Sherlock’s Last Vow has come! Wait a minute, isn’t that how last season ended? The stakes are raised to that exact same level again in this season’s finale.
Season 3 of Sherlock has been a peculiar beast. It has brought us excellent human drama with the dynamic between Benedict Cumberbatch’s flawless Sherlock and Martin Freeman’s considered John Watson getting better and better. But it has also brought us an occasional lack of direction, even pace and character development. I think it would be fair to say that much of our critical picking at Sherlock this year is down to the inevitable assumption that it can only get worse from the zenith of Season 2, and Season 3 is still in many ways superior television to most other shows. But it is also fair to say that Season 3 has so far been patchy, so we go in to the finale hoping that it will obliterate our doubts.
Enter Charles Augustus Magnusson
Exactly what Sherlock needed – a new supervillain! Morarity, Sherlock’s most famous nemesis, was fantastic, and his cameo in this episode is (unlike Irene Adler in last week’s) fitting and terrifying. But it does the show good to remind us that there are other villains and other plots to enjoy, and Magnusson is brilliant. Played coolly by Lars Mikkleson, he is fully-rounded by the writing and easily the most successful part of this story. What is so incredible about Steven Moffat’s writing is that he tells the story of a blackmailer as though it has never been told before. Evidence for that is in the face-flicking scene. We both stifle giggles and clench our fists, watching it.
It’s not all perfection: the fact he sees information about people around them in text is great as a parallel to Sherlock, but the way it is shot at first makes it seem as though he’s seeing it through his spectacles. Magic spectacles do not exist in the Sherlock universe. Meanwhile, Lindsay Duncan (one of Britain’s finest actresses) is wasted in a nothing-role, which so often happens now in Sherlock – there’s just no space for anyone beyond the leads.
Family Reunion
The story takes a diversion from this point, into a runaround involving finally giving Mary a character (welcome, if predictable that she would be “bad” or a mystery), and then bizarrely turning in to Christmas at the Holmes’s. Whilst I had as much of a giggle at Mycroft being referred to as “Mike” as the next man, the show is humanizing its lead too much. We are peripherally aware he must have had a family, and a childhood, we see his brother a lot (perhaps too much) – but he should be a slightly unknowable, slightly intangible presence. We don’t love Sherlock because he’s like any other man. He’s an enigmatic genius, and only Watson knows him. This all comes from the shock Sherlock shooting, which is a pacey and fun sequence but when the series has just moved on from the last time Sherlock ‘died’, it’s probably unwise to head straight back there.
Watson gets some great stuff to do in playing Sherlock, but the whole drugs den sequence is just a bit adult. Without Sherlock later rebutting his actions as immoral it would be completely inappropriate. Ultimately, Sherlock is darker than a family show – but they do get a lot of children watching, whether or not there is call for them.
This feeds into Sherlock’s final action: he takes a gun and simply shoots Magnusson, dead. “I’ve never been a hero,” he tells John, which is absolutely true – and the fact that we get to see Sherlock face somebody he genuinely, completely loathes is good stuff for Cumberbatch. The only problem with this resolution is: couldn’t Sherlock think of something cleverer? As a resolution, it lacks impact because of that. Sherlock isn’t above shooting the villain for moral reasons, but he should be above it intellectually.
“Did you miss me?”
Of course we did! There is a clever false end to this episode of Sherlock – the titles start crashing in and everything, before we are treated to a thrilling epilogue. Thankfully it is a false end, because Sherlock jetting off on a plane never to see Watson again completely fails to convince. Why can’t he sneak back? Why can’t they go on holiday and see him?
Moriarty lives! But how? It’s a great direction to spin us off towards Season 4, and wisely kept back to avoid over-shadowing Magnusson. The question: “how did Moriarty survive?” brings us back to where we were at the start of the season, with “how did Sherlock survive?”, which yet again draws comparisons between them. If Season 4 can iron out the inconsistencies of this year, and focus more on strong separate stories, then we have something very special in store!
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