Holy shit, that worked!
Epic 
Review:
Yeah, that was a good one. The ending seems to have sparked a million theories so far. 
Gatiss and Moffat both confirmed on twitter that there will be a third series.
Wow. That last confrontation between Moriarty and Holmes was really something. The utter joy on Moriarty’s face right before he pulled the trigger was chilling, and brilliantly done. And the bit where he was Richard Brook almost had me convinced.
On thing I don’t get, regarding Moriarty’s final ultimatum: Why didn’t he threaten Mycroft along with Mrs. Hudson, Watson and Lestrade? I suppose Moriarty might not have been able to get to him - but that seems unlikely, given his abilities. Or perhaps he thought Sherlock wouldn’t give a damn - but the guy’s his brother, for Pete’s sake.
I loved the modern take on the Hound (previous episode), but this one totally knocked me flat. Absolutely brilliant.
I don’t often think that is the case but I’m close to agreeing with you.
That’s what you call a finale.
Kudos to all associated with it right from conception to execution.
I know how he did it. They telegraphed it somewhat.
Wonderful layers of intrigue, though.
Well, I don’t.
Are we *really *going to use spoiler boxes for the next six months? Oh well. [spoiler]My wife thinks that it was Moriarty’s body that was thrown from the building, but I can’t see how this fits. There was the “You are me!” conversation between Moriarty and Holmes, but although there wasn’t a clear shot of the face after death, it certainly looked like Holmes. Also, that was pretty clearly a very alive man standing at the edge of the building. Plus, it’s a hell of a conspiracy to cover up a bullet hole in somebody who allegedly died in a fall.
Isn’t is very like the faked death in Moffat’s other big show?[/spoiler]
What do you think, GuanoLad?
[spoiler]Ask yourself why the (kidnapped) girl screamed when she saw SH’ face.
And perhaps then, who might have carried out the post mortem on the dead body.
[/spoiler]
There are three things that:
[spoiler]should be noted.
One: Sherlock goes to Molly and asks for her help with something.
Two: Sherlock asks Watson to look at him as he jumps, but Watson is knocked over by a cyclist before seeing Sherlock hit the ground.
Three: Watson goes to Sherlock’s body but is not able to check his pulse before being taken away.
Sherlock fell on a prepared surface that broke his fall, prepared by Molly, who also made sure Sherlock looked suitably injured when the Ambulance took him away.
I think Sherlock was well aware that a few lines of code was not enough to be a Universal key, and that he would have to be seen to commit suicide. Everything that happened on the rooftop, except perhaps Moriarty’s death, was intentional.
And I’m not even certain of Moriarty’s death being genuine either.
[/spoiler]
I personally think
He is hiding with Adler, there has to be some reason he went and saved her
furthermore re Moriaty, he blew out his brains, that has me puzzled. But I think he is alive.
I heard quite a good theory about Watson and the death, which was that it was Moriarty’s body but the cyclist who hit Watson sprayed him with a shot of the gas from the previous episode, at Holmes’ instruction. Watson thus saw what he expected to see - and so did we. Molly was needed to identify the body as Holmes.
Again, why have the kidnapped girl scream at seeing Holmes’ face?
[spoiler]And of course, Mycroft can pull all the strings necessary to make sure that the identification of the body is entirely official and proper.
[Spartan]You don’t fake the DNA results, you issue a press release.
[/quote]
[/spoiler]
Although I did enjoy it, there are some elements of this that were unsatisfying.
