Sherlock Season 3 Episode 1 Complete – Do We Know How Sherlock Survived?

If you are just now joining the spoiler game you are a bit late my friend.  I’m not going to bother summarizing the rest of episode one because I have outlined it thoroughly in numerous articles already.  No use repeating myself.  Instead this is going to focus on the scenes filmed at Saint Bart’s and what they could possibly mean.  Be warned, since the filming did take place at the place where Sherlock “jumped” to his “death” there will most likely be spoilers for how he survived.  Most of this is just massive speculation and there is a ton of contradictions, but it could be right so only read on if you’re okay with possibly being spoiled.

To start off with, both Mark Gatiss and Andrew Scott were on hand at Saint Bart’s.  Moriarty and Mycroft have a rather fishy meeting where Mycroft appears to hand him a red handkerchief for some unknown reason.  Moriarty also appears to possibly be wearing Sherlock’s coat, though this is also maybe just the same coat from the end of the Reichenbach Fall.  There’s quite a kerfuffle over that damn coat, man.  He’s also wearing his aviator sunglasses.  Does this scene take place the same day as the fall?  Did Myrcoft and Moriarty meet?  OMG conspiracy?!  Believe it or not, this was the most spoiler free leak from the set in the past two days.  So moving on…

Derren Brown, the famous hypnotist/illusionist, was also on set.  He seems to hypnotize John and make him collapse before bending down and fiddling with John’s watch a bit.  It sounds a little off to me, but there’s a strong possibility that John’s little run in with the bicyclist as actually him being hypnotized while Sherlock faked his own death (more on that later).  I’m not sure if hypnotism falls too much on the side of fantasy for this show or not, but why else would Derren Brown be slamming his palm onto John’s forehead?  Is it just a hallucination?  A nightmare?  John’s guilt ridden speculation?  Not sure.

So what is Sherlock’s grand escape?  Well, we have a few possibilities.  To start off this video shows a couple of devoted accomplices quickly drag a body out from an ally to the sidewalk where Sherlock’s body was found.  Mycroft appears to be waiting on a nearby bench when the body is placed on the cement (video embedded below), but not all of the images released show him sitting at that bench. This makes me think that some of these scenarios are decoys, hallucinations, dreams, or very vivid speculation.  John’s?  Mycroft’s? Again not sure.  This inconsistency is definitely making me pause, though.  Why is he there?

Then we have the Sherlock/decoy body conundrum.  There’s an image of Sherlock running towards the men carrying the decoy body and then taking it’s place(?) on the ground.  His mysterious accomplices come armed with a bag of blood and spread it around to make it look like Sherlock has massive head trauma.  Those same accomplices then drag the decoy body that they just placed on the ground away (??) once Sherlock is in place.  Then a crowd swarms around the body and we are presumably at about the moment when John comes running up. However, there was also footage shot of Sherlock jumping onto a huge blue pillow that then gets rushed away rather quickly and a picture of Sherlock hiding nearby after his fall.  Did Sherlock replace the body?  Or did the decoy body replace Sherlock?  Did they really drag the body out for just a few seconds of being a decoy only to drag it away again moments later?  This seems too convoluted.

Perhaps these are two different scenes, one of which is a decoy for us.  Or maybe its a dream or speculation or whatever and not actually real.  Those are the only two explanations I can think of for why there would be shots of them pulling the bodies in both directions and for Mycroft disappearing between takes.  Or maybe they’re both completely fake.  Martin Freeman did say that even after reading the script, he’s not quite sure how Sherlock did it.  Maybe we’ll never know.  Maybe, like the movie Clue, they have numerous scenarios filmed and ready to go.  Maybe they’re just messing with us, I don’t know.  This is giving me a headache.  You figure it out.

For an amazing theory on how all this crap fits together should give this post a shot.  Also, here’s a cute bonus picture of Benedict Cumberbatch flying high with an umbrella.  Maybe he just Mary Poppins-ed his way down?  I’m going to go with that.

Sherlock Mary Poppins-ed off of Saint Bart’s.  YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST FOLKS.

Author: Angel Wilson

Angel is the admin of The Geekiary and a geek culture commentator. They earned a BA in Film & Digital Media from UC Santa Cruz. They have contributed to various podcasts and webcasts including An Englishman in San Diego, Free to Be Radio, and Genre TV for All. They’ve also written for Friends of Comic Con and is a 2019 Hugo Award winner for contributing fanfic on AO3. They identify as queer.

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