, though, so it’s 
    okay.

Right. So as I’ve mentioned in previous recaps, I have 
concluded that the only way we are getting through this episode 
with our sanity (mostly) intact is if we are rip-roaring drunk 
and I give up all hope of this show ever making sense again. 
Hopefully this won’t be a total disaster. Here goes nothing. As 
I said in the previous recap: we who are about to die salute 
you.
   [Emilio holds up an already open beer and Chrissy bumps 
   her full wine glass against it in a toast]

We open on an extreme close up of someone’s eye. It opens and 
the pupil contracts. Oh, did I accidentally put in the wrong 
disc and we’re actually watching an episode of “Lost”?
   Chrissy: I’m sure you would love that, but no. I’m not 
    sure if Mofftiss did that intentionally or not.
   Emilio: Did what? I’ve never seen “Lost”.
   Diandra: [splutters and stares at Emilio in shock]
   Chrissy: Well, I guess we know which fandom the two of 
    you DIDN’T meet in.

Further reinforcing the theory that the “Lost” parallel is, in 
fact, intentional, we pan out to show the eye belonging to a 
little girl who is on a plane. She blinks at the emergency 
oxygen masks dangling in front of her face. She shakes her 
sleeping mother and calls for her, growing increasingly 
panicked as she realizes that a) she is NOT waking up and b) 
everyone else on the plane is also asleep.
   Chrissy: It’s okay, sweetie, they’re just already in the 
    sideways universe. You’ll see them soon once the plane 
    crashes and you die a firey death.
   Emilio: So the island really was purgatory?
   Chrissy: [ducks in anticipation of a rant]
   Diandra: I’m going to forgive you for that misconception 
    since you haven’t seen the show, but I WILL be loaning 
    you my DVDs. 

The girl climbs over mum into the aisle and sees that the 
entire crew including the pilots are also asleep. She can see 
this because for some reason the door to the cockpit is hanging 
wide open. A cell phone rings and she follows the noise to find 
it in the front pocket of one of the bulkhead seats. She 
answers with a whimpering “help me please! I’m on a plane. 
Everyone’s asleep!” Suggesting that this is some sort of 
bizarre dream sequence or something, Moriarty’s voice answers 
“welcome to the final problem.”

Credits. This is probably your final chance to save yourself 
from the coming insanity. Go. Now. Save yourselves.

For the masochists still reading: don’t say I didn’t try to 
warn you.

Somebody is watching either a porno or a detective drama with 
terrible suggestive dialogue when we come back. It turns out to 
be Mycroft watching an old film reel and smiling and lip 
synching along with the actors. The reel starts jumping and 
showing snippets of a home video. Mycroft puts out his 
cigarette and the horrible movie finally cuts away completely 
while the femme fatale is describing how “thoroughly” she wants 
the “authorities” to “search” her.
   Emilio: This movie sounds awesome, actually.
   Diandra: That’s just because you enjoy watching things 
    that are terrible so you can make fun of them.
   Emilio: Yes, which is why I am here right now doing this 
    recap with you.
   Chrissy: Set, match, point.

The home video appears to be an actual home movie of Benedict’s 
parents from a time he was probably too young to remember with 
a portly older child and a curly haired younger child edited 
in. This is where casting Benedict’s actual parents obviously 
came in handy. Mycroft just looks wistful and not all that 
worried until the words I’M BACK appear in serial killer 
handwriting and the reel snaps. He goes to open the door of 
what is apparently his personal home theater and finds it 
locked. A girl’s voice whispers his name from somewhere, 
there’s a thumping sound of somebody running across the floor 
upstairs and the door creeks open. He steps through tentatively 
and it slams behind him.
   Emilio: What were you saying about a horror movie 
   earlier?

Lights flicker at the other end of a long hallway...
   Chrissy: Some shutters blow open in a gust of wind, the 
    floorboards creek beneath him and somewhere in the 
    distance a wolf howls...
   Diandra: The phone rings and a voice asks if he likes 
    scary movies...
   Emilio: ...and then tells him he’ll be dead in seven 
    days. Come on, girls, he was JUST WATCHING A MOVIE.
He grabs an umbrella from a stand and yanks down on the handle 
to reveal that it is actually a disguised sword. Because of 
course it is. Seriously, are Mofftiss trying to make a case 
that they should write a James Bond movie? He turns his phone 
on flashlight mode and creeps down the dark hallway. A child 
runs past an adjoining hall and then seems to appear at the end 
of the hall he’s in when he turns his head. He creeps closer 
until the flashlight reveals that it is a dummy. But there’s 
still a girl’s voice whispering his name from somewhere.

He tells whoever is doing this to come out already because he 
doesn’t have time for this nonsense. The girl’s voice sing-
songs that they have all the time in the world and calls him 
“brother dear”. And then the girl runs up some nearby steps and 
he follows.
   Chrissy: Forget James Bond. I think they’re making an 
    argument that they should do the next “Paranormal 
    Activity”.
   Diandra: Oh, Jesus, that series is still going?
There is another long hallway at the top of the stairs with 
paintings all along one wall. Mycroft demands to know who this 
is. The girl says he knows very well who it is. He says that’s 
impossible. She says nothing is impossible and a light 
flickers. Something that looks like blood pours from the faces 
of the people in all the paintings. The little girl taunts that 
there’s an east wind coming to get him. Now beginning to look 
scared, he stammers that she couldn’t have gotten out. 

A clown sticks his head out from down the hall.
   Chrissy: Why is Emilio hiding behind me?
   Diandra: Yeah, sorry about that.
   Emilio: JUST TELL ME WHEN IT’S GONE!
The clown steps into the hall and draws another sword from 
somewhere. Mycroft is like ‘okay, I guess I might as well 
entertain this insanity and hope I wake up soon’. He removes 
the blade from the sword to reveal that the handle is a pistol 
and tries to shoot it. It clicks empty. Can we stop this before 
he tries to make a phone call on his shoe or something? The 
girl continues to taunt him and the clown charges with his 
sword. Mycroft runs back downstairs and tries to open doors 
that are all locked. 

And then Sherlock jumps through a doorway, wearing the stupid 
deerstalker and whistles. The lights come on and the “little 
girl” comes out. It’s actually a little guy in a dress and wig. 
Sherlock thanks Mycroft for confirming that he has a sister 
somewhere that he previously didn’t know about because Mofftiss 
only recently pulled this plot twist from their asses. Or, you 
know, because she has been incarcerated from the time they were 
very young. And Mycroft knew about it. As did, presumably, 
their parents but I’m not drunk enough yet to address questions 
about why they either developed amnesia or decided to go along 
with Mycroft’s plan to pretend she never existed until just 
now.
   Chrissy: Here, give me that beer you’re drinking.
   Diandra: Why?
   Chrissy: I’m going to pour a shot of vodka in it.
   Emilio: I’ll just have another beer as long as you’re 
    up.

Mycroft groans, rubs his forehead and asks WHY Sherlock would 
put on this whole ridiculous, elaborate performance. Funny. 
We’ve been asking Mofftiss the same thing ever since this 
episode aired. Sherlock, basically ignoring him, notes that 
Mycroft is TERRIFIED of their sister for some reason. Mycroft 
growls that he has NO IDEA what he’s dealing with. No, and 
neither does anybody else because this is completely uncharted 
territory we are entering here. John comes out from another 
doorway and adds the conclusion that the sister is obviously 
out of whatever hole Mycroft threw her into. Mycroft argues 
that that’s not possible. John says yeah, well, trust me. She 
posed as my therapist and ended my last session by shooting me. 
Oh, and I’m still lying in a hospital bed recovering, so 
obviously everything that is happening right now is just a 
figment of my fevered imagination. I’m sorry, my muse seems to 
have taken control with that last sentence in a desperate 
effort to redirect this to something that actually makes sense. 
Actually, Sherlock sighs that it was just a tranquilizer 
because apparently the whole thing was just done for cheap 
dramatic effect.
   Chrissy: You’re a writer. Have you ever written yourself 
    into a corner and had to do something ridiculous to get 
    yourself out of it or put an end to a scene?
   Diandra: You mean like that scene I wrote in “The 
    Healer” where I came dangerously close to clichéd “fuck 
    or die” territory? Yeah. The difference is I actually 
    had the sense to stop it and go in a completely 
    different direction.
   Chrissy: Yeah, but...okay, so that’s a bad example 
    because John has magical abilities to repair damage 
    like that in that story. You must have other examples.
   Diandra: Probably, but the fact remains that I am a 
    fanfiction writer. Fanfiction is an entirely separate 
    style with its own tropes and I’m not getting paid to 
    dash out nonsense for the general public to consume 
    because I’m trying to make a deadline and I have 
    writer’s block. 
   Emilio: Weren’t you using an argument like this when you 
    were talking about the coffin scene later in this 
    episode?
   Diandra: Yes. Right. We’re already getting ahead of 
    ourselves in our rants. God, this is going to be a long 
    episode. [drinks] [coughs] You put too much vodka in 
    this, Chris.
   Chrissy: No, I didn’t.

Sherlock tells “you two” that Bill is outside waiting with the 
money he promised them. The little person scampers off and John 
looks puzzled. “Two?” Sherlock is like ‘yeah, that guy and the 
clown who is still hovering creepily by the banister for some 
reason.’ John is like ‘what clown? We never hired a clown.’
   Emilio: That’s not funny!
   Diandra: It’s a little bit funny.

Sherlock heads for the door and Mycroft splutters that he’s 
just LEAVING? Sherlock says um...yeah. Because apparently my 
Deux Ex Machina of a sister is coming for us all and “someone’s 
disabled all your security”. “Sleep well,” he calls as he heads 
out. Mycroft glares at him like he’s regretting resisting that 
impulse to smother him when he was an infant and blame it on 
SIDS. As John goes to leave, Mycroft asks him why his brother 
would do something like this to him. John, taking a page from 
Sherlock’s blame evasion, says that “someone” convinced him 
that Mycroft would only tell the truth if he was shitting his 
pants in terror. Mycroft justifiably sneers at him and John 
tells him not to worry because there’s a place for people who 
are scared and desperate and have nowhere else to go. He 
invites Mycroft to visit 221b in the morning. Mycroft snarls 
that this isn’t one of their cases. No. No, I’m pretty sure 
Arthur Conan Doyle would agree with you on that one. John just 
snottily tells him to close the window upstairs because there 
IS, in fact, an east wind coming.

So the next scene begins with Mycroft standing awkwardly beside 
the client chair in 221b. John and Sherlock are just staring at 
each other from their respective chairs.
   Chrissy: How do you feel about role playing, Emilio?
   Diandra: Knowing about your extracurricular activities 
    makes the wording of that question alarming, Chris.
   Chrissy: No, I mean...shut up...Emilio, you took the 
    same quiz the two of us did about which Sherlock 
    character you are, right?
   Emilio: I took it twice. Once it said Moriarty, the 
    other it said John.
   Chrissy: Right, so I was thinking that for this recap 
    you should play John whenever we do our little role 
    play cutaways.
   Emilio: Actually, since I’m new and I got Moriarty too, 
    I think I should play Moriarty/Eurus.
   Chrissy: Oh. Yeah, that makes more sense. Okay, now that 
    we have that established, can you take this scene from 
    the top again, Dee?

So the next scene begins with Mycroft standing awkwardly beside 
the client chair in 221b. John and Sherlock are just staring at 
each other.
   Chrissy: Think he knows that we were having angry make-
    up sex before your birthday party?
   Diandra: How could he possibly? I mean, it’s not like 
    you were leering at me the entire time and smiling 
    every time I went to sit down and winced. Oh, 
    wait...yes you were.
Mrs. Hudson, standing in the doorway, tells him he has to sit 
in the chair or they won’t talk to him. Mycroft scoffs that he 
isn’t a CLIENT. Sherlock invites him to leave then. Mycroft 
sighs, refrains from asking why JOHN is going along with 
Sherlock’s nonsense these days and sits in the chair. Then he 
asks if Mrs. Hudson is just going to continue to hover in the 
corner there the whole time. Sherlock looks at her like ‘it’s 
okay, you can go.’ She asks Mycroft if he would like some tea. 
When he says yes, she waves in the direction of the kitchen and 
says ‘great, the kettle is over there.’ Because she is getting 
all the best lines of this whole season.

Once she leaves, Mycroft asks what the next step of this 
ridiculous dance is. Sherlock says now he tells them all about 
this sister he can’t remember and why the fuck Mycroft has 
spent their whole lives scaring Sherlock by telling him the 
“east wind” is coming for him. Mycroft says no, he wasn’t 
trying to SCARE him. He was testing him. You know, because 
repressed memories can randomly pop to the surface at any time 
so he occasionally used trigger words to see if this one was in 
danger of breaking through.
   Chrissy: How’s the psych major doing with this so far?
   Diandra: [grumbling]

Sherlock is like yeah, sure, whatever. But WHY did I repress 
the entire memory of her in the first place? Mycroft looks at 
John and says this is a “private” family matter. Sherlock says 
yes, and John is staying. John looks down at the pad he is 
writing in with a tiny smirk like ‘that’s my boy.’ 
   Chrissy: I will reward you for that later in an entirely 
   non-family-friendly manner.
He clears his throat and asks what the age gap was between the 
three Holmes siblings. Mycroft says seven years between him and 
Sherlock. One between Sherlock and East Wind. John nods and 
mutters “middle child. Explains a lot.” Um, no. No, it doesn’t. 
You know why? Because absolutely no version of Sherlock Holmes 
has EVER BEEN A MIDDLE CHILD. Because you can’t have a middle 
child when you ONLY HAVE TWO CHILDREN. A secret third OLDER 
BROTHER was only ever a theory some scholar came up with in 
1962 (thirty years after Doyle died) to explain why neither 
Sherlock nor Mycroft were taking care of the family estate (the 
primary job of the eldest male child in Victorian England).  

This is Chris. Emilio and I just spent the last ten minutes or 
so calming Diandra down after she tried to Google the date on 
that third brother theory and had to wade through several 
questions from fans about whether Eurus was really in the 
books. She made a very alarming angry noise, pounded the rest 
of her spiked beer and started grumbling about how Mofftiss 
have officially ruined Sherlock Holmes. On the plus side, I 
think the alcohol might finally be kicking in.

JGIWKQALGIHQIGIGI3OQHBDFIDFOH9444IHJ;OSRIOEQRHQT34JSGR9HU4O;OIS
TLI4TY WHAT? OH, SORRY. Is this better? Um... John asks if 
Eurus has “it” too. Well, obviously not. You’re a doctor. You 
have a female baby. You should know how this works. Mycroft 
asks what he means by “it”. “The deduction thing,” John 
elaborates.
   Diandra: Sorry, that’s his pet name for it. I call his 
    the little Captain.
   Chrissy: General, dear.
   Diandra: Oh, did he get a promotion?
Mycroft reminds John that of the two Holmes boys, HE is the 
“smart one”. Sherlock is like ‘yeah, yeah, we know, fuck you.’ 
Mycroft says yes, well, Eurus was “incandescent”. Old fashioned 
and replaced by CFL? No, wait... 

