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Deciphering the Romance Arc: Many Happy Returns & The Empty Hearse

This is part of my meta project Deciphering the Romance Arc, which offers my current reading of the romance between Sherlock and John on BBC Sherlock up through TAB. Find the table of contents and the introduction here.

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Opening Thoughts on Series 3

In S3, we see Sherlock’s vulnerability and gentleness shine through much more frequently than we did in the first two series of the show, to the point where it often feels overwhelming. I think this results from two shifts.

First, the overall arc of S1-S2 was mostly told from John’s point of view. As viewers, we’re encouraged to identify with John as he meets Sherlock for the first time, gets caught up in Sherlock’s world, and begins to share his life with him. In contrast, S3 tends to forefront Sherlock’s side of the story. Of course, in all three series we get scenes that are told from different characters’ points of view; what I’m describing is the general narrative orientation of the series, which I think leans towards John’s perspective just a little bit more in S1-S2 and leans towards Sherlock’s just a little bit more in S3. Since we’re seeing things from Sherlock’s perspective more frequently in S3, we see the more vulnerable and gentle sides of his character more frequently.

Somewhat related to this, @ivyblossom has a meta about how in the mind palace scene in HLV, we see that Sherlock sees himself as an ordinary man—someone who needs the help of others and who feels fear, pain, and heartbreak intensely. In S3, we see more of this because we’re seeing the world as Sherlock does.

Second, and just as importantly, Sherlock’s time away from John and his experiences upon his return to London affect Sherlock deeply, and this leads Sherlock to let the vulnerable and tender sides of his personality rise to the surface much more readily than he did in S1-S2. There’s a genuine shift in his character, and this is part of Sherlock’s character arc as he changes from someone who used to believe that he needed to hide his softer emotions in order to shield himself from harm to someone who is more willing to let his emotions shine through as he forms relationships with other people. These aspects of Sherlock’s character were always there before in S1-S2. Think of his genuine smile and warmth when he cured John’s limp in ASIP, the expression on his face as he listened to Soo Lin’s story in TBB, his tenderness as he comforted Sarah in TBB, or the domesticity and care that he shares with Mrs. Hudson in ASIB. In S3, we just see these elements of his character even more clearly.

Making this side of Sherlock’s character more visible in S3 also helps us see just how much Sherlock’s heart breaks over the course of the series.

Sherlock returns to London nearly bursting with eagerness to see John and entirely certain that John will welcome him back with open arms. Sherlock believes that Moriarty is truly dead, and without Moriarty’s threat hanging over him anymore, he finally feels ready for a romantic relationship with John. After his return, however, the consequences of Sherlock’s fall and his long separation from John combine to keep the two of them from being together. In many ways, S3 is the story of Sherlock’s heart breaking over and over again as John pulls away from him and chooses a relationship with Mary over one with him.

My personal take is that in S2, Sherlock did two especially important things that kept him and John from being together: first when he chose not to tell John that he loved him after the Battersea scene in ASIB, and then when he jumped off the roof of Bart’s in TRF and disappeared for so long without telling John that he was alive (although obviously that last one wasn’t his fault, if you read my last meta). In S2, it’s Sherlock’s actions at critical moments that keep them apart. In S3, however, the initiative has shifted to John, and it’s John who makes the crucial mistakes that prevent Sherlock and John from being together. Most importantly, John decides not to leave Mary for Sherlock immediately after Sherlock’s return. Then, throughout the rest of the series, John repeatedly fails to allow himself to see how much Sherlock loves him. John seems to be feeling a volatile mix of loyalty to Mary, guilt that he’s so strongly attracted to Sherlock when he feels that he’s supposed to be with Mary, and uncertainty regarding Sherlock’s feelings. All of this makes it very difficult for John to admit to himself that what he really wants is to be with Sherlock, and it combines to prevent him from confronting the truth about how he and Sherlock feel about each other, even as Sherlock demonstrates that he will do absolutely anything to protect John’s safety and happiness.

