loudest-subtext-in-tv:is this a version of alibi theory that already exists? I can’t keep up with...

loudest-subtext-in-tv:

is this a version of alibi theory that already exists? I can’t keep up with anything, link me if anyone’s laid it out this way

The real story is that Mary did betray AGRA, she was “the Englishwoman” that the torturers alluded to. But John and Sherlock couldn’t be sure of that at first. They colluded up to the Morocco bit – this could be coded texts if you want, or else the cheating bit happened to show that John did not like or trust Mary or value the marriage (to show casuals John might not be as reluctant to kill her as they’d assume). John killed AJ in Morocco and they rewrote that bit, which was why it was so weird with Kareem walking in with police but like, calmly carrying tea until the last second.

They still have nothing solid on Mary so Sherlock explores other leads and thinks of Norbury. John thinks maybe Mary has been telling the truth and he was going to confess either to texting E, or if it was coded collusion he was going to confess that he hadn’t trusted her before but he was going to try to now, or something. Either reason is why John was feeling guilty or whatever on the plane.

Sherlock asks Mrs. Hudson to say “Norbury” to him when he gets too cocky because he really had believed it was Norbury, but when he showed up at the aquarium, Norbury totally snitched on Mary working for Moriarty.

Norbury is a mirror for both John and Mary because at the aquarium, Mary tried to shoot Sherlock again (out of “jealousy” maybe, like Sherlock says is Norbury’s motive, or just because she was found out) which is why Sherlock is obsessing over escaping death twice (the Samarra story), but John shoots Mary from behind. Norbury also mirrors Moriarty a bit just because Mary was working for him, so it’s part of the Mary mirror.

Mycroft and Lestrade witness it but they all agree to cover it up NOT merely because John killed Mary – the circumstances make it pretty legal – but because it looks terrible for Mycroft and MI6 to have been employing someone like Mary. Instead, they paint a super pristine picture of Mary, someone the government wouldn’t have been ashamed to employ, and just pin it on Norbury because she sucks too and they want an excuse to punish her even more severely. That ties up all of Mycroft’s loose ends.

And they make Mary say all this super nice shit about John to make John look blameless. The cheating-or-whatever texts aren’t part of the story they tell or anything, that’s just for the viewer because it’s a clue to Sherlock collusion or John not being invested in the marriage.

Either the estrangement is faked to strengthen the cover-up story – they figure John would have to be mad if his wife sacrificed herself for Sherlock – or else John was actually angry at Sherlock for not doing a better job of taking out Moriarty’s network and letting him marry an assassin or something. Or John unfairly blames Sherlock and the estrangement is real because having to shoot the mother of his child because his crush’s nemesis had a long game to ruin him is a very “what the fuck is my life” thing to go through, and he’s beating himself up for his attraction to dangerous people and telling himself he needs to have a normal life yet again. He would have a lot of pressure on him not to let his daughter get hurt, and they’d both have reason to think Moriarty’s long game isn’t over. (We see Sherlock admit he’s still expecting something when he puts in the DVD.)

The skull frame shows up for “The Cardiac Arrest” case and glows during the secret assassin working for Moriarty bit because Mary gets shot in the heart and was a secret assassin working for Moriarty, and that’s why she died. That’s also why John is replaced with a fake (the balloon) in that scene. It’s just signalling that there’s a fakeness about those events. It’s not the cleanest set of clues but it sort of works.

Ella’s office is fake because Sherlock sends himself to MP therapy after all that shit goes down, not because the entire story is 100% fake.

The Six Thatchers case was used again because Moriarty knew about the AGRA drive (he was telling AJ where the busts were), knew the Thatcher bust would catch Sherlock’s attention, and was slowly revealing Mary’s past – without Mary’s permission – because he doesn’t care about a henchman and it would really fuck with John and Sherlock both. Maybe Mary really did think she could live a normal life, like Moriarty told her she could just have John because it makes things easier for him, but she’s “shortsighted” (Sherlock’s deduction in TEH) and failed to realize Moriarty will always just use her however it most amuses him. She never thought through that her exposure and death could be a great way to cause a rift and burn Sherlock’s heart out.

What I can’t explain:

- I have no idea what to make of the Miss Me? DVD. I have an EMP reading but even that one is a wild guess. Maybe the “save John Watson” bit was a nice Mary story, but the real DVD just told Sherlock to go to hell because Mary realized things were unraveling? Like, Sherlock goes to investigate a weird murder that has this inexplicable Thatcher bust tie-in, then a bust has an AGRA stick… and Mary realizes that’s not a coincidence and Moriarty must be setting her up for something bad?

- The Duplicate Man case, where a person is dead in one place and alive in another. I can only come up with an EMP explanation. Maybe it’s not significant?

- Why specifically the secret assassin working for Moriarty was administering mind control drugs, which fits perfectly with EMP and the MI6 guy insisting Sherlock was high in the beginning of the ep. But maybe that’s all nothing.

I like all of this. Very logical!