Mycroft says their intelligence was tested several times and he 
always scored remarkable, but Eurus scored a superbrain level 
of genius that has quite possibly never been seen before. Like, 
she may as well be a Marvel character like Ozymandius or 
something.
   Emilio: Ozymandius is from “The Watchmen”.
   Diandra: And?
   Emilio: “The Watchmen” is DC, not Marvel.
   Diandra: ............and?
   Chrissy: You see what I have to deal with here? Just 
    give up now while you still have most of your sanity.
   Diandra: Yes, learn from what she says, not what she 
    does.
   Chrissy: Bite me, Dee.

Sherlock is like yes, fine, but WHY DON’T I REMEMBER HER AT 
ALL? Mycroft says he does in some way. “Every choice you’ve 
ever made, every path you’ve ever taken...”
   Emilio: Every move you make, every step you take, I’ll 
   be watching you!
He claims everything about the way Sherlock is today “is your 
memory of Eurus”.

And then we abruptly flash back to the Holmes children playing 
in some puddles with Redbeard as Mycroft keeps rambling about 
how DIFFERENT Eurus was right from the beginning and how she 
knew things she shouldn’t have. Like she was tapping into all 
of human knowledge with godlike abilities or some bullshit. The 
little girl turns suddenly and looks right at him, announcing 
that he “looks funny” as a grown up. Because I guess she is so 
superhuman that the laws of time and relative dimensions in 
space don’t apply to her. 
   Emilio: Wait, so she’s a Time Lord? 
   Diandra: I’m not sure if that theory would make it 
    better or worse.
   Chrissy: Wait...is that what TARDIS stands for?
   Diandra: And now you see what I have to deal with, 
    Emilio.
   Emilio: No, but it works, doesn’t it? I think 
    Benedict/Sherlock’s mom was on “Doctor Who” back before 
    he was born.
   Diandra: That would make HIM a Time Lord, not her.
   Emilio: Maybe he and Eurus were actually supposed to be 
    twins but mom got stuck in a time loop, causing Eurus 
    to come out much later. Or maybe she was pregnant when 
    she got on the TARDIS, spent a few years traveling and 
    came back with both Sherlock and Evil River.
   Chrissy: I don’t know what’s going on anymore.
   Diandra: Hush. No, but you should totally write that 
    crossover fic, Emilio.
   Emilio: Why would I write it? YOU are the writer.
   Chrissy: Hahaha. No, we’d probably get a cease and 
    desist letter from the BBC because my understanding is 
    that they don’t want a crossover.
   Diandra: That’s Mofftiss. Although we might get a letter 
    from the BBC about how Johnlock was never meant to be 
    cannon and they never said Sherlock was gay and blah 
    blah autoresponse. 
   Emilio: What were we talking about?
   Diandra: When?
   Chrissy: I think we were recapping this mess of an 
    episode.
   Diandra: We were? Whose brilliant idea was that?

Back in 221b John asks Mycroft what’s wrong. He shakes himself 
and says the memories are just too disturbing. Sherlock demands 
he elaborate. Mycroft says they found her with a knife once, 
looking like she was cutting herself. She told Mycroft she 
wanted to see how her muscles worked. Noting her apparent 
detachment while cutting open her own arm, Mycroft then asked 
if she was capable of feeling pain. She said “which one is 
pain?” John is freaking out a little, but Sherlock just asks 
what happened after that. 

Mycroft stands up and we get one of those dream sequence type 
shots that transport him, Sherlock and John into the field 
surrounding Skyfall. Or, as he calls it, Musgrave. Because it’s 
not totally Skyfall with a half ass reference to something that 
was actually in one of Doyle’s stories. Mycroft explains that 
it was their ancestral home and I’m going to pretend I didn’t 
just nearly type “incestral”.
   Emilio: You did type “incestral” just now in your tweet.
   Diandra: Damnit. 
   Chrissy: Maybe because we forgot to go back to that 
    whole “I think she liked me” weirdness from the last 
    episode after it was revealed that she was his sister 
    and your brain is still stuck on it?
   Diandra: Yeah, let’s go with that.

Oh, yeah, and if you follow me on Twitter you got a bit of 
insight into the process we go through to write these recaps 
because I decided it would be fun to live tweet while we were 
watching and recording our reactions and analyses. And now I 
have to pull all these pieces together and try to transcribe 
and edit them into something that makes as much sense as is 
possible for this episode. Wish me luck.

Mycroft muses that Sherlock always liked to play around the 
“funny” gravestones on the property. John asks how they were 
“funny”. Mycroft says that if the dates were anything to go by 
they were obviously fake. It seemed like some sort of 
“architectural joke” that Sherlock found fascinating. The 
camera focuses on one for “Nemo Holmes” who was born in 1617 
and died 205 years later at the age of 32.
   Emilio: And Amy and Rory died a couple decades before 
    they were born at ripe old ages. Seriously, this is a 
    family of either companions or actual Time Lords.
   Chrissy: Who are Amy and...
   Diandra: STOP!
   Chrissy: ...Rory?
   Emilio: River’s parents. River actually met them as an 
    adult before she was born. Also, she was the Doctor’s 
    wife.
   Chrissy: How...
   Diandra: Seriously, dude, just stop. I saw all the 
    episodes and I still can’t figure out what sort of 
    drugs Moffat must have been on. You do NOT want to try 
    to untangle that timeline. 

Child Eurus starts singing about somebody finding her deep 
below the old beech tree. Back in 221b, Sherlock and Mycroft 
both spontaneously recite the rest of her song: help succor me 
now, the east winds blow. Sixteen by six, brother and under we 
go. Mycroft notes that Sherlock is magically remembering things 
now.
   Chrissy: Or are these just false memories, planted to 
    confuse him?
   Diandra: Tell me you are not quoting my fic now.
   Emilio: Did Henry make him take the pill this morning? 
    Maybe none of this is real and he’s been dreaming this 
    whole time.
   Diandra: I think maybe we might have hit the liquor a 
    little too hard already. Maybe we should take a break 
    and dry out a little.
   Chrissy: We’re still in the normal part of the episode. 
    Do you really want to go into the rest of it sober?
   Diandra: Yeah, okay, never mind.

Little Sherlock, wearing his pirate hat and holding a play 
sword, suddenly gets up from the kitchen table where the other 
two kids are and runs outside yelling for Redbeard. The three 
adults are still standing outside and John looks at Sherlock 
and asks who Redbeard is. Okay, how is this actually playing 
out in 221b? Did Sherlock blurt out Redbeard’s name or are we 
suggesting they might actually be there watching the memories 
play out? Do Mofftiss even understand how timelines work 
anymore? Sherlock says he was their dog. Mycroft adds that 
Eurus locked him away somewhere nobody could find him and if 
anybody asked where he was she would just repeat that insane 
song. Mycroft makes sure to add that it was a sort of “ritual” 
because they are not above slipping the names of original Doyle 
stories into the dialogue awkwardly and thinking this makes 
them sound clever. He says they kept begging her to tell them 
where she’d hidden Redbeard, but she just said the song WAS the 
answer. Sherlock asks what happened to Redbeard like he can’t 
deduce an answer himself from all of this. Mycroft says they 
never found him, so...obviously he died eventually, but “she 
started calling him drowned Redbeard”.

Mycroft turns to John while Benedict contemplates whether this 
technically counts as playing an idiot for once and says that 
Sherlock was naturally traumatized because he was very 
emotional back then. After that he changed. Never talked about 
it again. Became less emotional. Forgot he even had a sister.
   Chrissy: Should we go over all the ways that explanation 
    is fucked up?
   Diandra: I feel like this entire recap should cover 
    that, so for now let’s just mark it as the moment when 
    Mofftiss pulled a load of crackpot psychobabble from 
    their asses.

John questions how Sherlock could have forgotten Eurus if she 
was living in the same house. Yes, because THAT’S THE ONLY 
PROBLEM WITH THAT ENTIRE SCENARIO. Mycroft is like ‘aha, but 
she wasn’t living in the house anymore because we locked her up 
after that.’ John is confused by this because last he checked 
you don’t lock up children just because a dog went missing. 
Probably not, but the world might be better off if we locked up 
little budding psychopaths who MURDER THEIR FAMILY PET WERE YOU 
EVEN LISTENING? Mycroft says yes, well, I didn’t mention the 
part where she did a bunch of artwork after that detailing her 
plans to murder Sherlock, threw it all in a pile and set fire 
to it, burning the entire house down.
   Chrissy: Well, at least the apple didn’t fall far from 
    the Drama Queen tree.
   Diandra: Maybe this is why Mofftiss have always insisted 
    Sherlock is a sociopath. It distinguishes his behavior 
    from that of his CLEARLY PSYCHOPATHIC sister.

Mycroft is like ‘so obviously we had to lock her up in the 
loony bin and throw away the key.’ She died there when she 
started another fire that she got herself caught in. Sherlock 
announces that that’s a lie. Mycroft says yeah, okay. 
Obviously. But that’s the story I told our parents so they 
would quit asking or visiting or acknowledging her continued 
existence in any way, thereby explaining why they didn’t seem 
aware that they had another child until this episode. At any 
rate, since they realized that Eurus had supernatural abilities 
that rivaled Jean Grey and/or Sylar, “Uncle Rudi” took care to 
find an institution that could properly contain her.
   Emilio: Was this the cross-dressing uncle?
   Diandra: Holy crap, I completely forgot about that.
   Chrissy: That’s okay, Mofftiss probably did too and this 
    is somebody else entirely.

Anyway, he found a super max facility located on an island 
called Sherrinford. Like Fort Boyard. Or Alcatraz. But, you 
know...British. Where the government keeps all the people who 
are a clear and present danger...
   Emilio: [stands up and applauds]
   Diandra: No, you’re only supposed to do that when I use 
    the title of the thing we’re actually watching.
   Chrissy: What are we doing now?
   Diandra: Never mind. It’s something we saw on a comedy 
    site once, I think.
...a clear and patriot October to society.
   Emilio: They represent the sum of all fears.
   Diandra: Dork.
   Emilio: You’re a dork.
   Diandra: No, you are.
   Chrissy: Jesus, it’s like Emilio switched brains with 
    your sister.
   Emilio: Nah, I just have experience as the older sister 
    in another life.
   Diandra: Why do you think I call him BroSis?
   Chrissy: You have never done that. At least not that I 
    can remember.
   Diandra: I haven’t? Well, I’ll have to start then.

And I’ve forgotten where we were again. Right. Sister 
PsychoMutant. Mycroft assures the boys that she’s been at 
Sherrinford since early childhood and whoever they met can’t 
possibly be her. Because she is obviously omniscient, this is 
the moment Eurus sends a drone crashing through a window to 
announce how mistaken Mycroft is, singing the song they were 
just discussing from a speaker somewhere on it. All three men 
stand up and move into different positions as if they know 
where they will need to be in a minute or so. Mycroft orders 
them to stay as still as they can. John, who was in the 
military in a war zone remember, is like ‘dur...why? What is 
it?’ Sherlock says it’s a drone. John says he knows that, he 
meant what is that thing it’s carrying? Mycroft identifies it 
as a DX-707, a new weapon he has personally authorized sales of 
known as a “patience grenade”. They all stand around and watch 
as it lands and beeps because why not? Mycroft says that means 
the motion sensor is activated and if they move it will 
explode.
   Chrissy: Great, so remind me why we didn’t just run 
    BEFORE it activated?
   Emilio: I believe we discussed this thing called  
    Mofftiss logic in the last episode?
   Diandra: Also, logic would divert the story arc they are 
    determined to follow.

Sherlock asks how powerful it is. Mycroft says it will 
completely destroy the flat, but the neighbors should be safe 
assuming the walls are of average strength. I’ve compared this 
episode to “The Hurt Locker” before, but I’m thinking that’s a 
very poor comparison now because the people who wrote that 
movie obviously have a better grasp of how bombs work. He does 
point out that the café downstairs might be in the radius 
though since it landed on the floor. Sherlock says no, Mrs. 
Hudson doesn’t open it on Sunday mornings. John is like yeah, 
but MRS. HUDSON. The camera pans down to show her vacuuming, 
headphones in her ears, headbanging to loud heavy metal music.
   Emilio: Of course she is. She is awesome.
   Diandra: Was there ever any doubt about that?
   Emilio: No. No, there was not.

Sherlock listens and says if she sticks to her usual routine 
this should only take her another two minutes. John says she 
keeps the vacuum cleaner at the back of the flat, so if they 
wait until she’s putting it away she would be safer. Because 
they’re going to have to move eventually and one of them might 
as well acknowledge that. Sherlock suggest they wait eight 
seconds after the vacuum stops then and asks how fast the 
trigger response time is on the grenade. Mycroft looks at him 
like he doesn’t understand those words despite all evidence 
that he should so far, so he asks how long they have between 
the time they move and the time the grenade goes boom. Mycroft 
says oh, “we have a maximum of three seconds to vacate the 
blast radius.” You really think the audience you’re going for 
on this episode is going to understand words like “vacate” and 
“blast radius”, huh? Okay. Sherlock states the bleeding 
obvious: that he and John will jump out the windows and Mycroft 
can run down the stairs. I say this is bleeding obvious because 
as I noted when they all stood up, they moved into positions 
within two feet of these three locations like they already knew 
that was exactly where they would need to be. 

Sherlock announces that they have a minute left and asks if a 
phone call is “possible”. Mycroft is like ‘who the fuck would 
you be calling?’ Sherlock reminds Mycroft that John has a 
daughter he might want to say goodbye to.
   Chrissy: I do? I mean...right...Josie. Er...Rosie.
Mycroft apologizes to John and says any movement will set off 
the bomb. John is like ‘yeah, well, the thought of doing the 
whole last phone call cliché didn’t even occur to me until JUST 
NOW THANKS A LOT, SHERLOCK.’ He suddenly blurts a quote from 
Oscar Wilde: “the truth is rarely pure and never simple.” And 
this is relevant how? Apparently we’re just entertaining random 
brain farts to kill time because he notes that they read “The 
Importance of Being Earnest”, which the quote is from, in 
school. Mycroft remembers that. “I was Lady Bracknell.” 
Sherlock remembers that and says Mycroft was great. Really. 
Mycroft is like ‘aww...thanks, bro! Have I mentioned lately 
(or, you know, ever) how much I love you?’ “I’ve always 
wondered.”
   Emilio: “How I looked in a dress” is obviously how that 
    sentence was supposed to end.
   Diandra: He may or may not take after Uncle Rudi.
If this whole scene sounds weird I promise it has absolutely 
nothing to do with the way I’m describing it. 