We receive a great deal of evidence in S3 that John was never in love with Mary the way he was with Sherlock. I do think that before he discovered her identity as an assassin, John cared for Mary. And I think that by the time he was ready to consider proposing marriage, John felt a strong sense of loyalty and commitment to her that it was difficult for him to walk away from. Perhaps more importantly, I also think that John was drawn to the idea of Mary, especially because she seemed to offer him a safe future away from what John saw as the intense emotional danger of Sherlock. John is terrified of how deep and consuming his love for Sherlock is and of how much power that gives Sherlock over him, as this great meta explains. As a result, he tries to convince himself that he can make things work with Mary—before her identity as an assassin is revealed, she appears to be the safe, stable option who won’t break his heart.

But that said, all throughout S3, we’re given piece after piece after piece of evidence that whatever John felt for Mary was never the same as what he felt for Sherlock. I think John knew this the entire time, and that’s why I think he made a terrible mistake by not leaving Mary for Sherlock. In my breakdown of the episodes, I’ll point out many different pieces of evidence that support this. I think I’ve caught a lot of them, but I’m sure that there are even more that I’ve missed.

To start us off, however, I submit the following: John never looks at Mary the way he looks at Sherlock. I mean, just look at John’s face in this scene at the very end of TEH. I’m going to talk about this scene again at the end of my discussion of this episode, but for now…wow.

Many Happy Returns

Like the ending of TRF, MHR serves to establish just how devastated John was after Sherlock’s apparent suicide.

When Lestrade comes over to John’s flat to give him the uncut birthday video Sherlock made for him, Lestrade pointedly asks John how he’s been doing and looks at him with an expression that clearly demonstrates that John hasn’t been doing very well in recent memory. Then when Lestrade gives John the uncut video, there’s a heartbeat sound, and then another when John tries to reassure Lestrade by saying that he probably won’t even watch it.

After Lestrade leaves, John has to pour himself a drink to even contemplate putting the disc in. But from the unchanged natural lighting entering the room from the window and from John’s unchanged outfit, we see that he probably poured himself the drink and steeled himself to watch the video almost as soon as Lestrade left. John is desperate to see Sherlock again, even though thinking about him is incredibly painful.

On a lighter note, in the birthday video Sherlock says that all of John’s other friends hate him and that he’s written an essay on suppressed hatred based entirely on John’s friends. S2 Sherlock was so jealous! Sherlock also seems incredibly nervous about what he’s going to say to John and clearly wants to get the video right. Sherlock has always been so far gone on John!

The Empty Hearse

In TEH, Sherlock returns to London after having missed John terribly for the year and a half that he was away. After his fake suicide, it seems that Moriarty mostly left Sherlock to his own devices and let him dismantle a good amount of his network so that he could lure him into a false sense of security. As Sherlock did so, he seems to have firmly believed that John knew the two of them had something incredibly special together and that John would wait for him. And I have to cut Sherlock some slack here. In S2, the two of them were so close to finally bridging that divide so many times. Just think of the tension of the New Year’s Eve scene after Battersea and the bottle of wine the day afterward, the magnetic moment in the car after they leave Baskerville for the first time, and then John playing the part of Sherlock’s attentive spouse in TRF. They were definitely on the verge of something more, even if they never quite got there. On top of that, all of John’s relationships with other people had quickly fizzled out, to the point where John had given up on dating anyone else entirely.

When he returns, however, Sherlock finds that John has tried to move on from him. Even worse, John doesn’t immediately leave his new fiancée to return to his life with Sherlock after Sherlock reveals that he’s still alive. Over the course of the episode, we see Sherlock gradually coming to the realization that John isn’t going to come back to him the way he had expected. And it breaks Sherlock’s heart.

