Sherlock Season Three

Oh, screw it. Spoiler alert:




For two years, we were kept in limbo, knowing that Sherlock had survived the fall (even if we hadn't seen him watching Watson at his "grave," the show's named after him) but having no idea how he had done it.

The opening scene of the season (series to the Brits, but that term has a frustrating lack of specificity, so I'm going to be patriotic and stick to my own country's vocabulary) plays a mean prank on the audience, teasing them with the most outlandish explanation, or really explanations plural, for how Sherlock managed to fake his death (including a totally science-fictiony mask that they put on Moriarty's corpse.)

Thankfully, this is revealed to be the ramblings of a few conspiracy nuts, and we get another from the Sherlock/Moriarty shippers, until we finally get what seems the "if we ever explain it, you can consider this one to be it" explanation that is also suggested to be the hallucination of one of Sherlock's fans, so take it with a grain of salt.

The great mystery of how he faked it all honestly doesn't get resolved in a terribly satisfying way. For a show that's about crazy but true explanations of mysteries, that's a little disappointing, but I can't say I had a great way to explain that one away. But let's put a pin in the whole resurrection thing, because it'll come back.

But the how of Sherlock's survival is not so important here. Season Three's opening is less of a mystery (in fact, the high-stakes terrorist plot is barely given lip service,) and it's more about showing how Watson has moved on. He's  actually in the middle of proposing to his girlfriend Mary when Sherlock decides to show up in the most dickish way imaginable (though of course also a way that allows him to show off.)

Reestablishing the friendship between the two of them is really the main drive of season three. The second episode is framed entirely around Sherlock's duties as Best Man to give the toast at his wedding, and when reminiscing about the cases that the two of them have worked on, realizes that there's an ongoing murder plot at the reception itself.

This second episode, "The Sign of Three," thankfully breaks the trend for this show of middle episodes being significantly worse than the rest, mainly in committing fully to being a comedic episode, even though there's murder and a pretty clever mystery (though I'm not sure how likely it is that this method of murder would actually work, except perhaps if the killer were a surgeon.)

Of course, one of the interesting things about this season is the introduction of Mary, John's wife as of episode two. She's plucky, but we don't get much to work other than the fact that she seems to fit surprisingly comfortably into the Sherlock/Watson dynamic (she seems to do so by liking Sherlock despite... everything.)

It's episode three where we discover that, twist, Mary is actually some kind of secret agent lady. I don't know if that's quite the way to flesh out a character (especially given that this crazy past is left incredibly vague.)

While I'm not that satisfied with Mary as a character, the third and final episode of season three does manage to introduce a pretty fantastic villain in the form of Magnussen. Charles Augustus Magnussen looks almost as if he's going to be the next Moriarty, despite the fact that he is really just a blackmailer. Still, given the wealth of information at his disposal, and his more-Sherlock-than-Sherlock style of intellect (including a "Scanning" technique that uses a similar HUD to how we often see Sherlock looking at things,) he manages to be a real threat, while also just being an awful, disgusting person.

When it all looks like a parting of the ways, however, and even the end-credits music begins to play, we realize we've been faked out. Magnussen is dead, you know who isn't? (Probably?) Moriarty.

On one hand, bringing Moriarty back makes the entirety of the Richenbach Fall seem a little unimportant, but I also think it's a pretty fantastic bit of misdirection. The mystery of how Sherlock managed to fake his death functioned to shroud suspicion that he might not have been the only one to do so.

Jumping back a season, when Moriarty put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger, it really seemed like the most shocking act of self-destructive nihilism - to kill oneself in order to force one's opponent's hand. There's no gloating when you do it that way, after all, and what good villain doesn't like to gloat? To be that self-destructive for the sake of a plan while also being such a show-off as Moriarty (see: wearing the Crown Jewels,) it seems that we should have suspected that Moriarty had a trick up his sleeve as well.

Or maybe Moriarty really is dead. We saw him only as an animated gif, other than the little post-credits gag and in Sherlock's mind-palace. Moriarty had a bunch of people working for him, and may in fact have been some kind of figurehead, after all. Anyway, the promise is that there will be more to deal with in season four, which will hopefully come quicker than this one did.

Oh, and apparently there's a third Holmes brother. Maybe. Something?

Anyway, it's still a joy to see Cumberbatch and Freeman bounce off each other. Come for the mystery, stay for the bromance.