The vacuum stops and Sherlock wishes them luck, then counts 
down the last three seconds. They run in their designated 
directions in slow motion and we cut to a shot of the windows 
from outside as John and Sherlock jump through, chased by 
fireballs in a special effect shot worthy of the BBC. By that, 
I mean that it looks cheesy and fake as all hell. Maybe 
slightly better than that “Doctor Who” scene I recapped where I 
could actually SEE the green screen. But they were so proud of 
it that they released behind the scenes footage the next day to 
show how they did it, which I didn’t watch because I CAN SEE 
HOW THEY DID IT JUST BY WATCHING THE FUCKING SCENE.

Now, I’ve seen a lot of people noting the ridiculousness of 
assuming that Sherlock and John survived jumping out of second 
story windows by landing on the teeny little awning of the café 
underneath. I have seen diagrams illustrating how such a thing 
would be impossible. This, I feel is missing the point, which 
is that this show clearly no longer exists in the real world. 
In the real world, the concussive force of a blast that close 
to them would have killed them long before their singed bodies 
splattered on the street or whatever cars were parked by the 
curb (remember the first guy killed in “The Hurt Locker”? And 
he was wearing a shit load of padding). This show is now 
applying the rules of a James Bond or similar universe where 
humans have superhero strength and durability without any of 
the cool comic book abilities like being able to fly or shoot 
fireballs from their hands. Looking back, I now realize that 
this show has always had a small degree of this, but this 
episode – and possibly this whole season – has dropped all 
former pretense of normality. This right here was the real 
turning point for me in this episode. The moment when I 
realized that a show that had formerly required my complete 
focus to follow its clever plots and dialogue suddenly expected 
me to have come into this episode with my brain completely 
switched off (otherwise known as Action Movie Mode). And no, I 
am not referring to the explosion itself. I am referring to 
that entire ridiculous exposition involving a supervillain who 
sent a death machine worthy of a Bond villain to kill her 
brothers. Or maybe her only goal was to destroy the flat 
because OF COURSE THE HEROES ARE GOING TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO 
ESCAPE THE STUPID DEATH MACHINE.

On a shipping vessel somewhere on stormy waters, a sailor comes 
in from the deck, grunting and wiping his mouth like he just 
threw up. The older man at the helm tells him “go on, son, get 
it up.”
   Chrissy: Oh, did I miss the transition into a porno? 
   Aye, matey, raise the forward mast!
“Better out than in,” he adds.
   Chrissy: Yes, I prefer it that way too.
   Emilio: Definitely. In fact, that might make a good 
    title for my biography.
   Diandra: And this is why I was afraid to let the two of 
    you be in the same room.
   Chrissy: Oh, have another drink and get back to 
    recapping.

Green newbie asks if it’s always this bad. Grizzled sailor says 
no, it’s usually worse. Newbie is questioning his career 
choices when he hears a helicopter overhead. Grizzled scoffs 
that nobody would be crazy enough to fly one in this weather. 
The radio broadcasting the weather report suddenly starts 
repeating “Sherrinford... Sherrinford...” Grizzled tells Newbie 
to forget he heard that because sometimes they get that message 
when they’re out in this direction and he should just shut up 
and pretend it never happened.

Something lands on the roof and they both go outside to find 
Sherlock standing on top of the ship in his coat, his hair 
somehow unaffected much by what must be a LOT of moisture in 
the air. Grizzled asks who the hell he is. Sherlock says his 
name. Newbie recognizes him as “the detective”. Sherlock 
corrects that he’s a pirate right now, actually, and John comes 
up beside him with his pistol raised. I really hope Mofftiss 
didn’t plant his childhood love of pirates in just so they 
could eventually make that joke.

On British Alcatraz, a guy monitoring security hails the 
approaching ship to tell them they’re off course and about to 
enter restricted water. A voice that the closed captioner 
identifies as John despite sounding absolutely nothing like him 
replies that he copies, but this is a distress call. They’re 
about to crash into the rocks. The guard sends a signal to 
initiate lockdown and guys in suits and wool beanies armed with 
machine guns take up positions all over the outside. Two of 
them find the sailors tied up near a life raft on the beach. 
One of the guards up on a catwalk screams at the guys on the 
ground to look at the sand by the raft where the words “tell my 
sister I’m here” are scrawled in big letters.

Some guy inside calls a suit somewhere and shouts that he needs 
to talk to Mycroft. The suit says he’s in the hospital because 
there was this explosion...he’s still unconscious with severe 
injuries and nobody is sure he’s even going to make it.
   Chrissy: Hahahaha, shut up and get with the program. 
    This is the dream universe. He’s fine.
   Diandra: If we were already in the dream universe since 
    “E” shot John or even sooner, would this be a dream 
    within a dream and the explosion is the kick?
   Emilio: You should write that crossover.
   Diandra: Stop giving me new things to write!
   Chrissy: Actually, I like that theory because it would 
    explain the wonky physics involved with surviving the 
    explosion and the fact that we keep skipping the 
    aftermath of everything that should have killed John 
    and/or Sherlock. The start of the episode was John’s 
    dream and now we’re in Sherlock’s dream where he gets a 
    chance to play pirate. 
   Diandra: You are both horrible.
   Chrissy: [singing] Noooooooooon, je ne regretted 
    rieeeeeeeeennnnnn!

Guard asks where SHERLOCK is then. One room over, probably. In 
a shared room with John. All of them are critical. Suit says 
he’s MIA. Guard says well, we probably found him. One of the 
guy’s at the surveillance computers announces that they’ve 
found two more people from the boat and we focus on a camera 
filming over the barrel of a guard weapon. John and a taller 
guy with a ridiculous beard and accent have their hands raised. 
Taller guy shouts that “him and another fella” stole their boat 
at gunpoint. Clearly people who are familiar with Sherlock 
Holmes are meant to assume that the taller guy is Sherlock 
because he was always described as a master of disguises. There 
are two reasons I use the qualifier that we are “meant to” 
assume this. The first is that I remember Mark Gatiss and/or 
Stephen Moffat saying once that they wouldn’t be doing that. I 
would discount that because I’m guessing the reasoning was 
something like ‘it would be silly’ and obviously they are not 
above being ridiculous now if it weren’t for the second reason 
which is that when the guy at the computer asks the guard where 
they were found it is CLEARLY Benedict’s voice answering from 
behind the camera. Suit orders NotSherlock to bring John and 
Grizzly Adams to a holding cell.

The warden – or as he’s titled in England, the Governor - goes 
down to the holding cell. Grizzly Adams jumps up the second he 
opens the door and starts shouting about what an outrage it is 
that they are treating him this way after he was taken hostage 
by PIRATES and they stole his boat. John calmly agrees that 
yes, he is one of the pirates. Head guard tells Grizzly to sit 
down and identifies John Watson by former military rank.
   Chrissy: I love how everybody is pretending the “guard” 
    in the corner keeping his face hidden isn’t really 
    there.
   Diandra: Huh? Who? Actually, this part is fine. I’ll get 
    to the problem in a minute.

Head guard asks what John is doing here. He says this is a 
hospital, isn’t it? Do they have any work he could be doing? 
Head guard says no, it isn’t you idiot.
   Chrissy: Yes, it is! I just heard somebody page Dr. 
    Shephard!
   Diandra: Just for clarity when I go to type this up, are 
    you referencing Derek Shepherd from “Grey’s Anatomy” or 
    Jack Shephard from “Lost”?
   Chrissy: I’ll leave that up to you, but my guess is 
    you’ll choose Jack. [ETA: she knows me so well]

The Governor, without even turning his head to look, orders the 
guard pretending to be part of the scenery in the corner to get 
eyes on Eurus and “deploy the green and yellow shift”. And 
while I didn’t notice the voice earlier or pay attention to the 
guy in the corner the first time I saw this episode (the night 
it first aired), this was the moment I understood why they have 
not attempted to have Sherlock disguise himself before. Because 
even though he keeps his head down, it is obviously Benedict 
wearing one of the guard outfits. Even if you didn’t recognize 
the profile and the voice as he says “yes sir”, they are going 
to so much trouble to hide his face that you can’t help but 
look at his face.
   Emilio: Well, but the hat is covering his hair.
   Chrissy: And it’s not THE hat, so most people wouldn’t 
    notice. Unless you’re talking about Benedict’s vaguely 
    stalkerish fans, which probably make up at least half 
    the fanbase. They definitely noticed.

Grizzly (who I really didn’t recognize even if I knew it wasn’t 
Benedict the first time around), sits down and stops making a 
fuss once TotallyNotSherlock is out of the room. Here’s your 
sign. The Governor sits as well and sighs that they are 
supposedly on the same side, so he’s cutting them a break. John 
asks for no apparent reason if they are planning on doing a 
cavity search.
   Emilio: Well, if we ARE actually in Sherlock’s dream...
   Diandra: Yeah, he would, wouldn’t he?
   Chrissy: I will totally agree to one if you bring that 
    guard back in here to perform it.

The Governor says he would like to spare them the indignity of 
seeing right through Sherlock’s ridiculous disguise, but, well, 
everybody knows Sherlock loves disguises despite never 
apparently using them and that beard really is ridiculous. John 
is like ‘yeah, congratulations dumbass. You were so busy 
staring at Grizzly Adams making a scene over here that you 
didn’t even LOOK at Sherlock.’ Grizzly stands up and takes off 
the wig and prosthetic nose to reveal Mycroft who, while still 
wearing the beard, grins and waggles his eyebrows like a 
demented Santa.

Sherlock, still hunched over, makes it to the elevator, swipes 
a key card and finally stands fully upright and faces the 
camera. Mycroft reminds the governor of the fact that people 
don’t really look carefully at anyone wearing a uniform and a 
name badge. He says they might as well wear clown outfits.
   Emilio: NO!
John says they’ll find the real sailors and two of their guards 
tied up exactly where they were “found”. The Governor is like 
‘why did you need two guards?’ John says the first one’s 
uniform wasn’t Sherlock’s size. 
   Chrissy: According to Sherlock. I thought it was fine. A 
    little tight, maybe, but it nicely accentuated his –
   Emilio: Stop perving over my brother while I’m IN THE 
    ROOM.
   Chrissy: Oh, are you Mycroft now too?
   Emilio: Eh, why not? I can play older brother to Deedle 
    here.
   Diandra: I hate when you call me that, brosis.
   Emilio: [puts Diandra in a headlock and musses her hair] 
    Love you too, sis!

John says their security is obviously compromised and they 
didn’t know who to trust. The Governor asks if that justified 
dressing up and putting on that little show there. “Yes it 
does,” Mycroft snaps angrily like Jesus, dude, I think you 
missed your calling as a prima donna.
   Chrissy: Says the drama queen.
   Diandra: Screw you, John.
   Chrissy: I believe we already established that I would 
    like that, actually.
He spews a rant at the guard about raining all hellfire down on 
them if he finds out that his sister has left this island at 
any point. “Say thank you to Doctor Watson,” he adds as an 
afterthought. “He talked me out of Lady Bracknell. This could 
have been very different.”

Mycroft asks Sherlock via comm if he in yet. Sherlock says he’s 
just arriving at the secure unit now, so...you know...good 
thing they didn’t lock down the elevators once they figured out 
what was going on.
   Chrissy: I think it’s safe to assume that this entire 
    episode hinges on people NOT doing what they would 
    normally do in any given scenario.
   Diandra: That’s what I’m saying.
Mycroft says this part of the prison is basically extreme 
solitary confinement with very restricted human interaction 
because sister psycho mutant can’t be trusted around anybody. 
Sherlock approaches the guards at the end of a hall with 
something similar to the walk Benedict adopted to play Richard 
III (hunched over, taking up more space than usual) and 
announces in an exaggerated Scottish accent that the governor 
ordered him to keep an eye on Eurus.

Mycroft is asking the governor if, despite his clear 
instructions NOT to, they have attempted to do a psych eval on 
Eurus. Governor says yes. Mycroft grumbles that the tapes are 
probably in his office then and goes to leave the room. 
Governor is like ‘YOUR office?’ Mycroft says well, it USED to 
be the Governor’s office.

Sherlock steps onto a scanner and a guard notes that he hasn’t 
been down here before and says it’s basically Silence of the 
Lambs down here. You have to stay well back from the glass and 
tread carefully. Although she’s unlikely to actually eat you. 
We think.
   Emilio: Hold that thought, I was going to make a joke 
    about that.
   Diandra: Of course you were.
Sherlock notes that the guy sitting at the bank of computers is 
wearing headphones. The guard at the door says that’s because 
she plays the violin CONSTANTLY and it can drive you mad. 
Sherlock is like ‘okay, but it sounds pretty from here’. The 
second the door closes behind him, he straightens, sheds his 
top coat and hat and somehow manages to restore his hair to its 
perfectly styled glory before another door spits him into the 
actual cell area.

Eurus is standing in the middle of a slightly dim, glassed off 
cube marked “stay three feet back” EVERYWHERE, playing the 
violin. The sound of the violin is slightly muffled by the 
glass, a detail I would like to submit into evidence for 
further discussion about what the fuck is going on here in a 
few minutes. A light comes on automatically and she pauses, 
then starts playing something that invokes “Redbeard” somehow, 
though I’m not totally clear on how. Sherlock has flashbacks of 
splashing around in the water with the dog. He tries to step 
closer, but once he goes over the three foot line she starts 
sawing at the violin to produce the kind of sounds you’d find 
on the soundtrack of a horror movie. He steps back again and 
she returns to normal. All without turning her head. Because 
her powers include omniscience, remember?

Governor’s office. John and Mycroft watch a security video of 
Eurus, sitting on the floor of possibly the same room she’s in 
now for that psych evaluation. She asks why she’s here and 
whether she’s being “punished”. The psychologist asks if she 
thinks she was being “bad” to deserve punishment. She singsongs 
that there’s no such thing as “bad”. Concepts like good and bad 
are a product of human evolution attaching “emotional 
significance to what is nothing more than the survival strategy 
of the pack animal.”
   Chrissy: Well, she sounds like a Holmes child. Or you.
   Diandra: Thanks for the reminder.
She keeps rambling and throwing big words around so the idiots 
in the audience will think she’s super smart. Too smart, in 
fact, for this bullshit, as she claims.