Before we get into the details of the episode, allow me to tell you a little about the ACD Sherlock Holmes story “The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor.” In this story, Holmes takes a case that centers around a couple who once lived a rough, dangerous life together and fell in love, but then had to part because of reasons beyond their control. The husband went off on his own to complete a task that will allow him to return to his beloved, but then he got captured. He escaped from his captors and tried to return to his wife, but by that point she had believed him to be dead for more than a year. He followed her to London, only to find out that she’s about to marry someone else.

Seriously, I’m not making this up. You can read the full story here.

When the husband approaches his wife and she catches sight of him, she realizes that he’s still alive and immediately resolves to leave her new fiancé for her first, true love. Later on, once Holmes has solved the case and reconstructed this sequence of events, he tells Watson that he doesn’t think the wife did anything wrong by leaving her new fiancé for her first husband. And the new guy was kind of an asshole, anyway. The story ends with Holmes saying to Watson (in reference to the abandoned fiancé) that they should “thank our stars that we are never likely to find ourselves in the same position.”

I swear to God, the writers must have modeled TRF and TEH on this story, but with John making the exact opposite decision from the wife in the original story. Of course, Holmes does leave Watson for several years in the original canon, but the writers made a deliberate choice about when and how to introduce their version of Mary Morstan, and this is what they decided on. In the original canon, Mary enters the picture as one of Holmes’s clients, and she and Watson are married for several years before Holmes’s confrontation with Moriarty and presumed death in “The Adventure of the Final Problem.” Moreover, by the time Holmes returns to London, Mary has died, and Watson immediately sells his medical practice and moves back in with Holmes.

Obviously, the writers decided to take things in a very different direction in Sherlock, and it really seems to me that they looked to “The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor” for inspiration when they sketched out Sherlock and John’s romance arc and decided how they wanted to use Mary Morstan’s character within it.

So, the writers quite possibly borrowed a love triangle from ACD canon for S3. With that out there, let’s get into the events of the episode to talk about how Sherlock’s heart gets broken several times.

First, we have the scene in Mycroft’s office right after Sherlock returns to the UK from Serbia. Mycroft tries to get Sherlock interested in a terrorist plot against London, but Sherlock clearly isn’t having it. Instead, he’s totally focused on the prospect of making a triumphant return and sweeping John off his feet. Sherlock probably thinks that once he reveals to John that he’s still alive and gets to tell him all about how he saved his life and dismantled Moriarty’s network so that they could be together, they’re going to fall into each other’s arms at last. It’s going to be soooo romantic. It’ll be everything Sherlock has ever wanted!

Sherlock keeps talking to Mycroft about John while trying to make himself look as hot as possible for John. He even dresses himself in white like it’s their wedding night and he’s about to offer himself to John for John to take his virginity. (I think I saw an interview with Mark Gatiss at one point where he said that they deliberately dressed Sherlock in white for this scene. I hate them.)

Mycroft, however, tells Sherlock that John doesn’t live at Baker Street any more and pointedly tries to tell him that John has “got on with his life.” Right then, there’s a very loud heartbeat sound as Sherlock’s expression changes. There are heartbeats all over this episode, so get ready for those!

Sherlock stares and Mycroft and replies, “What life? I’ve been away,” but this isn’t an arrogant quip. Sherlock pauses before saying it and looks very insecure as he says the words: he’s genuinely hurt and unsettled by Mycroft’s suggestion. As I saw someone on here say once, Sherlock thought that since John was his whole life, he must have been John’s, too. The show creators also deliberately cut this episode so that this scene where Sherlock and Mycroft discuss John is interlaced with the scene where John tells Mrs. Hudson that he’s met someone else and is moving on from Sherlock. Stitching these two scenes together emphasizes just how wrong Sherlock is.

Still, Sherlock gets Mycroft to tell him where John will be that evening. After Mycroft does, Sherlock rubs his upper lip with one finger contemplatively, as if he’s imagining what it will feel like to kiss John. (Thanks to @loudest-subtext-in-tv for pointing out that detail to me.) Then he dismisses another warning from Mycroft—Sherlock’s got this, really! It’s gonna be soooo romantic!—and puts on his big swirly coat to feel all strong and impressive.

