The final scene (where the viewers see Sherlock watching Watson) is a nod to the fact that viewers (should, at least) know that he is still alive. Trying to cliffhang something so well known is pointless, and Moffat seems to have enough respect for his audience than to try it. Well, in my opinion. Plus (contrary to an earlier equivocal statement from Moffat), he has confirmed that there will be a third series.
When Holmes texted to Moriarty that “I have something of yours that you’ll want back,” he meant the latex Holmes mask Moriarty wore when kidnapping the children.
[spoiler]found or created a Sherlockalike - that’s why the kid screamed. And Sherlock needed Molly’s help to turn a random dead body into a lookalike of his own, or to use the dead body of Moriarty’s lookalike, or something like that. The jumper didn’t move the whole time Sherlock and Watson were having that final phone conversation, did you notice?
We figure the cyclist who pushed Watson was Sherlock, possibly so he wouldn’t notice that the jumper fell like an already-dead body.[/spoiler]
Also, like Stanislaus, I wasn’t convinced by
Moriarty’s suicide. Why? It didn’t feel coherent with the character at all. Unless he’d realised that Sherlock was actually better than him, and that given any more time with him, Sherlock would work out the signal to call off the assassins from killing Watson et al - so Moriarty’s only way to remove that option and force Sherlock to commit suicide was to kill himself. And I’m not actually sure that even makes sense.
Well, my theory, worth every penny you pay for it, is this:
[spoiler]As John gets out of the cab, his view of what happens on the ground in front of Barts roof is obscured by a lower building. Sherlock is quite emphatic that John must stay exactly where he is.
Now after Sherlock jumps from the roof, John starts running to the scene (passing the building) and we see the back of an open topped truck with rolls of something piled in the back. Something soft, perhaps? Then John is hit by the cyclist.
There’s a scene shot from the roof of Barts immediately after that, and we see the truck drive away. Only after the truck is gone does John actually recover enough to stumble past the obstruction and see the body on the ground.
Sherlock jumped into a truck full of foam and was driven away.[/spoiler]
I agree with most of your theory. The only differences between your theory and mine is that:[spoiler]I think Sherlock jumped into a truck full of foam, but wasn’t driven away. I think he jumped into the foam, then got out an lay on the ground with fake blood on his face. He didn’t look very smashed up, given the height of the fall; I think that although Watson was in shock and disoriented from getting crashed into by the cyclist, he likely would have noticed if it wasn’t Sherlock on the ground.
He did jump off a hospital roof, but still the paramedics got there pretty fast - I think Molly arranged for them to get there quickly. Someone checked Sherlock’s pulse (not Watson, but I think it was a paramedic), then they load him onto a gurney and quickly rush him away somewhere.[/spoiler]
And we should read spoiler boxes, because Guanolad kinda scooped us here. Still:
Yes, you could well be right. I assumed Molly had found a suitable body that was ejected from a lower window (out of John’s sight - per the low building) having been made to look like Sherlock. But your theory makes more sense, though it must have been an extremely fast makeup job.
And it dosent breake the story line uterly.
!!!OBS!!! spoiler alert!!!
[spoiler]it is sherlock that jumps.
in the scen wher you se him jump he is jumping furter out from the building then wher he is found.* flailing hes arms** and aiming for the flat bed whith the hospital laundry that is parked next to the spot wher sherlock jumped. he jumps in to the laundry and quikly leps down to the curb*** and then wattson ses him and is imedyetly struck by the cyklist.****
at an angel that isent consistant whit the position that he is later found
**
clear proof that he is in fact alive and not moriaritys ?dead? corps
wher ther is no blod when wattson spots him.
giving sherlock time to pore blod ower hes head and the ground.
and to mask the pulse beat hed just ned to be injekted whith tetrodotoxin also known as Fugu or pufferfish poison.[/spoiler]
sry for speling. eng is second languish to me. and finaly
All the theories posted here seem plausible, but there’s still one thing that doesn’t quite fit…
[spoiler] In that part of London there are always pedestrians about. If Sherlock was jumping into a truck full of soft stuff and then instantly climbing out someone would have seen it…
I notice that when Sherlock jumped there is absolutely no-one on the pavement, which would mean that we either have to assume that Sherlock had also arranged for this to be the case, or else suspend our disbelief and accept the pavements just happened to be particularly quiet that day…
I’m perfectly happy to suspend my disbelief, but it seems to me that in “real life” the fact of trying to pull off such a difficult trick with an uncontrollable variable (i.e. the possibility of people being near the truck and witnessing the event) would be too much of a risk… [/spoiler]
It’s easy to make spoiler boxes here – just put [ spoiler ] and [ / spoiler] (without the spaces) around the text you want to put into a spoiler box. I’ve done it for you for the post above.
Mr-Myagi and others have summed up exactly what I think happened. With regard to the pedestrian issue:
That troubled me too, until I remembered that if Mycroft was in on it, with his resources to run enormous conspiracies, it might be possible to populate the whole area with his operatives, and subtly prevent access to all but Watson. That area between the low single storey building and St Bart’s didn’t look huge. Does anybody happen to know if it’s a public street or part of the hospital campus?
It’s a public street. Mycroft’s involvement would still make that easy, and Sherlock could surely arrange a temporary distraction. There are always roadworks in London, often cutting off pedestrian thoroughfares; a few signs would be all that was needed. Besides, all eyes would be on a body falling from the building then going splat..
I wonder if they’ll work in bystanders filming the “fall” on their phones?
I wonder whether the writers themselves know what really happened. I sometimes like to imagine that they just write the biggest cliffhanger possible, and then read forums such as this to discover how to explain it away…!!
Anyway, my current theory is that a lot of time passed between Watson being knocked out, and him waking up. Or at least a good few minutes. This would allow time for Sherlock and his cohorts to set up whatever scene they wanted…
[spoiler]
Mycroft stays alive so his humiliation and Sherlock’s defeat is complete. Moriarty spent time with Mycroft. This plan is as much about defeating Mycroft as it is killing Sherlock.
The hard rubber ball he was playing with could be used, tucked inti his arm pit, to cause him to not have a pulse temporarily in that arm.
The mask, which I’m guessing he found by returning to the factory and deducing its hiding place, could have been used to help fake the autopsy photos. I’m guessing EP 2 was practice for this for Molly.
Drugs that could help him fake death, slowing heart rate etc. might, I’ve been told, cause the tears we see him cry.
The coat slowing his fall helps make it survivable. There are laundry trucks which are kind of like a truck full of foam. I’m told we see one drive by.
I’m willing to bet the people on the ground are a mixture of the homeless network, Mycroft’s people, and possibly a few Molly trusted.
There are two pieces of computer code that would plausibly be what Moriarty claimed to have. The simplest is the private key to the top CA preferred by governments. The other is a simple efficient algorithm for factoring large numbers. Such an algorithm is possible and would shake secure computing as we know it. Sure they don’t quite fit but its close in value. Laughing off the possibility that a few lines of computer code could be horrendously important is stupid. What if I have the private key for some major certificate authority, or the seed and algorithm for secure tokens? Both have been alleged to be compromised previously. [/spoiler]