In the cell, Eurus stops playing and asks if Sherlock brought 
her hair band like she asked. Sherlock blinks, assumes that she 
thinks he’s one of the guards despite the obvious evidence that 
she knows exactly who is behind her, and stutters that he 
doesn’t work here. She just repeats that she wants her special 
hair band. He says he is NOT one of the doctors. She sighs and 
says she is referring to the one she made him steal from their 
mother and reminds him that this was the last thing she ever 
said to him on the day they took her to the funny farm. Instead 
of pointing out the ridiculousness of remembering something she 
told him back when he was a schoolboy, he reminds her that 
they’ve actually spoken since. You know, when she came to him 
pretending to be the suspect’s daughter. And they spent the 
night talking, eating chips and courting dangerously incestuous 
territory. She asks if this means he didn’t bring the hair band 
then. He ignores her and asks how she managed to get out of 
this super high security wing of a super high security facility 
on an island. She says that’s easy. Just look. Then she 
realizes that he can’t see “it”, no matter how hard he tries. 
He has no idea what the hell she’s talking about. She holds out 
the violin and asks what he thinks. He’s like ‘yeah, your 
playing is lovely, can you quit changing subjects?’ She says 
she can never tell if it’s “beautiful”, only if it’s “right”. 
We entertain a brief philosophical discussion about whether 
those are only sometimes the same thing and what would be the 
point of beauty if they weren’t? Then she demands he look at 
the violin again.

He sighs and does a quick look over, noting that it’s a 
Stradivarius. She says yes, it was a gift she gave to herself. 
She walks over to put it in the chamber that rotates to the 
outside of the cell. Sherlock goes to grab it. She says he 
still plays, right? Because she’s the one who taught him how. 
He finally admits that he doesn’t remember her at all. She says 
Mycroft told her he had rewritten memories, but he didn’t tell 
her she had been so completely excised. He lights on the word 
“rewritten”. “You still don’t know about Redbeard, do you,” she 
asks. “Oh. This is going to be such a good day.” No, it really 
isn’t. For anybody. Least of all for viewers.

Back in the viewing room, Eurus is rambling away on the video 
about something probably not important. The governor says she 
had the same effect on everyone who went into that room with 
her. He struggles to define it. Mycroft suggests she 
“recruited” them. Yeah, brainwashing. That’s it. Convinced them 
to do her bidding. Mycroft says she’s had this ability since 
she was five and now that she’s an adult, she’s that much 
better at it. Not really how talents work if you’re not given 
plenty of opportunity to practice them. I’m not even sure it’s 
how magical abilities work, but whatever. The Governor argues 
that her unique mental state was just too tempting to ignore. 
They had to try to understand it. Mycroft looks at the video 
where Eurus is rambling about happiness being a pop song and 
sadness being a poem.
   Chrissy: Specifically, one written by Virginia Wolfe.
   Diandra: Eh, Emily Dickinson was a downer too.
He asks what the worst thing that has happened so far has been. 
Governor says well, she kept suggesting one of the doctors 
should kill his family until he couldn’t take it anymore and 
quit. Mycroft keeps prompting the Governor until he admits that 
the guy actually did kill his family and himself because he 
just couldn’t get her out of his head.

Meanwhile, downstairs, the woman who can apparently talk a 
person into killing themselves is talking to a man who very 
recently tried to get somebody to kill him. Because this whole 
thing really is just a terrible idea all around.
   Emilio: It’s okay, I draw the line at family.
   Diandra: Oh, I forgot you were playing Eurus. Okay, 
    um...since when? Because my understanding is that you 
    were put in here after you starting fantasizing about 
    killing me.
   Emilio: Fantasies aren’t the same as actually trying to 
    kill you.
   Chrissy: That’s true. I fantasized about killing my 
    former boss all the time. But then he’s a racist 
    asshole so I’m pretty sure a lot of people could 
    sympathize.

Eurus demands Sherlock play the violin. Sherlock demands she 
tell him how she managed to get out. She sighs that he already 
KNOWS that and repeats her demand that he play. And LOOK AT HER 
while he’s doing it.
   Emilio: I like it when people look at me. Especially the 
    ones I’m eating.
   Diandra: Okay, Hannibal.
   Chrissy: Um...I think by “eat” he meant...
   Diandra: I KNOW WHAT HE MEANT. I’m trying to keep that 
    image from being burned permanently in my brain.

Sherlock tucks the violin under his chin and begins, getting 
all of two notes out before she snaps at him to not play Bach, 
damnit. “You clearly don’t understand it. Play you.” He gives 
her a look like ‘I may not remember you, but I’m getting 
flashbacks of how annoying siblings are’ and switches to a 
different, less complicated song. Again, he only gets a few 
notes before she goes on a tangent. “Oooh, have you had sex?” 
Sherlock doesn’t see what that has to do with anything, but 
Eurus continues that she had sex once with a nurse but it got 
“messy” and “people are so breakable”. “I take it he didn’t 
consent,” Sherlock notes. “He,” Eurus asks like ‘Way to 
reinforce heteronormative assumptions, dude.’ Sherlock is like 
‘uh...she?’ Eurus gives a bizarre non-answer that she didn’t 
“notice” at the time and after it was over “you couldn’t tell”.
   Emilio: Tasted like chicken, whatever it was.

I would point out how this is yet ANOTHER example of LGBT 
people being exclusively represented by the bad guys on this 
show (like, basically all the bad guys), but at this point, 
that just feels like stating the bleeding obvious. 

She notes the sudden vibrato in his playing and asks if that’s 
intentional or if his hand is just shaking. He just stares, 
finishes the last note and stops.

Mycroft is chastising the Governor for ignoring his express 
instructions that nobody is ever to talk to Eurus alone. The 
Governor notes that Mycroft talks to her alone. Mycroft snaps 
that that’s DIFFERENT because he knows what he’s doing.
   Chrissy: [snort]
   Emilio: Shut up. I do to.
   Diandra: Wait, this is going to get confusing if you 
    play both my older brother AND my younger sister.
   Chrissy: Didn’t I say I would play Eurus at some point?
   Diandra: Yeah, but Emilio thought it would be better 
    this way.

The Governor is like ‘really? Is that why you brought her a 
visitor and/or a gift on Christmas Day?’ John looks sideways at 
Mycroft like ‘the what now?’ Mycroft snaps that he is FULLY 
AWARE of the dangers his sister presents and he is capable of 
dealing with it. John asks what dangers he’s referring to like 
he wasn’t present for that whole last scene where they were 
discussing this already. Mycroft says Eurus “reprograms” 
people. “Anyone who spends time with her is automatically 
compromised.” John stares at the screen still playing the video 
like ‘but I’ve met her several times...she didn’t...did she?’ 
And if I trusted Mofftiss as far as I could throw them I would 
theorize about what she might have done the times she met John 
or the entire night she spent with Sherlock, but all 
indications are that she didn’t do anything and trying to 
figure out the logic in all of this just might lead to madness.

Sherlock notes that obviously SHE remembers HIM. She says yes. 
Duh. “You just need a big enough hard drive.”
   [Chrissy and Emilio fall over themselves in a race to be 
   the first to say “that’s what she said”]
John’s voice suddenly comes over Sherlock’s earpiece.
   Chrissy: Speaking of big hard drives...
   Diandra: Oh my god, do you really need constant 
    reassurance of the impressive size of your equipment?
   Chrissy: Well, not if you’re going to put it that way.
   Emilio: So is that a yes on the ‘have you had sex’ 
    question then? You never actually answered.
“Vatican cameos,” John says. Sherlock says yes, IN A MINUTE and 
pulls out his earpiece.

Eurus asks if Sherlock was told to keep three feet from the 
glass. He says yes. Despite apparently having a fit herself if 
he got any closer, she invites him to come closer now. He takes 
a deep breath, turns fully toward her but doesn’t move any 
closer. He demands she tell him what she remembers. She says 
she remembers the three of them and rambles about how Mycroft 
was cleverer provided she explained things to him a little 
slower, but “you were my favorite.” Sherlock cocks his head and 
takes a step closer, asking why she says that. She says she 
could make him laugh. And she loved to make him laugh. She once 
made him laugh all night long. Of course then mum and dad had 
to ruin the fun by telling her he wasn’t laughing, he was 
screaming. His face falls and he asks why he was screaming. The 
sound of a dog whimpering creeps across the soundtrack and he 
may or may not forget the question to announce that he 
remembers Redbeard. She says really? Does he? They keep 
stepping closer to the partition until she invites him to touch 
the glass.

I’m just going to sidebar for a minute to recall that in a 
previous recap I quoted someone as saying that Sherlock 
describes himself as a high functioning sociopath because “ADHD 
with possible mild autism” doesn’t sound nearly as cool. This 
whole conversation is exactly what you would expect a 
conversation between people with ADHD to sound like. “So did 
you bring the thing I asked you for more than two decades ago? 
Ooo, that’s a pretty song. Have you had sex?” “Well, 
actually...” “I have. I may or may not have killed him or her, 
but remember how I used to torture you when we were kids?” “Um, 
no...but about our dog...” “TOUCH THE GLASS, DAMNIT.”

Mycroft is ranting about how he put his faith in the Governor’s 
ability to keep this place secure and blah blah as John slips 
out the side door and looks over the balcony to the cliffs 
below. Because it all isn’t dark and ominous enough, thunder 
rumbles overhead. He goes back inside as the Governor is 
claiming that she really changed after that Christmas, so 
clearly it is Mycroft’s fault somehow. He activated her. 
Mycroft starts yelling about his orders and John quietly 
interrupts to redirect them to the still-playing video. Mycroft 
rolls his eyes and tries to continue his reprimand, but John 
repeats “just listen.” “You have no idea how I could help,” 
Eurus is babbling. “Bring me your wife. I want to meet her.”
   Emilio: Oh, I’m sorry, did I say “eat” her? I meant 
    “meet” her.
   Diandra: Think you got that backwards just now.
   Emilio: Yeah, you’re right. I definitely meant eat.

Back in the dungeon, Sherlock is repeating that Redbeard was 
his dog. He says he knows what happened to him. Eurus thinks 
he’s adorable, but knows nothing. She invites him to touch the 
glass again and holds her hand up to mirror. And by now 
Sherlock is close enough that he should be able to see the 
problem here, but to further reinforce the idea that the 
Sherlock in this episode is not really Sherlock but some 
version of him that somebody like John has concocted that is 
slower and dimmer, he doesn’t see what would normally have been 
a bleeding obvious observation for him.

But before we fully dive into this insanity, we check back in 
with the others and the still-playing video where Eurus is 
offering to “fix” the guard’s wife and give her “straight” 
back.
   Chrissy: I use the word “straight” ironically, of 
    course.
   Emilio: I’m supposed to be Eurus.
   Chrissy: Oh, right. Sorry.
John reminds the Governor that he just said EVERYONE who went 
into that room with Eurus was affected by her mind control 
voodoo. Isn’t that his voice on the tape? Which would suggest 
Eurus has already mind controlled the person supposedly in 
charge of the entire prison, right? Mycroft – who remember is 
supposed to be smarter than Sherlock – looks at the video in 
wide eyed shock at the realization that came from JOHN WATSON. 
So, you know, if you’re collecting evidence that this is taking 
place in John’s head, here’s some. The Governor stands up, 
mutters an apology and pushes a remote button he pulls from his 
coat that triggers a prison lockdown. Alarms blare and guys 
with guns burst in and point them at John and Mycroft.

Sherlock is hesitating, staring at Eurus’ raised hand. She 
notes that he’s unsure and he’s not used to being unsure about 
things. (Or, as Moffatt has worded it on at least two separate 
occasions on two different shows: I don’t know and I don’t like 
not knowing). He raises his hand and slowly reaches toward hers 
as she marvels at how the man who sees through everything 
doesn’t notice when there’s nothing to see through. He is 
surprised when their hands meet, totally unimpeded by glass. 
She invites him to deduce how she did this. He babbles some 
nonsense about her “suspending” the signs that are supposed to 
be attached to the glass. She adds that her voice sounds like 
it’s muffled because of a throat mic that goes through the 
speakers. Yeah, that’s nice. Did you have one in the violin too 
then? 
   Chrissy: Shh...you’re not supposed to notice the plot 
    holes.
   Diandra: Well, that’s kind of difficult when they’re big 
    enough to drive a semi through. Seriously, Sherlock has 
    been able to notice things far less obvious than this 
    for the past twelve episodes, but suddenly he fails to 
    see the lack of a barrier one foot in front of his 
    face?
   Chrissy: I see the alcohol is wearing off already.
   Emilio: [hands another already open beer to Diandra] On 
    it.
   Diandra: You guys are such enablers.
   Emilio: We love you and we want you to get through this 
    with your sanity intact.
   Chrissy: Yeah, and sadly in this case that means making 
    sure you are too drunk to give a shit anymore.

Eurus clicks the mic off and her voice becomes normal as she 
congratulates herself on being so “clever”. Sigh. [Drink]. 
   Chrissy: Atta girl.
She reminds him that he kept asking how she got out and offers 
to demonstrate. She clubs him in the head with both fists, pins 
him to the floor with her forearm over his throat and starts 
shrieking for somebody to “get in here before I kill him.” A 
couple guards enter and she calmly tells them no, wait a minute 
before stopping her. Then returns to shrieking and choking 
Sherlock.

Meanwhile, upstairs, John suddenly decides “fuck this shit” and 
knocks out the guards escorting him from the conference room. 
He runs up some stairs and along a catwalk while a voice on the 
PA system yells nonsense crap like “big bouncy red alert” and 
“Klingons attacking lower decks! Also, cowboys in black hats!” 
John slows to a stop and he and Mycroft both listen with their 
heads cocked like ‘the fuck?’ as the voice adds “Darth Vader! 
Don’t be alarmed! I’m here now! Did you miss me?” John stumbles 
into a room with a bunch of television screens as Moriarty’s 
face appears, the voice syncing with his mouth as he continues 
to repeat “did you miss me? Miss me? Miss me?” A guard comes up 
behind John and knocks him out.

And then we jump back in time with absolutely no warning, doing 
a pan over Sherrinford while “I Want to Break Free” plays. A 
helicopter lands and Moriarty, apparently listening to this on 
whatever player is buried in his coat pocket, steps out and 
does a rock star pose in time with the screaming audience on 
the live recording because I guess we’re just catering to his 
fangirls now. He takes out the earbuds, cutting off the music 
abruptly, and approaches the waiting Governor, who he greets as 
“Big G”. Because he’s “down with the kids” and knows their 
street speak.
   Chrissy: Yeah...no.

He asks if the Governor likes his “boys” and points to the 
bodyguard on his left, saying he has more “stamina”, but he’s 
“less caring in the afterglow”. He looks at the guy over his 
glasses pointedly.
   Emilio: I mean, he could have at least offered to get a 
    washcloth or something. 
   Chrissy: It’s not like I was in any shape to get up and 
    get it myself. Did I mention the “stamina”? 
   Diandra: Great. There are two of you now.

