12/9/2023 0 Comments Review sherlock season 3The reveal and eventual reconciliation of the two is played perfectly, with Sherlock’s bumbling social skills (which would have been sorely needed in a situation like this) clashing with Watson’s hardheadedness and deep hurt at being deceived. How he did it, why he did it, and most importantly, what affect it has had on Watson. To be honest, the episode wasn’t really about that plot so much as it was Sherlock’s return in general. Good timing too, as his brother Mycroft shows up to recruit him to suss out a terrorist plot. Watson (Martin Freeman) has moved on and is about to propose to his affable yet sarcastic girlfriend, while Sherlock (Benedict Cumberbatch) is being tortured in one of the lesser Slavic countries after eliminating the last of Moriarty’s crime cells. Really, two full years have passed when the first episode ( The Empty Hearse) begins. And Season 3 did pick up right where 2 left off, in story if not in actual time. That was where Season 2 left us, and it left fans anxiously awaiting (too long, I might add, as both its stars have been very busy as of late) the return of the show in its very odd, 3 episodes of 90 minutes each season (or series, because the show is British). And so, he fools the world, leaving his best friend mistakenly grieving at an empty grave, because he’s also a bit of an asshole. Except none of that is really what happened, because this is Sherlock we’re talking about, and he wasn’t going to let a criminal mastermind’s international ring of killers, mobsters, and corrupt officials outsmart him. Jumped from the roof of a tall building while his best friend looked on, all in an attempt to stop assassins waiting to murder those closest to him should he leave that rooftop alive. She’s a dangerous character in her own right, and in the process Watson gains two formidable protectors – a sociopath, and a psychopath. But what is it? We don’t find out exactly, but revealing that she’s an ex-spy who stole her identity from another of the recently deceased – another Mayfly Man technique – suddenly makes her character more than a mere wife for Twitter to turn against. Sherlock discovering her in Magnussen’s office, threatening him with a gun, leads to the reveal that she is an excellent marksman with a secret past and that she will do anything, include killing both one of the most powerful men and one of the most gifted detectives in the UK, to protect her secret. That scene is also important because it defines the future of Mary Watson. In this world, no-one is truly good, nor truly bad, aside from Magnussen. It also means that Sherlock adopted one of the techniques of the Mayfly Man in the last episode, entering into a relationship with someone’s personal staff to get access to them, blurring the line between hero and villain. In one fell swoop, that scene defines the trajectory of the episode and tears down everything that came before it in the series, everything that had caused the first two episodes to be practically written off by angry, entitled netizens. Notably it all centres around “human error,” something Sherlock understands as the weak link in every chain, but also something that Sherlock falls prey to himself at the end of the episode, putting that chain of events in motion. This ends in disaster for everyone involved, of course, but it’s still a fun scene. Suffice to say, the lovey-dovey fun and games of last episode are well and truly over, apart from one hilarious scene in which Sherlock proposes marriage to his recent girlfriend Janine – Magnussen’s PA – to break into his office. From his first scene with Sherlock and Watson, as he makes himself at home at 221b Baker Street, we see that not only that he’s morally bankrupt but also that Sherlock appears to hold him in a quiet respect, recognizing him as his match in most walks of life. As the introduction of villains go Magnussen’s is more chilling than most, outing himself as both a power-hungry control freak and a sexual predator, made all the more horrifying by his completely blank expression.
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