Sherlock Rewatch: Season 3

Yup, that's right, we've already made it to the end. So sad 😢.

Thursday (I'm sorry I didn't publish Thursday) my friend and I watched season 3 of the amazing Sherlock. The third season shows some more advances in filming methods, a bit of a re-emergence of the need to capture modern settings in most shots, some new special effects, and a development of all the main characters.

The Empty Hearse

After two years, Sherlock has finally been freed from the lies that Moriarty created. Anderson, and other believers in Sherlock Holmes, begin to theorize about how Sherlock may have actually survived this event. (Anderson, as shown in a pre-episode not present on the DVD but probably still on the Internet, has been tracing activity that he believes points to Sherlock still bein alive and in Europe. Other believers join with him to theorize a  little later on, but they too think he survived somehow.)

We are then shown clips of a man being chased, caught, and tortured in Eastern Europe. He escapes thanks to his deductive skills distracting his torturer, and his brother Mycroft bringing him back to England to face a terrorist threat in London. Sherlock Holmes prepares to go back and meet with John again.

John visits Mrs. Hudson and let's her know that he has plans to propose to his girlfriend Mary Morstan (played by Martin Freeman's real life partner, Amanda Abbington).

Sherlock tries (although it takes a while) to interrupt the dinner, not realizing what John was planning on. He disguises himself, rather poorly, as a French waiter. John is a mixture of so many emotions and acts out by tackling Sherlock. This occurs several times as they try to reacquaint themselves and continue to get kicked out of restaurants. While John becomes more angry with Sherlock's betrayal of his trust, Mary really seems to enjoy Sherlock and knows how good he will be for John.

John now has his practice, so Molly joins him for a time in solving cases. Particularly one with a skeleton at a desk containing a book called How I Did It by Jack the Ripper. This later turns out to be Anderson's  creation.

Sherlock and John, despite the fights, clearly miss each other and it is affecting their work.

Mary turns to Sherlock when she receives texts that she needs to save John, who has been placed in a Guy Fox fire. Their friendship is strengthened, and the guys team up to solve Mycroft's terrorist problem. A case that at first seems unrelated, containing a missing passenger on an underground train, leads Sherlock an John to the answer to the puzzle.

In the end, Sherlok will admit to Anderson the methods of his escape from the roof of Bart's. If you go back and watch The Reichenbach Fall, you can see things that hint at the truth of this "theory".

Many emotions are shared during this episode. John expresses almost every feeling that friendship and love could ever conceive, while Sherlock shows more of his care and concern for John. Of course, Sherlock is still twisted, and he may be learning to play with other's emotions as he tries to understand his own.

The Sign of Three

This episode gets a little jumpy as it goes back and forth in telling the story of several related cases in Sherlock's best man speech and the wedding of John and Mary Watson. I apologize if this doesn't all stay in order.

John and Mary are planning their weddin and the guys are getting bored and nervous. Sherlock is YouTube-ing how to fold napkins. Mary plays them both and sets them out on a case.

Come wedding day, john's commanding Major Sholto arrives, despite not responding to the invitation. He is a hermit essentially, and very like Sherlock in many ways.

As Sherlock tells his best an speech, he says some amazing and heartfelt things that nicely explain the relationship between the sleuthing partners. He recounts the case of a guardsman who was stabbed in a locked shower, though saved by Watson. He also tells of the two of them going out for John's stag night and getting drunk, then eventually trying to solve the case of the Mayfly Man which the received that night. The speech gets odd as he gets too into the cases, and then when he begins to realize that the cases connect to one another and that a murder will take place at the wedding.

Sholto is discovered to be the target of the murderer, due to a tragic training exercise in the past. Sherlock must put the cases together and figure out how to save the major before time runs out.

And then after he plays the song he composed for the couple's first dance, he deduces that the Watson family is expanding. He also promises to protect their little family, and that he will do. Mary is pregnant! (Not a spoiler, it's very clear but the next episode and this is a rewatch).

His Last Vow

John hasn't seen Sherlock in a month, and he is having war dreams again. Early one morning, a neighbour comes to the door crying about her son running off and getting into drugs, so John decides to go get him and Mary decides to come with him.

At the drug house, John sprains a man's arm and manages to find the high boy to bring him home. But he also discovers Sherlockz. Molly's drug test on him comes back positive and she is not happy! The man with the sprained arm, Wiggins, becomes Sherlock's new protege in the Network.

John discovers that Sherlock was mostly using to create a weak point that could be attacked. However, he is now dating Janine, the maid of honour from the wedding, which is a shock to John.

Charles Augustus Magnessun, newspaper owner, is accused of having influences over the Brotish and other world leaders. He then uses an affair to blackmail a Lady Smallwood, on the committee questioning him. She turns to Sherlock to negotiate with Magnessun to get the back letters that her husband wrote to a teenaged girl. Magnessun is a truly disgusting man, even to Sherlock.

Sherlock decides to break into Magnessun's office. It turns out that Janine is his secretary, and Sherlock proposes to her in order to get in. However, someone beat the boys there. He thinks it is Lady Smallwood, but it's Mary. She shoots Sherlock and runs before her hisband can find her.

It turns out, that Mary is an alias and that the woman has a very shady past. Sherlock tricks her into admitting this in front of John. Her husband is angry, but Sherlock convinces him that they need to take her on as a client. She presents them a USB with all of her past information; information which Magnessun has a hold of.

At Christmas, John actually speaks to his wife and says that her past is her problem but her future is his privilege and so he burns the USB without ever reading any of it.

Magnessun's real interest in their little friend group is actually all about getting a hold over Mycroft. Sherlock allows Wiggins to drug his family and Mary at Christmas so that he and John may go to Magnessun and deal with his threat, particularly to get back all his information on Mary. But his vaults are not as they seem an Sherlock sees only one way out.

In this season Sherlock becomes more human, but sometimes a bit more cruel. The emotions run so deep in this series that it's a very different, but cathartic, feeling. Different, but still so well done. And sadly, the end for now.