The Governor is like ‘yeah, whatever, let’s get this over 
with.’ He leads Moriarty into the facility. Moriarty asks if 
they have any cannibals and how many. The answers are yes and 
three. Moriarty thinks that’s cool and spews some non sequitr 
about people leaving their bodies to science when cannibals 
would be SO MUCH MORE grateful. Moriarty is led into the 
conference room where Mycroft is waiting and we finally get a 
time reference: this is Christmas Day, five years ago. So the 
day the Governor was talking about when everything changed.

Sometime later, Moriarty asks if this means he’s under arrest 
again. Mycroft says he’s a “person of interest”, but 
unfortunately he has never committed a crime that could be 
proven, so...no. He’s a “Christmas present”. 
   Chrissy: Oh, well. Why didn’t you just say so? I would 
    have showered a little more thoroughly. Should I take 
    my clothes off now or would your brother rather have 
    the honor? Or am I remaining clothed? Did he get 
    inspired by that case with The Woman and he’s tied to a 
    St. Andrew’s Cross somewhere? What’s his safe word? I 
    assume you are both aware that I will not be the least 
    bit gentle in divesting him of his pesky virginity. He 
    is still a virgin, right? Why are you not stopping me, 
    Dee? You usually stop me by now.
   Diandra: I was just seeing how far you were willing to 
    go. Also, I’m practicing letting go of things.
   Emilio: Also, it was just starting to get kind of hot.

Mycroft says there is a prisoner here whose “intellectual 
abilities” are of “occasional use’ to the government. She 
predicted the exact dates of the last three terrorist attacks 
after an hour on Twitter. But she requires them to occasionally 
bring her unconventional rewards.
   Chrissy: So I’m just a piece of meat for you to whore 
    out then. Nice. And I’m actually not being sarcastic 
    there.
   Diandra: Actually, given that conversation about 
    cannibals, I would question what you mean exactly by 
    “meat”.
Anyway. Last year she wanted a violin and this year she wants 
five unsupervised minutes alone with Moriarty. Moriarty acts 
all fluttery like ‘she wants me? She’s noticed me? Wow, this is 
such an honor!’ Mycroft says she has noticed Moriarty’s 
interest in Sherlock. Moriarty presses Mycroft to tell him what 
her connection is to Sherlock, but we cut away before he 
answers.

So he goes down to the dungeon where the glass is obviously 
still intact and Mycroft watches on the monitors in the 
conference room. Moriarty introduces himself to Eurus as her 
Christmas present.
   Emilio: I distinctly remember asking for something with 
   a little more meat, but you’ll do.
They approach each other on either side of the glass, their 
reflections on it visible, and Eurus looks at the camera in the 
corner until Mycroft’s screens turn to static. Now safe from 
prying ears she says “Redbeard”
   Chrissy: Okay, cool. My safeword is “vagina” because 
   it’s something I would never be thinking of under normal 
   circumstances during sex.
They get really close to the glass and practically hump it 
creepily.

John wakes up...
   Chrissy: Or DOES he?
...in a brightly lit room that looks a lot like the one in the 
video of Eurus’ interrogation. He’s laying on the bed and 
winces, grabbing at his head. Sherlock stops pacing the floor 
to ask if he’s okay. John groans “bit of a lump” and Sherlock 
starts pacing again between Mycroft and the Governor, grumbling 
that that’s true, but he can be useful at times.
   Chrissy: If you think the presence of your brother and a 
    stranger is going to stop me from pulling your pants 
    down and spanking you...
   Diandra: We have discussed this, John. While we’re in 
    public, I need people to think I’m in charge.
   Chrissy: [grumble] Fine, but I’m keeping a running count 
    in my head for later. You’re at eight already.
   Diandra: How did the number get that high?
   Chrissy: Nine.

John asks how his meeting with his sister went then. “Family is 
always difficult,” Sherlock grumbles. Mycroft asks if now is 
really the time for their usual banter. There’s a muffled sound 
of a phone ringing over the speaker in the ceiling and John 
takes half a second to note it for the audience before asking 
why the Governor is here. Sherlock says he’s following orders, 
apparently, because Eurus is controlling the prison.

The ringing phone connects and the little girl from the 
beginning of the episode begs somebody to help her because 
everyone on the plane she’s on is asleep. The light in the room 
goes red and Moriarty repeats his “welcome to the final 
problem” message, so apparently we’re caught up to the 
beginning of the episode now. The light goes back to normal and 
Sherlock mutters that everything is fine because Moriarty is 
dead. John is like ‘are you sure about that?’ Yes. Yes, we are. 
Stop trying to bring him back to life already, Mofftiss. The 
light turns red again and Moriarty says this is a recorded 
announcement and prompts the girl to say hello to some old 
friends of his. The girl says she can hear them talking and 
begs them to help her. Mycroft asks what the hell this is 
anyway. “Do shut up, dear,” Sherlock says.
   Emilio: I hate when you call me that. So condescending.
   Diandra: Whatever you say, dear.
   Chrissy: I’ve heard that one before. 

Mycroft asks if this is supposed to be a game or something. 
Apparently, yes. Sherlock addresses the girl, ordering her to 
stay calm and tell him her name. She says she’s not supposed to 
tell strangers her name. 
   Chrissy: Yes, because at the moment your biggest concern 
    is that you might be kidnapped.
   Diandra: Obvious plot contrivance is obvious.
Sherlock says okay, fair enough, but he can tell her his name 
at least. He goes to say it and the line disconnects. 

Eurus appears on a video screen on the other side of the glass 
and announces that they’ve lost the connection. Mycroft demands 
to know what the hell she’s doing and why. Eurus non-answers 
that Mycroft was the one who put her in here with nothing but 
the occasional present to keep her going. She plays another 
part of the video where Moriarty raves about how great she is. 
She explains that Moriarty recorded a lot of messages for her 
before he died. “Did you know his brother was a station master? 
I think he was always jealous.” Sherlock is like whatever, what 
about the girl we were just talking to? Eurus babbles about the 
poor thing being all alone in the sky and not knowing where, 
exactly, she is and if Sherlock really wants to try solving 
that puzzle she can reconnect them, but... She sits back to 
show a woman tied to a chair behind her. The Governor perks up 
and blurts that that’s his WIFE. Eurus is like ‘yep, and I’m 
going to shoot her in about a minute.’ Sherlock pathetically 
begs her not to. She says he CAN stop her if he gets the gun 
she left in the hatch opening and gives it to either John or 
Mycroft to kill the Governor. Oh, and if Sherlock tries to do 
it himself, she’ll consider it cheating and kill the wife 
anyway. Because she is beyond the level of crazy that would 
qualify her for Bond villain at this point and deep into “Saw” 
territory.
   Chrissy: His name is Jigsaw.
   Diandra: Never saw the movies and I don’t care.

The Governor begs Sherlock to just do what the crazy woman says 
because she doesn’t make idle threats. Sherlock agrees that 
they don’t have a choice and hands the gun to Mycroft. Eurus 
says she’s starting the countdown. Mycroft asks how long he 
has. She says no, dummy, the countdown is for ME, not YOU. 
“Withholding the precise deadline, I’m gonna apply the 
emotional pressure more evenly where possible.”
   Emilio: I’m really just doing things randomly, but if I 
   say stuff like this every so often it makes you think I 
   have a plan.
“Please give me an explicit verbal indication of your anxiety 
levels.”
   Chrissy: Doesn’t have to be complicated. Colors work. 
   Specifically, green, yellow and red.

Mycroft whines that he can’t just MURDER somebody. The Governor 
says it’s not murder. It’s assisted suicide that might save 
another person’s life. Eurus rambles some social psychology 101 
bullshit about moral codes and internal conflicts. Mycroft says 
he will NOT have blood on his hands and steps back. So Sherlock 
turns to John, although I’m not sure why he didn’t approach him 
in the first place since he WAS A SOLDIER FOR FUCK’S SAKE. 
Because this scenario wasn’t campy enough yet, the Governor 
pleads his case to John by opening with “are you married?” John 
is like ‘yeah, thanks for that reminder. She’s dead.’ Governor 
asks what he would give to have her back. He argues that either 
way, Eurus is going to kill HIM, but John might be able to save 
one person here. Eurus pipes up that she will give them regular 
“prompts” to “create an atmosphere of urgency” and flips the 
lights between normal and red repeatedly, recorded Moriarty 
hissing “tick tick tick tick” every time it switches to red.
   Chrissy: Because piling more artificial tension on top 
    of this ridiculousness will generate the illusion of 
    actual tension.
   Emilio: Isn’t it writing 101 that you shouldn’t do this?
   Diandra: I’m thinking this entire episode is going to be 
    a demonstration of things you should not do when 
    writing.

John finally takes the gun and asks the Governor what his name 
is. Governor says David. John asks if he’s really sure about 
this. Um, I thought he JUST said he will die no matter what so 
it doesn’t really matter. John asks if he needs to pray or 
anything and David argues that the existence of Eurus in 
general kind of makes him doubt that there is a god. John tells 
him he’s a good man and doing a good thing and lifts the gun. 
Everybody flinches and David closes his eyes. John hesitates. 
After a moment, David begs him to please just do it already. 
Realizing it would probably be easier if John didn’t see his 
face, he turns his back. John has a couple more false starts 
before patting David’s shoulder to prompt him to kneel. Then he 
leans in and says some bullshit about it being okay to be 
scared, but he should also be proud right now. David is like 
FOR FUCK’S SAKE JUST KILL ME ALREADY. John braces himself, both 
hands on the gun, and stalls some more, saying goodbye. Then he 
flinches again and announces he can’t do this. David leaps up 
and grabs the gun from him, waving it frantically at all of 
them so they’ll back off and then putting the gun under his 
chin, whimpering “remember me” and pulling the trigger.

Mycroft lurches to the wall and gags. Sherlock asks John if 
he’s okay. Eurus is like ‘interesting as that was, it CLEARLY 
violates the rules I set out, so...’ She shoots the wife, then 
ponders whether John’s decision was really selfish since his 
adherence to his moral code caused TWO people to die instead of 
one. John yells that she didn’t have to KILL the woman, damnit. 
Eurus is like ‘of course I did. Those were the rules.’ She 
orders Sherlock to pick up the gun now and remember this little 
exercise when she tells him to use it later. Sherlock, flailing 
for anything at this point, suggests maybe he doesn’t want to 
use a gun. Eurus says the gun is there to make things easy for 
him because it is far more difficult to kill someone with bare 
hands. John is like ‘fuck it, just play along with the crazy 
person.’ Sherlock picks up the gun, checks the cartridge and 
announces that there’s only one bullet left in it. Eurus says 
that’s all he’ll need.

A door to the side slides open and Eurus tells them to go 
through it because she has some more contrived nonsense for 
them before they can save that little girl. I mean, she doesn’t 
say this in as many words, but...whatever.
   Emilio: It’s implied.
   Chrissy: Let me know if you need to tap out.
   Diandra: Jesus. You know it’s bad when you’re actually 
    offering to do the recap for me.
   Chrissy: Well, I would offer to take a break, but I’m 
    afraid if we walk away from this now it will be that 
    much harder to get you to come back.
   Diandra: Probably. Ugh.

They go to the next room while recorded Moriarty yells “all 
aboard” and makes “choo-choo” noises. Yes, you read that right.

The next room has random splashes of red all over the walls 
like maybe several people were murdered in it. Mycroft notes 
that it is barely dry and must have been done recently. Eurus 
appears on the tv on one end of the room to announce that she 
is reconnecting them to give them incentive to continue 
cooperating. Recorded Moriarty yells at them to fasten their 
seatbelts because it’s going to be a bumpy ride. Okay, A) we’re 
long past the point where we needed that warning and B) I’m 
really starting to wish they hadn’t brought Moriarty back if 
he’s going to be this annoying and pointless.
   Chrissy: Actually, the worst part is that he isn’t 
    pointless. He’s here to prove that he was just a stupid 
    puppet all along to the REAL criminal mastermind.
   Diandra: Right. Because just killing him wasn’t good 
    enough. We have to totally destroy the character as 
    Doyle wrote him.

The call reconnects and Sherlock tries to figure out where the 
girl is in the world via a series of questions, starting with 
whether it is day or night outside. It’s night. Mycroft sneers 
that this is brilliant. Sherlock has narrowed it down to half 
the planet. Sherlock glares at him and asks what sort of plane 
she is on. 
   Emilio: Oh, it’s a pretty, white plane with wheels and 
    curtains in the windows and it looks like a big 
    Tylenol.
   Diandra: I would compliment you on that “Airplane” 
    reference, but you’re making me wish I was watching 
    that instead right now.
   Chrissy: Surely, you can’t be serious.
   Emilio: I am serious. And don’t call me Shirley.
   [Chrissy and Emilio high-five]
   Diandra: I hate you both.

The girl doesn’t understand the question, so John jumps in to 
ask if it’s big or small. Big, with a lot of people. Sherlock 
asks where they took off from. The girl becomes distracted by 
the fact that everybody including the “driver” is asleep. 
Sherlock asks again and she gives an answer of “my nan’s”. He 
bites back a sigh and asks where they were going. “Home,” she 
says. Flustered, he snaps he meant what AIRPORT.
   Chrissy: Oh, sweetie. It’s nice that you’re trying, but 
    you really are not good with children.
   Diandra: Is this your way of saying I’d be a shit 
    babysitter for Rosie, John?
   Chrissy: Eh, she’s not talking yet. 
   Diandra: But when she does, her first word will be 
    “idiot”. Mark my words.

Eurus cuts in to say that’s enough of that and it’s time for 
another game. She directs them to open the envelope on the 
table in the middle of the room.

Mycroft whines that this is INSANE. John is like WE KNOW, but 
you wrote it, so...shut it, Mark. Eurus says a man named Evans 
was killed six months ago and the case is still unsolved. Well, 
she solved it, of course, because she was bored that day. 
Sherlock starts laying out the evidence on the case pulled from 
the envelope as she continues that he was shot from a distance 
of 300 meters with the rifle mounted near the ceiling over 
Sherlock’s head. She says there are three suspects. Brothers 
named Alex, Nathan and Howard Garrideb. For those who are fans 
of the original Doyle stories, yes, Mofftiss is referencing a 
story they have claimed is their favorite. If you have 
forgotten the story, do yourself a favor and don’t bother going 
to look it up because they are interpreting it so loosely that 
it is almost as much of a throwaway as the harpoon thing in 
“The Hounds of Baskerville”. There are pictures of the 
brothers. Eurus says Sherlock has to figure out which one is 
the killer. John is like ‘that’s it? That’s all the evidence we 
get to solve it?’ Eurus adds that she’d like to see Sherlock 
“make use of” John because she’s interested in how he interacts 
with people he’s close to. 
   Emilio: Yes, please “make use” of him right on that 
    table there. I want to see it.
   Diandra: Pervert.
   Emilio: I will take that as a compliment.