[spoiler]1) Moriarty kicked Sherlock’s arse all over London. Entirely as planned, Sherlock’s reputation is now in the gutter; Sherlock didn’t work out how Moriarty really did the three break-ins, or he’d have been able to get the assassins to stand down by revealing there was no code. In the original story, Moriarty wants a fight to the death because Holmes left him no other way out - here, the situation is reversed. And we don’t even see Sherlock turn it round because…
-
Moriarty’s suicide. WTF? As said, he’s beating Sherlock hollow. He makes one slip of the tongue, enough to let Sherlock know that there is a way to call off the assassins. But that’s all. He doesn’t reveal the actual way to call them off, just that there is one. At first he’s confident that he can keep it from Sherlock, but then he takes one deep look into his eyes, decides Sherlock is no angel, and tops himself. Really? He couldn’t have tried hanging on for five minutes more? Even given that he was evidently suicidal, that abrupt surrender based on nothing seems right out of character. If Sherlock had beaten him, then yes, he might well kill himself. But as things stood, he was depressed because he thought Sherlock was ordinary. The sudden, entirely believable, realisation that Sherlock wasn’t should have reinvigorated him. A new challenge! Instead he just eyeballs Sherlock and BANG! he’s out of here. It’s a cheat, because we don’t actually see the big final struggle between Holmes and Moriarty. We’re told Sherlock would win, but we’re not shown it.
-
“The computer code is bogus, DUH!” I’m guessing everyone here, when the claim was first made, thought it was pretty weak writing. Of course there couldn’t be computer code like that. But hey, it’s a Maguffin and we don’t take this too seriously. But then they switch it round - it’s not weak writing, it’s a cunning bluff, smartarses. Which is fine, because I don’t mind using the audience’s expectations against them. But it was too widely accepted in-show for that to really work. Not only does Sherlock get fooled, but so does Mycroft who is a) nobody’s fool and b) in a really good position to have experts tell him this is obvious bullshit. He’s got the resources to check this out, and he doesn’t. It was when Mycroft showed he was taking it seriously that I decided it was a genuine Maguffin.
3b) What happened to the police investigations of the break-ins? It’s all very well to fool Sherlock by offering him a clever solution, but in the 6 weeks before the trial and the 2 months till John is warned about the assassins, haven’t the dull, ordinary police got involved? Hasn’t Mycroft had his people trying to find out where the systems were compromised? Is there no protocol to be followed after such incidents? Apparently not. The mystery only exists because entire institutions fail to do a basic job. -
Richard Brook, the actor. What? After all the publicity the original court case got, no-one’s meant to have noticed that this guy had been on TV? Or if the whole CV was faked, wouldn’t it be pretty obvious that there was no actual footage of him anywhere, not even in the programmes his CV claimed he’d been in? He’s not only faked an entire career, he’s also blackmailed all his supposed cast and crew members, and the archivists at every place he’s ever supposedly worked. In the world of online crowd-sourcing, this wouldn’t last five minutes.[/spoiler]
I really liked it, I did! But there’s a lot of Fridge Logic in there.
Guanoland got my exact thoughts in post #10. It’s exactly what I assume is the answer.
Any idea when this season will come to BBC America?
It’s not scheduled to come to BBC America but will be broadcast on PBS starting in May.
That is a very Moffat thing to do. You may very well be right.
I’ve added a spoiler warning to the thread. Yeah, this is one that has been aired in the UK but not in the US for several months – the reverse of our usual, which is something airing in the US and not getting to the UK for a while, and some folks forget to use spoiler tags.
Anyway, I’ve not seen the episode yet (obviously) but I wind up having lots of stuff spoiled for me, because of the moderating job. I would like to remind y’all that, in the original story “The Final Problem,” Watson thinks both Sherlock and Moriarty have fallen over the Reichenbach waterfall and that both are dead. It’s not until years later, in “The Adventure of the Empty House,” that Watson learns that Sherlock has been alive but in hiding all those years, that Moriarty did indeed die, but that Moriarty’s #2 (Colonel Moran) is still causing mischief. So, in an episode entitled Reichenbach Falls, I’m not going to be surprised to find that, at the end, Watson thinks Sherlock is dead.
Stanislaus - I slightly wonder if your post a parody of a detective with hints of Aspergers…
Fwiw, this SH, if not the original as well, is a kind of superhero, as unrealistic in deed and thought as Superman is to flight.