Sherlock – The Reichenbach Fall (BBC One) More thoughts.

WARNING - Contains many, many spoilers so only continue reading if you have seen the show or know the story of the episode.

At the risk of seeming a bit obsessed with this puzzle, I have been mulling over the matter and I started looking at it from a different angle. I might be on completely the wrong track and I daresay that may be the case but it’s something else to consider.

I’ve watched all of the episodes from series one and two again as I thoroughly enjoyed them but something that was said in an earlier episode made me consider that I might be looking at things all the wrong way. Sherlock said that ‘we mustn’t jump to conclusions’ and I realised that I had jumped to a lot of conclusions and made a lot of assumptions which i just believed to be true without considering other options.

On any of these points i could be entirely wrong so please don’t be fooled into thinking I have some sort of insight or insider knowledge as I have none, just theories based on looking at the situation another way.

During the episode ‘The Great Game’, when Sherlock enters Mrs Hudson’s spare room/flat where he finds the shoes in the middle of the room he says briefly under his breath what seems to be “The curtain rises” as if this is the start of a performance. Sherlock is already big news in the media and due to John’s blog he is receiving messages from all over the world asking for help – he has perhaps become something of a liability. If someone has the ability to detect crime, surely they would have the knowledge to commit crimes, for good or for bad reasons. His popularity growth is something of a pain to both he, as he doesn’t seem to appreciate the attention, as well as to his brother and possibly his country in general. In the first two episodes of series two he not only forces Mycroft and his organisation to abandon a plan they had regarding the plane but he effectively breaks into a military base using his brother’s identification - his ability to solve puzzles and show off may put peoples lives in danger and that is very dangerous indeed. Therefore he has to be reigned in or removed, not just because Jim Moriarty wants to ‘burn’ him, but because he is a major risk – perhaps the final problem? For Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes seemed to become something of a burden as well as the people wanted more Sherlock and he wanted to write other works so he effectively killed off his creation in order to pursue other works but the public wanted Holmes back. Perhaps the final problem is that Sherlock in the TV programme is considered too much of a burden due to his skills and has to be taken out of the equation but he is still very useful so needs to be kept alive or Mycroft wants him alive and for the rest of the world to believe he is dead. His showing off and pride in his intellect is too much, and they do say that pride comes before a fall...

Once I started thinking in this way I started to consider a few other possibilities as well, perhaps Moriarty was just an actor, hired to take on a role and that Sherlock knew this. Perhaps if Sherlock’s death was faked, why couldn’t Moriarty’s death be faked also? The only person who saw Moriarty die was Sherlock and even though we all heard a bang and saw Moriarty fall, couldn’t this have been a trick also? At the end of the Baskerville episode, Sherlock was shuffling through some sauces at the table while John was eating and he asked him if he wanted ketchup or brown sauce, perhaps he was thinking about using a sachet of blood in the faking of his death? In the words of Jonathan Creek (Or possibly David Renwick seeing as he wrote the shows) ‘no one ever believes how far you will go to fool your audience’ and as elaborate as those plans would be, once you start thinking that maybe we shouldn’t take Sherlock at face value the whole situation looks different.

Or perhaps Moriarty was entirely genuine and did die but Sherlock knew he was to die too and wanted to do it on his own terms, perhaps he was looking for ways to fake his death and had already tested hanging and found it not to be effective due to the hanging mannequin in his home. At some point in one of the episodes he mentioned jumping out of the window several times or something to that effect so maybe he decided that falling was the way he was going to fake his death if he should have to do it?

When Moriarty is sat on the roof in the fall scene he is listening to ‘Stayin’ Alive’ by the Bee Gees, in a previous episode this was his ringtone so perhaps he wasn’t just listening to the track, perhaps it was a phonecall and when he touched the screen the line was opened so either someone could listen or record the conversation. Perhaps the whole rooftop scene was entirely played out to make Sherlock’s demise seem more realistic or perhaps it was real but the snipers that dotted around to kill Sherlock’s friends were just a red herring – the sniper’s crosshairs are seen only on the ground on John Watson after Sherlock has jumped so perhaps the sniper was not for John but for Sherlock himself – either he was to jump or he would be killed therefore he needed some help in faking it. The gunman in Baker Street may not have been to kill Mrs Hudson but to kill Sherlock if he were to return to the house and in the case of Lestrade there is only a man turning to his office rather than any gun seen so this may be to throw us off the scent.

Maybe Mycroft couldn’t protect him and the assassins dotted around Baker Street were for Sherlock and Mycroft was the one who organised their deaths? The person who shot the assassins was trying to protect Sherlock.

I really want to think that Sherlock’s tears are real in the fall scene but after seeing him cry on two other occasions in order to manipulate a situation, crying during his suicide phonecall would not be too much of a stretch for him. Perhaps Sherlock knew that he was going to have to die and tried to find a way of faking it and making it convincing. Maybe the tears were genuine as Sherlock didn't know he would survive? If John were to know that Sherlock was really alive he might blow his cover due to his emotional attachment to his friend, borne out when he says ‘Why should you care what other people think of me?’ so he couldn’t be permitted to know that Sherlock was alive just yet.

When Sherlock asked Molly for help, it was very easy for me to jump to the conclusion that she is a pathologist and therefore would have access to all sorts of equipment to fake his death and fake the results of DNA tests or whatever but perhaps it is more simplistic than that? Perhaps, as he knew that she was loyal and even though he hurt her she still stayed true to him, she also knew that he felt he was going to die soon so perhaps he entrusted her with some other information – not assistance with faking his death but something to do afterwards like get a message to John or to get something for him? Being a pathologist, she seems to be in a good position to help him fake his death and so forth but maybe he thought that he really was going to die and asked her to carry out some task after his death.

Perhaps he didn’t intend to fake his death at all and that it was just coincidence, or luck that a bin lorry was passing at that time or maybe he knew the times of the bin collections and took advantage of the situation?

Molly knew that Sherlock felt he was going to die and perhaps this was genuinely how he felt, knowing that he was becoming more and more exposed. Perhaps Moriarty had help committing crimes from Mycroft in order that Sherlock would be drawn in on the situation and it would lead ultimately to his demise? I don’t think Mycroft meant any harm to Sherlock, perhaps he was protecting him? Mycroft’s claim that he told Moriarty all about Sherlock’s life seems pointless really as Irene Adler explains in a previous episode that Moriarty told her how to play the Holmes boys so he already knew his enemy – perhaps Mycroft told Moriarty details of Sherlock’s life in order to provoke him into challenging Sherlock, to fan the flames of his hatred? Moriarty didn’t just want to kill Sherlock, he wanted to burn him and to make him a disgrace so perhaps Mycroft was just giving Moriarty the ammunition to go after his brother hoping or knowing that his brother would know what to do. I think it extremely unlikely that a man like Mycroft would make such a foolish mistake as to tell a master criminal all about a family member by mistake. It wouldn’t be the first time that Mycroft has put Sherlock in danger.

Realistically I found that i have been concentrating on the mechanics of how Sherlock faked his own death without really considering why or how or what other reasons could be behind the situation so I started looking at it in a different way. As I said before, these are just thoughts about the possibilities of the situation. I may be wildly wrong but it is certainly another viewpoint. What are your thoughts?