She adds some offhand thing about him maybe having to decide 
later “which one to keep”. So Sherlock turns to Mycroft and 
asks for his input. Mycroft is like ‘oh, so I can prove I’m 
useful enough to not kill later? Fuck this shit.’ Sherlock 
gives up easily and turns to John. John takes the gun from 
Sherlock and identifies it as a “Buffalo gun” from the 40s. 
It’s old fashioned and doesn’t have very good sighting. 
Sherlock thinks that makes the fact that one of the brothers 
has glasses important. Based on the way John just held the gun, 
somebody with glasses would have shattered a lens with the 
kickback and the picture – which Eurus claims is recent – 
doesn’t show any damage to his face.

Mycroft notes John’s usefulness and asks if he gets the 
impression they’re competing for something. John snaps that 
they’re trying to save the little girl, actually. He adds that 
they have to think like soldiers right now and not worry about 
what happens to THEM. Eurus cuts in to say that Sherlock 
represses emotion to enhance reasoning skills and she’d like to 
see how that works, so... The three brothers are dropped in 
front of the window on the opposite end of the room, tied and 
gagged. She explains that two of them were orderlies at the 
prison so it was easy to lure the third. There’s a bit of hasty 
exposition here to establish that the idea is Sherlock will 
figure out who did it before she drops them all into the water 
where they will definitely drown as their hands are tied. 
Mycroft asks why they should entertain this insanity at all. 
Eurus reconnects the line to the little girl, who is talking 
about going through the clouds. Sherlock sighs and tries to get 
her to talk about the plane again. She just says “why won’t my 
mummy wake up?” and Eurus disconnects again.

Sherlock goes to look at the actual men and deduces that Howard 
has a drinking problem and a case of DTs. He is too shaky to 
have made a good shot from a distance. Which leaves Alex, but 
he has indents on his face that suggest he wears glasses too. 
Mycroft jumps in to say he WAS short-sighted, but he got laser 
correction recently. He prompts Sherlock to look at the suit 
Alex is wearing and they both conclude that he’s making an 
effort to look good these days. No glasses, spray tan, nice 
suit, but his nails are a mess and he has hair sticking from 
his ears, so he hasn’t figured it out totally yet. Not that any 
of that matters. His eyes are good and his hands are steady, so 
he must be the killer. Eurus asks if he’s sure enough to 
condemn him, knowing what she will do. Sherlock says yes, he 
did it. Eurus drops the other two brothers and congratulates 
Sherlock on solving the case. John starts screaming at the 
monitor about her dropping the innocent men. She muses that she 
doesn’t think guilt or innocence makes much of a difference 
really and drops the third one as well. Sherlock sidles up to 
John and tells him not to let her distract him, reminding him 
of the thing he just said about soldiers. John stiffens, nods 
and follows Sherlock to the next part of this insane maze.

And now, since this next scene is so spectacularly pointless 
and idiotic, I’m going to forgo recapping for a couple 
paragraphs in favor of general description and analysis. Sister 
RealMoriarty’s next game involves Sherlock getting Molly to say 
“I love you” to him before a bomb goes off and kills her. Now. 
Before anybody accuses me of hating this mess of a scene just 
because it is MOLLY who has to say I love you and not JOHN, let 
me say that I think it would have been stupid no matter WHO the 
parties involved were. Because there is a name for this trope. 
It is called “Fuck or Die”. And I think that while there may be 
a place for such cheesy ridiculousness, that place is in 
FANFICTION. Not on the actual show.
   Emilio: Even in fanfiction, you don’t like it. You 
    texted me when you were writing that story you were 
    talking about earlier in a panic because you were 
    horrified that it was turning into a fuck or die scene.
   Diandra: Yes, well. I have found a story or two that are 
    well written, but I don’t trust myself to write another 
    one.

Supposedly this scene originally had Molly locked in a coffin 
and the boys having to figure out how to get her out. This 
would have been a much better scene, even if it would have 
missed the Character X is Buried Alive plot bandwagon by 
several years. Anyway. As if the premise of this weren’t stupid 
enough, it turns out in the end that there never was a bomb and 
Molly was never in danger. So Mofftiss set back Molly’s entire 
character arc by forcing her to admit she still has this 
schoolgirl crush on Sherlock just for shits and giggles. 
   Chrissy: And to continue stringing along the Sherlolly 
    shippers despite having no intention of ever following 
    through on that.
   Diandra: Which is the worst part, really. A lot of them 
    were big enough suckers to think there would be follow 
    through. Including Louise Brealey, apparently, who 
    yelled at any fans who reacted to the scene with horror 
    because it undid all the progress Molly had made as a 
    character. Then Stephen Moffat did an interview where 
    he confirmed that nothing would change and Molly would 
    just “have a drink and get over it”.
   Chrissy: I think the Sherlolly shippers are in denial 
    that that happened.
   Diandra: Yeah, that’s just the tip of the iceberg of 
    things they’re in denial about. I’m not saying there 
    aren’t just as many delusional Johnlock shippers (and 
    both have the unique ability to recognize their own 
    flaws only in members of the other group), but at least 
    they don’t believe that a relationship founded on one 
    person only remembering the other EXISTS when they need 
    something from them is healthy. I used to have friends 
    who treated people the way Sherlock treats Molly. I 
    didn’t stay friends with them for very long because it 
    is just not worth it. And the fact that there are 
    obviously still a lot of women who think this one-sided 
    bullshit makes for a good romance partly explains the 
    high divorce rate.
   Emilio: It’s not surprising though.
   Diandra: No. No, it is not. 
   Emilio: This is what basically every canon ship in “Once 
    Upon a Time” is based on.
   Diandra: Of course it is. Because fairy tales and women. 
    By the way, Chris, this is the fandom Emilio and I met 
    in. Although I gave up watching “Once” years before he 
    did.
   Emilio: I haven’t spent a whole lot of time in Sherlock 
    fandom. Are Sherlolly shippers like CaptainSwan 
    shippers?
   Diandra: Yes. Except Captain Hook is an actual canon 
    character. Molly was invented by Mofftiss seemingly 
    just to give Sherlock a potential romance that Doyle 
    was very adamant SHOULD NOT EXIST.
   Chrissy: Because I guess they weren’t content with just 
    turning the Irene Adler relationship into a romance 
    like almost every other adaptation has for some reason.
   Diandra: Oh, I think we know the reason. Most straight 
    guys in our current culture can’t imagine admiring a 
    woman for her intelligence and being friends with her 
    without secretly wanting to fuck her.
   Emilio: Hey!
   Diandra: I said most. Look...I like Molly. But I would 
    like her a whole lot better if I believed she had ANY 
    OTHER REASON to even exist in these stories. Also, if 
    this hadn’t happened because she was finally growing a 
    fucking spine and this turned her back into a useless 
    female to fawn over Sherlock.

Somewhere in there, Sherlock was connected to the little girl 
again, who says the plane is flying over water which, again, 
doesn’t narrow it down a whole lot. But she can see the lights 
of a city up ahead, so the number of possible casualties should 
the plane crash just increased exponentially. Mycroft suggests 
they talk her through steering it back over water to limit the 
damage. John is horrified by the idea of letting the girl die 
and thinks they can talk her through landing it. Because 
between the three of them they have how much experience with 
flying? Sherlock asks if she’s really REALLY sure there isn’t 
somebody on the plane who could help. She is.

The scene ends with Sherlock getting angry and smashing the 
prop coffin to pieces for reasons. John repeats the whole ‘we 
are soldiers right now’ thing, while sympathizing with Sherlock 
for having to go through all this insane bullshit because his 
psycho sister enjoys messing with him. 
   Chrissy: Although I should point out that now you know 
    how I felt when you made me think I was being hunted by 
    a mutant dog in Baskerville.
   Diandra: You should, but you won’t for some reason.

John hands Sherlock the gun he dropped at some point and they 
go into the next room, which Sherlock loudly notes is empty. 
Eurus is like ‘yeah, but that’s because I’ve decided to stop 
beating around the bush and have you use that gun to make a 
Sophie’s Choice.’ Because this is what she meant earlier by 
determining which of them is more useful to him. He will have 
to kill one of them. Sherlock just stands there with a stunned 
look until Mycroft snaps at him to get on with it. There’s 
nothing to discuss. Just shoot John and get it over with. He’s 
less intelligent and he actually was a soldier so he’ll 
understand the concept of dying for someone else. John says 
yeah, he’s right, actually. He turns to Sherlock and braces 
himself. Sherlock doesn’t do anything and Mycroft starts 
taunting him, calling him the “slow one” and the “idiot” who 
lets sentiment overpower his ability to reason. For good 
measure, he adds “that’s why I’ve always despised you. You 
shame us all. You shame the family name. Now for once in your 
life, do the right thing. Put this stupid little man out of all 
of our misery.” He continues to rant about how John is just a 
“distraction” for Sherlock. An ordinary, entirely replaceable 
person who will stroke his ego whenever he shows off his 
superior intellect.
   Emilio: [cough] Yeah. “Ego”.
   Diandra: Yeah, well, he hasn’t been doing a lot of that 
    lately.
   Chrissy: Ten.
   Diandra: For all you know, you’re about to die and 
    you’re still counting?
   Chrissy: Sorry. Reflex.

Sherlock snaps at Mycroft to knock it off because he is 
obviously trying to goad him into shooting HIM. “On balance, 
even your Lady Bracknell was more convincing.”
   Emilio: You said it was good before. Now you’re saying 
    this is WORSE?
   Diandra: Well, as long as we’re being honest...
   Emilio: Oh, just shoot me already.
John looks at Mycroft with a surprised expression that probably 
validates Mycroft’s assessment of his intelligence. Sherlock 
says his valiant effort is going to make this harder though. He 
points the gun at Mycroft, who mutters “you said you LIKED my 
Lady Bracknell.” John protests. Mycroft says it isn’t up to him 
and asks Sherlock to please just not aim for his head because 
he promised his brain to science. He suggests Sherlock try to 
aim for whatever shriveled heart he must have somewhere in his 
chest. 

John tries to jump in again, declaring he WON’T allow this to 
happen. Mycroft insists it’s fine because this is all his fault 
anyway. He let her talk with Moriarty unsupervised for five 
minutes five years ago. So really all of everything that has 
ever happened on this show has been because he let their 
supervillain sister turn Moriarty into her puppet. As I said 
earlier, this is the other big problem I have with this 
episode, and I’m baffled more people aren’t pissed off by it. 
Because this means that Moriarty was never Moriarty as Arthur 
Conan Doyle imagined him: the ultimate antagonist. A villain 
just as smart and twisted as Sherlock Holmes. This Moriarty 
turns out to be a decoy whose every move was actually planned 
by the REAL big bad: a super genius sister everybody had 
forgotten even existed until just now.
   Chrissy: Just in case you thought the character 
    assassinations would stop with Mary.
   Diandra: Aaarrrrrrruuuuuuggggggggghhhhhhhhh.

Anyway. Where were we? Mycroft requests no flowers at his 
funeral and braces himself. Eurus cuts in to say Moriarty 
predicted this would be the choice Sherlock would make.
   Chrissy: As would LITERALLY EVERYBODY.
   Diandra: Yeah, I mean, come on.
She plays a clip of Moriarty rambling about how they’ve come to 
the end of the line. “Holmes killing Holmes”. And then he makes 
a statement that instantly dispels the cloud of pissed-off 
anger that has been hovering in this room by making all three 
of us laugh hysterically. “This is where I get off.”
   Chrissy: No, really. I wish I was alive to see it 
    because just thinking about it will be my go-to for the 
    next few years.
   Emilio: Hope you guys make it nice and messy though.
   Chrissy: Yeah, don’t worry about the stains. Just get it 
    EVERYWHERE. And feel free to splatter some of it on 
    John. 
   
   Emilio: So...do you usually have to take over the recap 
    when Diandra turns into a laughing, crying mess on the 
    floor like she’s doing right now?
   Chrissy: Nah. She’ll be fine in a minute.
   Diandra: [gasping] Have I mentioned how much I regret 
    asking both of you to do this?
   Chrissy: Oh, whatever. You would be climbing the walls 
    if we weren’t here to entertain you.
   Emilio: ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?
   Chrissy: You’re just a bottomless source of movie 
    references, aren’t you?
   Emilio: And TV references. And song lyrics.

Sherlock hesitates a while longer, grumbling that it took her 
just five minutes to set up this multi-year, baroque chess game 
worthy of Heath Ledger’s Joker that somehow went exactly 
according to plan. The dramatic music nearly drowns him out 
entirely. Then he lets the gun fall to his side. Eurus, 
alarmed, asks what the fuck he thinks he’s doing. He says the 
same thing the Governor did – fucking up her plan. He aims the 
gun under his chin and starts counting down from ten. Mycroft 
and John watch wide-eyed, presumably not moving to try to stop 
him because they are in shock or something. Eurus starts 
yelping protests that he CAN’T do this because he doesn’t even 
know about Redbeard yet. Sherlock is like ‘seven...fuck you, 
sis...six...’ She screams at him to stop and a dart shoots from 
one of the walls. He staggers, pulls it from his neck and 
passes out before he can finish saying “two”. We get a weird, 
stylized scene of him sinking into some sort of black goop and 
having flashbacks of his childhood.

He comes to face down on a table, wearing his coat, which has 
not been seen since the fishing boat. The little girl is 
calling him. And apparently he is hearing her directly through 
an earpiece now. The girl complains that he “went away”. He 
asks how long he was “away”. She says “hours and hours” which, 
given her age could very well mean twenty minutes. She demands 
to know where he went. He has no idea. But he sees a grated 
opening in the ceiling over him and the moon is visible through 
it so maybe it was more than twenty minutes after all. He asks 
her if she can be really brave and go to the front of the 
plane. Like all the way into the room where the pilot sits. 
Meanwhile, he explores the walls of the tiny room and finds 
pictures of himself and Mycroft as children plastered to them 
in serial-killer fashion. There is a mixture of pictures of the 
kids playing them in flashbacks and actual pictures of Benedict 
when he was the same age.

The girl starts making her way toward the cockpit. Sherlock 
gets impatient quickly and asks if she’s there yet. John, 
shaking himself awake somewhere else and misunderstanding the 
question, says yes, he’s here. Somewhere. He stands and 
splashes in thigh deep water. Sherlock asks where he is.
   Chrissy: A well. Clearly at the bottom of a well.
John says he doesn’t know and asks where Sherlock is. Sherlock 
says he’s in some sort of cell and he just spoke to the girl 
again and discovered that they’ve been unconscious for hours. 
John is like ‘and she’s still up there?’ 
   Emilio: Finally, somebody questions that.
   Diandra: Yeah, HOW long have they been going without 
    anybody questioning why they are out of contact or 
    anything? That’s not suspicious at all.
Sherlock says the plane will keep running until it runs out of 
fuel. Or, you know, it crashes into another plane because it’s 
off its programmed path. Or it crashes in general because it 
hits a patch of turbulence and there is NO PILOT to right it. 
He asks if Mycroft is with John. John says he can barely see 
anything so he doesn’t know. Ah. So the perfectly clear 
lighting is for the benefit of the audience and we’re supposed 
to pretend it’s really almost pitch black in there. Got it.

Sherlock seemingly takes a moment to fret over the possibility 
that Mycroft is dead, then asks if John is okay and tells him 
to keep exploring and tell him anything he can about his 
location. 
   Emilio: Thanks for the half a second of mourning there.
   Diandra: Oh, you’re not dead.
   Chrissy: You don’t know that yet. They could totally do 
    away with Mycroft if they wanted to.
   Diandra: Sigh. Yeah, I suppose that is somewhat 
    believable. As long as John and Sherlock live 
    *technically* anybody else is expendable.

John feels around, determining that the walls are rock and he 
thinks the floor under him is too, but there’s two feet of 
water covering it. And as he moves he realizes there are chains 
around his ankles. And then he finds some bones under the 
water. He doesn’t know what KIND of bones they are yet, but 
they are small. Sherlock suddenly finds Redbeard’s personalized 
bowl under the table and mutters his name. The little girl cuts 
in to ask who that is. Sherlock shakes himself and asks if 
she’s at the front of the plane yet. She says yes, but she 
can’t wake the “driver”. He asks her to describe what she can 
see out of the windshield now. She says a river and a big 
wheel. So...London? 
   Chrissy: How old is this child anyway? She can’t 
    identify the city the relative she was just visiting 
    lives in, can’t identify her OWN city and keeps calling 
    the pilot the “driver”. I’m pretty sure when I was that 
    age I could name the town my grandparents lived in even 
    if I didn’t know how to get there.
   Diandra: You could also probably have given your home 
    address. I mean, she’s what...eight? Ten? Either she’s 
    an idiot, Mofftiss aren’t giving a child that old 
    enough credit or there’s a specific reason she is being 
    so unhelpful that serves a narrative purpose. 

Sherlock says they’ll have to fly the plane themselves then. 
She just needs to find something that looks like a radio and 
try to contact somebody on the ground. Yeah, good luck with 
that. Are you sure she knows what a radio is? The plane jolts 
and she shrieks and tells him it’s shaking. Also, her ears 
hurt. Sherlock asks if the river is getting closer. She’s like 
‘um...maybe? Why are all these things beeping and flashing?’ 
Sherlock sighs like ‘great, it’s crashing already.’ 

A cloud moves suddenly overhead and John realizes he’s in a 
well. He announces this to Sherlock. Sherlock frowns and 
wonders why there is a well on British Alcatraz. He goes to the 
wall again and notices a) there is a draft coming from 
somewhere and b) there is evidence that the walls have moved 
after they were painted. He pushes the wall and it collapses 
outward to reveal Skyfall. Er...the Holmes estate, which he 
reminds us is called Musgrave Hall.
   Emilio: Didn’t that burn down?
   Diandra: I don’t know. The alcohol is impeding my 
    ability to remember things.
   Chrissy: Good. It’s working.

He marches toward it as Eurus comes back to explain some 
bullshit about being reminded of it when she realized she and 
Moriarty “got on like a house fire.” Yeah, whatever. Sherlock 
is like ‘I don’t fucking care about the house, the plane is 
crashing!’ Eurus keeps rambling about Moriarty and how Sherlock 
knew he would have some sort of revenge somehow but what he 
didn’t know was that SHE was behind Moriarty all along. I mean, 
this is not exactly what she says, but...it’s true. Sherlock 
says he’ll play whatever game she wants after he speaks to the 
little girl. Eurus says no, he has to find Redbeard first. 
Before she drowns another of his “pets”.
   Chrissy: You know, you keep referring to me that way, 
    but I’m usually the one holding the leash.
   Diandra: Not now, John!
   Chrissy: Ten.
   Emilio: I think you already said ten.
   Chrissy: Eleven.
   Diandra: Thanks a lot, brosis.
   Emilio: Any time.

Eurus announces that it’s time Sherlock solved The Musgrave 
Ritual: his first case and the “Final Problem”.
   Emilio: [stands up and applauds]
   Diandra: Yes, now that is the right context.
   Chrissy: I still don’t know what we’re doing here.
   Diandra: Neither do I.
   Chrissy: No, I meant...nevermind. Need another beer?
   Emilio: Yes, please.
   Diandra: Is that what I’m drinking?

Water starts pouring on John from above somewhere and Eurus 
starts singing that song again. Sherlock finds a television in 
the house that is apparently showing a feed from inside the 
well and he and John shout to each other uselessly. To add to 
the ridiculous, contrived “tension” of the whole thing, the 
little girl screams and begs Sherlock to help her.
   Chrissy: What, you don’t think Mofftiss might actually 
    kill the main character whose perspective all the 
    original stories are told from?
   Diandra: I assume that was sarcasm.
   Chrissy: You think? [Hands Emilio a beer and Diandra a 
    glass of something amber colored]
   Diandra: What’s in this?
   Chrissy: Does it matter?
   Diandra: No, probably not. [Drinks]

Sherlock is like ‘okay, one thing at a time’ and instructs John 
to try not to drown. John is like ‘the fuck did you just say to 
me?!’ 
   Chrissy: Twelve!
   Diandra: Again, for all you know, YOU ARE ABOUT TO DIE. 
    Prioritize!
Sherlock says he’s GOING to find him, he just...you know...hold 
on and try not to die? John tells him to hurry the fuck up 
because he doesn’t think he has much time here. The little girl 
shrieks that the entire plane is “leaning” now. Sherlock 
frantically reminds Eurus that he went over that stupid song 
line by line years ago and couldn’t find whatever answer Eurus 
claimed was in it. Eurus is like ‘oh, you poor idiot.’ John 
suddenly pipes up that he has discovered something he thinks 
Sherlock should know. Those bones he found in the well? Yeah, 
they aren’t dog bones. Eurus gleefully reminds Sherlock that 
yeah, their dad is allergic to dogs. Sherlock begged repeatedly 
for a dog, but dad never let him have one. Sherlock closes his 
eyes and remembers playing with the dog while Eurus smarms that 
he was so upset he “rewrote” the memory. “Redbeard” turns into 
a little boy with an eye patch and sword kneeling on the 
ground. And Sherlock suddenly remembers that the “dog” was 
actually his childhood friend Victor Trevor.

This is the point where, the first time I saw this, I startled 
the person I was watching with by screaming “WHAT THE ABSOLUTE 
FUCK IS THIS SHIT?” Because while my friend had already reached 
the conclusion that this episode bore almost no resemblance to 
any other episode in this series, she never read the original 
Doyle stories and therefore didn’t know to what extent it was 
destroying THOSE too. Anybody who has read the original stories 
knows that yes, Victor Trevor was involved in Sherlock’s “first 
case” (“The Adventure of the Gloria Scott”). He was a friend 
from university who helped him solve it. None of this has 
anything to do with the Musgrave Ritual, but this isn’t the 
first time this show has blended multiple stories together or 
used part of one story as a throwaway while turning another 
part into something else entirely. Basically, this season went 
from an episode that was very faithful to the original story 
while updating it and altering it to incorporate Mary’s story 
(“Six Thatchers”) to an episode that kind of followed one of 
the original stories in that it had all the major beats in it 
even if it was mostly different (“Lying Detective”) to this 
entirely original (if massively clichéd) story that 
occasionally pays lip service to three different Doyle 
stories. I guess this isn’t really the first time since I’m 
pretty sure “The Great Game” was almost entirely original too, 
but at least that plot was still in the SPIRIT of a Sherlock 
Holmes story. 

There was an episode of “Elementary” that adapted “The 
Disappearance of the Lady Francis Carfax” in which “Lady 
Francis” was a really expensive vintage guitar and the rest of 
the case was pretty standard American procedural fare. THAT was 
more recognizably a Sherlock Holmes story than this mess.

But what fucking ever. I’m drunk and I have stopped caring.
   Chrissy: SUCCESS! [goes to high-five Emilio and misses 
   because they are both drunk too]

Eurus summarizes that basically she was jealous of Sherlock’s 
friendship with Victor because they were so close and had such 
fun playing together. Sherlock cries and asks what she did to 
him. 
   Emilio: Threw him in the well, dummy. Weren’t you 
    LISTENING?
   Chrissy: And then I had you AAAAAAAALLLLLL to myself. At 
    least until I decided you were boring. But Uncle Rudi 
    threw me in a cell before I could kill you too.
   Diandra: See, this was enough. Killing the dog, 
    threatening to kill a kid and then burning the house 
    down would be plenty of indication that she was 
    dangerous and needed to be put away. Obviously she’s 
    killed plenty of people since to PROVE that point. They 
    didn’t have to turn Victor into a child she murdered 
    that Sherlock remembered as a dog because the real 
    memory was JUST TOO TRAUMATIC. Jesus.
   Chrissy: I thought you stopped caring.
   Diandra: Apparently not. 

John pulls a skull from the water, Eurus starts singing again 
and everyone pretends that this is all very dramatic and 
poignant, even when Eurus adds some stupidity about how water 
has always played a major role for Sherlock and we get flashes 
of the pool that was his and Moriarty’s first official meeting 
and his mind palace version (AKA Doyle’s version) of their last 
meeting at the waterfall. Oh, sure. He set their meeting by a 
waterfall in his mind palace because of a repressed memory of 
his childhood friend drowning. Right. Let’s just ask Arthur 
Conan Doyle how he feels about all of this.
   Arthur Conan Doyle’s Ghost: WHY ARE YOU PEOPLE STILL 
    TELLING THESE STUPID STORIES?!
   Diandra: Ahem, point taken sir. We were just curious how 
    you feel about your less intelligent stories being 
    turned into an even less intelligent story wherein 
    everybody is being manipulated by a Deus Ex Machina 
    third Holmes sibling nobody was ever aware of before 
    who basically supplants Moriarty in every way.
   Arthur Conan Doyle’s Ghost: Oh, dear god, just kill me 
    again.

Sherlock is like ‘so you killed my best friend.’ Eurus says 
yes, because she didn’t have any friends – a line of logic that 
makes perfect sense to a psychopath. She had no one at all. 
Sherlock focuses on the “Nemo” grave in his mind and translates 
Nemo to the Latin for “no one”. Realizing something, he says 
fine, he’ll play her stupid game and runs out to find the 
actual gravestones.

Outside, the girl on the plane suddenly connects again. 
Sherlock enlists her help solving a puzzle. He says it will 
help her problem with the plane too. He starts muttering about 
wrong dates being the key to the cipher in the song. John, 
barely staying above the water line, questions whether any of 
this is strictly relevant right now. Sherlock is like ‘yes, now 
shut up so I can think.’ 
   Chrissy: I can’t remember what number I’m on, so I’m 
    just going to say fifteen.
   Diandra: Oh my god, you are PRACTICALLY DROWNING RIGHT 
    NOW. Seriously, just shut up and stop wasting oxygen.
   Chrissy: Everybody knows I can’t die, Sherlock. And that 
    right there bumped you straight to an even twenty.

Sherlockvision displays all the dates from the gravestones in 
the air over them along with all the verses of the song. I feel 
I should note that the closest passage says “without your love, 
he’ll be gone before. Save pity for strangers. Show love the 
door.”
   Chrissy: Does that mean Victor died because Sherlock 
    didn’t love him enough?
   Diandra: I’m not sure anything means anything at this 
    point.

He overlays the numbers on the words of the song and rearranges 
them to match the order on the gravestones.
   Emilio: Am I too drunk right now? Is this making sense 
    to either of you?
   Diandra and Chrissy: No.
All other words fall away except “Without your love I am lost. 
Help me, brother. Save my soul. Seek my room.” The order of 
those words is a bit sketchy. And when he starts reading it, he 
comes up with “save my life before my doom” in the middle of 
the rest of that. The words “seek my room” linger and he runs 
back toward the house while the little girl screams that 
they’re about to crash and they’re all going to die.

Sherlock is like ‘that’s nice dear. You know, you never told me 
your name...’ She says yes, she’s not supposed to tell 
strangers stuff like that. Sherlock says he isn’t really a 
stranger, though, is he? He opens the door to Eurus’ room and 
all semblance of coherence this episode may have had at one 
point flies out the proverbial window. For a second, he’s 
standing in the cockpit of the plane before all the unconscious 
passengers and crew disappear and the little girl turns into 
Eurus, sitting on the floor with her eyes closed and no 
computer or video equipment in sight. She insists, in a little 
girl’s voice, that they’re PLAYING THE GAME. He says he gets 
it. The song wasn’t really directions. This whole scenario is a 
metaphor wherein she is literally above everybody all alone and 
doesn’t know how to come back down.
   Emilio: [makes a loud farting noise with his mouth]
   Diandra: My sentiments exactly.

He sits on the ground and spews some nonsense about being HERE 
for her and being able to bring her home. She whimpers that 
it’s too late and every time she closes her eyes she’s back on 
that plane and nobody can hear her calling for help. And in 
quite possibly the stupidest line of this whole episode, 
Sherlock tells her “I’m here, you’re not lost anymore” and hugs 
her. 
   Chrissy: You’re not LOST anymore. Get it? LOST!
   Diandra: No, we really aren’t “Lost” anymore. “Lost” 
    always gave their fans credit for having intelligence.
He says she just “went the wrong way” the first time, and this 
time she can help him save his friend. 

Having successfully convinced her to not kill John, she 
apparently tells him where John is and gives him the keys to 
the manacles. Because Mofftiss trusts the audience to be smart 
enough to understand all of this (despite being stupid enough 
to swallow the rest of this episode), we only get a quick shot 
of a rope being thrown down to John.
   Chrissy: What? John is starting to climb the rope 
    immediately like they forgot he was chained down there.
   Diandra: I know, but this is the defense certain fans 
    were arguing. Because CLEARLY Mofftiss aren’t that 
    stupid. We were supposed to realize that he was just 
    steadying it so Sherlock could climb down and unchain 
    him.
   Chrissy: Okay, when you have to work that hard to excuse 
    sloppy writing, something has gone horribly wrong.
   Diandra: I kind of understand it because it’s the same 
    thinking that led to the conviction that there was a 
    secret fourth episode that would explain everything. 
    It’s hard to believe that people who seemed so clever 
    in earlier episodes could suddenly make such glaring 
    mistakes now. I just can’t understand the fans that 
    scream at me and call me names for simply pointing out 
    that the emperor has no clothes.

Lestrade finds Sherlock and John watching while Eurus is loaded 
into a cop car. He says he just spoke to Mycroft and he’s 
shaken up but he’s fine. Eurus just locked him in her old cell. 
In case anybody was worried she had killed him since we last 
saw him. Which would be SLIGHTLY more likely than killing John, 
yes, but still ridiculous because you don’t kill a major 
character behind the scenes. Sherlock asks Lestrade to look 
after him because “he’s not as strong as he thinks he is.” To 
further drive home just how much this whole experience has 
affected him, he adds “thanks, Greg.” John and Lestrade both 
look surprised. And this is how you ruin a perfectly good 
running gag. Because Sherlock’s inability to remember 
Lestrade’s name was SUPPOSED to be a winking reference to the 
fact that Doyle couldn’t remember it or never used it. Now 
Mofftiss seem to be suggesting it was a result of his trauma-
related autism and fucky memory. 
   Chrissy: They hugged it out! He’s all better now!
   Diandra: Oh, what fucking ever. [drinks] [hiccups]

There’s a little bullshit reinforcing this nonsense wherein 
Lestrade and a random police officer do a call back to the good 
man/great man conversation he had with John several episodes 
back. And then Lestrade goes about his business and John sidles 
up to Sherlock to ask if he’s okay. Sherlock says yeah, but he 
promised he would take her home and he can’t really do that, 
can he? John thinks he at least gave her what she was looking 
for. “Context”.
   Emilio: [makes loud farting noise with his mouth again]
Sherlock asks if that’s a good thing. John gives the most 
profoundly self-aware line of the entire episode: “It’s not 
good, it’s not bad. It is what it is.”
   Chrissy: No, it is bad. Definitely bad.
   Diandra: Yeah, I’m just going to go back to what John 
    said the last time they had this conversation: what it 
    is is shit.

And now we have a little scene where the Holmes parents react 
with shock and outrage that their daughter is still alive and 
Mycroft has been keeping her from them all these years. 
Sherlock hovers in the background, staring at the floor while 
Mycroft explains that he really thought they would be better 
off thinking she was dead instead of knowing she was a psycho 
mutant capable of killing people with mind manipulation. They 
argue that he should have done better.
   Chrissy: No, really, Mark. Er...what is your name again?
   Diandra: Is Stephen here? Because he should hear this 
    too.
Sherlock pipes up that he “did his best”. “Then he’s very 
limited,” mum snaps.
   Emilio: Go, Wanda!

Mycroft gulps and assures them that she is safely back in 
Sherrinford. He reminds them that, given the opportunity, she 
WILL kill again so she cannot be allowed to ever leave the 
prison. Dad asks when they can see her. Mycroft doesn’t see a 
point in that because she won’t talk to them. Or anyone 
anymore. “She has passed beyond our view.”
   Emilio: You know that’s normally a euphemism reserved 
   for when people die, right?
Mum turns to Sherlock, notes that he was “always the grownup” 
and asks what they should do now.
   Chrissy: Sherlock is the...oh dear god, we’re all in 
   trouble.

Sherlock goes back to Sherrinford and the reconstructed 
Hannibal cell. He pulls his violin out of a case, tunes it and 
starts playing some dreary piece. Eurus just stares at the 
wall, her back to him. He keeps playing over a little montage 
of him and John cleaning up the mess at 221b, being sure to put 
the headphones back on the moose head that somehow survived. At 
one point, Eurus finally gets up, grabs her own violin and 
starts playing along. Because this is the only way she 
communicates now, I guesss.

Somewhere possibly before all of this (who the hell knows 
because timelines are murky this entire season), John finds 
another disc in the mail, this time labeled “miss you”. He 
calls Sherlock to come watch it with him. Apparently Mary 
separated a post-script for her video instructing Sherlock to 
“go to hell” onto a separate disc. “I know you two. And if I’m 
gone, I know what you could become.”
   Emilio: Yeah, the whole WORLD knows what you could become if 
    anybody had the fucking balls to write it.
   Chrissy: Which of us is Mary again?
   Diandra: Oh, right, that’s me. Sorry. Ahem. All I ask is 
    that you use protection because LORD KNOWS what you 
    might have picked up in a crack den, Sherlock, and I 
    didn’t spend all this time getting you two back 
    together just so you could give the father of my child 
    something that will make his dick fall off. I will come 
    back and haunt you I SWEAR TO GOD.
   Chrissy: Also, keep your safeword on the tip of your 
    tongue because if John goes too far with that riding 
    crop and actually hurts you we all know he will never 
    forgive himself.
   Emilio: [slow clap]

She says she knows who they really are and we go to a montage 
while her voice and the violins intertwine. She describes them 
as a junkie who solves crimes to get high and a “doctor who 
never came home from the war” over clips of our first 
introductions to them back when this show had promise. The 
violins sound like they have somehow multiplied. “Who you 
really are, it doesn’t matter,” Mary says in a line possibly 
mistakenly taken to be a statement on LGBT identity. “It’s all 
about the legend. The stories. The adventures.”
   Chrissy: This could be taken to mean “stop worrying 
    about what sort of relationships they should be having 
    with which gender because nobody cares about that. It’s 
    all about the mysteries.”
   Diandra: Yes, but the wording is still offensive because 
    it basically says “nobody cares who you are as a 
    person, you’re just here to service the plots”. I know 
    there are people who would like such a thing, but I 
    think most people find stories where the characters are 
    so devoid of personalities that they are 
    interchangeable boring.

She rambles about how 221b is the last refuge of the desperate, 
unloved and persecuted. John and Sherlock finish getting it 
back together and rewallpapered and then John spray paints a 
smiley in the same place it used to be and Sherlock shoots a 
few holes in it because nostalgia. The violins fade away 
entirely into a crazed version of the main theme while we see 
snippets of cases, some recognizable. John frowning at a 
ventriloquist dummy sitting in the client chair. A chalkboard 
with the caricature cipher message from “The Mystery of the 
Dancing Men”. John checking the pulse of an unconscious man who 
seems to be dressed like the lion from “Wizard of Oz”. Okay, so 
only one of them is recognizable. And then there’s an odd shot 
of Sherlock awkwardly taking Rosie from John and then 
apparently morphing through time and confidently handing her 
back to John.

Blah blah at the end of the day it is about two men sitting in 
a “scruffy flat” arguing “like they’ve always been there and 
they always will.” I thought it was about the CASES, Mofftiss. 
Make up your mind. “The best and wisest men I have ever known,” 
she concludes. “My Baker Street Boys.”
   Emilio: Terrible band name.

And we end on a shot of them running out of a building, 
freezing as they are level with a sign that says “Rathbone 
Place”. Because wink wink nudge Basil Rathbone.
   Chrissy: And then John wakes up in the hospital, having 
    been in a coma since his therapist shot him and tells 
    an amused Sherlock about this crazy dream he had where 
    Sherlock had a psychotic sister who played this 
    insanely baroque “game” with them and Sherlock figured 
    out she killed his best friend who he remembered as a 
    dog and Sherlock laughs and laughs at his wild 
    imagination.
   Diandra: Or we snap back to the ending of “Abominable 
    Bride” when Holmes suggested the entire modern series 
    has been a story he’s been telling and this turns out 
    to have been Watson’s stab at continuing it. Holmes 
    rolls his eyes, declares it “absurd” and suggests 
    Watson go back to their actual cases.
   Chrissy: Ooo, I like that one better. Write that fic.
   Emilio: Seconded.

End credits. I have mixed feelings, coming to the end of this 
episode. On the one hand, I’m glad it’s over because basically 
the only enjoyment I got out of this is the banter Chrissy and 
Emilio provided throughout this recap. On the other hand, I 
hate that it had to end this way. Because for ten episodes I 
swore that this was one of the best shows on television in ANY 
COUNTRY and it went out on an episode that might as well have 
been adapted from a preteen’s terrible fanfic. 
   Chrissy: Although speaking of fanfic...it provided 
    writers with a LOT of potential fix-it ideas.
   Diandra: Yeah. I saw a writer articulate that very well 
    recently. She said it was PAINFUL to revisit the 
    episode, but it provided a lot of material for fan 
    writers. She then proceeded to “Bobby Ewing in the 
    Shower” the entire episode.
   Emilio: Bob Newhart also did a variation on that wherein 
    the entire SERIES was a dream.
   Diandra: Or that. That would work too. Also the "St. 
    Elsewhere" snowglobe thing we talked about in the last 
    episode recap.
   Emilio: Basically there is a lot of precedent for shows 
    undoing something by saying “lol jk none of that was 
    real”.
   Diandra: Yeah. I don’t have a lot of faith in this being 
    one to continue the tradition though. Or any tradition 
    because the vast majority of what Mofftiss (and some of 
    the actors) have said indicates that this was meant to 
    be the END of the show proper. IF they do anything 
    else, it would be a stand-alone one-shot special like 
    “The Abominable Bride”.
   Chrissy: Except that one didn’t actually stand alone.
   Diandra: Yeah, it was more like the original “X-Files” 
    movie, sort of separate but still connected. 
   Emilio: Which would make any special they do in the 
    future like “I Want to Believe”?
   Diandra: I...um...but...[horrified squeaking noises]

   Chrissy: We talked about this after a “fan” basically 
    snapped at you to leave the fandom because fandom is 
    only for people who love the show unconditionally even 
    if it becomes something entirely different than what it 
    used to be. You drew an analogy to a political quote 
    from Al Franken (and the fact that you were still 
    talking about this show and politics in the same breath 
    proved to what extent this past season had linked them 
    in your mind, but I’ve accepted that this is just how 
    you think). He said Republicans love America like a 
    child loves mommy. Mommy can never do anything wrong 
    and anyone who says anything even slightly bad about 
    her must be a horrible person. Democrats love America 
    like an adult capable of recognizing faults and wanting 
    to work on them BECAUSE they love mom and want to see 
    her succeed. Fandom – at least this fandom – has formed 
    a similar split in thinking and differences in 
    expressing love. The girl who yelled at you cannot 
    handle any criticism of the thing she loves. You love 
    the show so much that we practically had to drag you 
    into this recap kicking and screaming because you 
    couldn’t bear to watch something you love die a second 
    time.
   Diandra: Yeah. I actually had a moment the night it 
    aired where I woke up at some ungodly hour of the 
    morning and thought “it was all a dream! The episode 
    hasn’t actually aired yet!” It only lasted a few 
    seconds, but it was probably the best part of that 
    entire week for me.
   Emilio: And hey, since you’re a fanfiction writer, you 
    can fix it in your stories.
   Diandra: Yeah, but I feel like the most common 
    misconception in the aftermath of this episode is that 
    the only people who didn’t like it were the 
    John/Sherlock shippers who really thought they would 
    kiss or something and since they are obviously 
    delusional, all criticism can therefore be dismissed. 
    But I know at least one homophobe who hated it for the 
    same reasons I did. It was BAD in just about every way 
    except the acting (because none of the actors can be 
    blamed for the shitty lines they were given and Sian 
    especially can’t be blamed for the fact that her 
    character is absurdly cartoonish and never should have 
    existed). Using part of the fandom as a scapegoat 
    because you know you will make them angry anyway is 
    just cruel, even if they were annoying.

   Chrissy: I think they might have blamed the Russian leak 
    of the episode for poor ratings too.
   Diandra: Yeah, even though I never heard of anybody NOT 
    watching because of that. More likely, they watched 
    because they thought the Russian leak wasn’t the real 
    episode. Probably those are same people who were 
    convinced there was a secret fourth episode that would 
    explain why this one was so bizarre. Like I said, 
    tinhatting was one of the stages of grief for some 
    fans. It worked very much like bargaining. “Please just 
    give me the real episode and I’ll forgive you for this 
    one.”
   Emilio: Isn’t that kind of what you were saying though 
    about a fifth season/special?
   Diandra: That I can forgive this if that mitigates the 
    damage? Yeah, well...I guess I’m still working my way 
    toward acceptance. 

   Chrissy: I think we may have gotten off track. What does 
    this have to do with you writing fix-it stories?
   Diandra: I am a JohnLock shipper. But I’m a realistic 
    one who really liked Mary and never expected Johnlock 
    to become cannon. The JohnLock Conspiracy people were 
    driving me insane before the season started, but I 
    found myself in an uneasy alliance with them after this 
    episode aired because once they got past the 
    queerbaiting argument they were pointing out a lot of 
    the same problems I was.
   Emilio: It is queerbaiting though. 
   Diandra: Yes, the show has been doing that all along. 
    But that’s like saying the only problem with “Fifty 
    Shades of Grey” is that it doesn’t properly portray the 
    BDSM lifestyle. That’s true, but it ignores the fact 
    that basically EVERYTHING ELSE about it is garbage. And 
    now that I think about it, that really is a good 
    parallel because I remember seeing people raving about 
    how that first movie was awesome and deserved to win an 
    Oscar and I don’t think they were kidding. Stephen 
    Moffat once said he thought what E.L. James did, 
    whatever you think of it in terms of quality, was 
    “brilliant”. I had a point there. What was it?
   Chrissy: That “The Final Problem” is the “Fifty Shades 
    of Grey” of this series?
   Diandra: Kind of? Certainly reading viewer responses to 
    it led me to the conclusion that SOMETHING has severely 
    lowered the bar. Some people were declaring it the best 
    episode of the entire series, much like those weirdoes 
    who declared “Fifty Shades of Grey” one of the best 
    movies they had seen. It felt like the show had 
    suddenly given up all pretense of their former 
    intelligence in favor of catering to people who just 
    want mindless plots and explosions and it was WORKING.
   Emilio: So...idiots.
   Diandra: No, I enjoy mindless action movies too. But 
    that is a separate thing, or it should be. Like I said, 
    I thought this show was too intelligent to suddenly 
    devolve into this homage to slasher movies with a 
    cartoonish ubervillain. But I guess I was mistaken.
   Emilio: I think you should have another drink.
   Diandra: I’m already going to need to call a cab to get 
    home. 
   Chrissy: You are home.
   Diandra: Oh. I guess I am. Well, in that case...

And on that note...thank you again to Christine and Emilio for 
helping me get through this. I couldn't have done it without 
you. To anyone still reading: I hope my venting has at least 
been cathartic for you, as our live tweeting session was for my 
fellow exasperated fan @academicfangirl, who described it as 
"theraputic salt". As this could very well be the last recap I 
write for this show (even IF it does come back in some form), I 
guess this is goodbye. See you in my Marvel recaps.

~DH