Meanwhile, John clearly isn’t over Sherlock at all, no matter what he tries to say to Mrs. Hudson or to anyone else.

The first time we see John again in this episode, he’s standing stock-still and staring at Sherlock’s grave with a blank look on his face that makes his grief seem even more intense than it would seem if he were crying. Then while Sherlock is busy getting himself cleaned up and talking to Mycroft, John goes to visit 221B and…lets himself into the building with the key…on his keyring…that he apparently never removed, even though Mrs. Hudson makes it perfectly clear that it’s been a very long time since he’s even called her, let alone been by to see her. When John first steps into the building, he remembers laughing with Sherlock in the hallway after the cab chase on the night when he and Sherlock first started to fall in love with each other. He also hears strains of Sherlock playing “Irene’s Theme” on his violin—you know, the love song Sherlock wrote for John while he was pining for him in ASIB. That one.

When Mrs. Hudson asks John why now—what’s changed and made him want to come back to 221B now, when he’s avoided the flat for so long—John starts to explain that he’s met Mary and he’s planning to propose to her. This means that John deliberately chose to visit Sherlock’s grave and to visit 221B in order to prepare himself to propose to Mary. John feels that before he can commit himself to someone else, he needs to gain some sort of closure from his relationship with Sherlock—closure that he very clearly hasn’t yet achieved. He might even need to feel like he’s “told” Sherlock about his engagement and asked for and received Sherlock’s permission. All of this emphasizes that for John, Sherlock was the one—the person who comes first for him, and someone who he hasn’t been able to let go of.

Even though John is attempting to “move on” from Sherlock, he doesn’t seem to be able to truly put his heart into the effort at all.

I mean! John is so excited about proposing to Mary that when he gets ready to tell Mrs. Hudson about it, Mrs. Hudson thinks he’s about to say that he’s been diagnosed with a terminal illness. Great job, John! When John says no to that, Mrs. Hudson’s next guess is that he’s emigrating. Apparently, Mrs. Hudson thinks it’s more likely that John will feel the need to leave the country to get away from his memories of Sherlock than it is that he’s actually moved on. Lol.

Eventually, John says to Mrs. Hudson “I’m moving on” and explains that he’s met someone and is planning to propose. As many other people have pointed out, Molly is a mirror for John, especially in S3. At the end of this episode, Molly will say brightly to Lestrade “I’ve moved on!” after bringing around her new fiancé Tom for everyone to meet. Yet it’s very obvious to everyone in the room that Molly has not moved on from her crush on Sherlock at all, and her engagement to Tom doesn’t last. The direct parallel drawn by having both John and Molly say “I’ve moved on” when talking about their fiancé(e)s gives us yet more evidence that John hasn’t gotten over Sherlock, and won’t.

Later on at the Landmark, John says at the start of his proposal to Mary that he and Mary haven’t known each other for very long. Mary shows up in the comments on John’s blog for the first time on April 20, ten months after Sherlock’s apparent death and about six months before Sherlock’s return in early November. The post Mary comments on is John’s first since the one he made shortly after Sherlock’s fall, saying “He was my best friend and I’ll always believe in him.” In the April 20 post, John says that he’s trying to “move on to new things,” but that he needs to talk about Sherlock before he can. John is clearly struggling with his grief, and in the post he implies that he fears he may become depressed and suicidal like he was before he met Sherlock if he doesn’t talk about Sherlock and face his immense grief head-on. After this, he makes a handful of posts about cases that he and Sherlock solved together in the S2 era, in an attempt to remember his life with Sherlock.

At most, then, John and Mary have known each other six, maybe seven months. It’s implied in the April 20 post and then very clearly in John’s attempted proposal that meeting Mary is what prompts John to try to move on from Sherlock. I think John probably became deeply depressed after Sherlock’s death and Mary was what finally offered him a way out of it. John was desperate for anything that would help, and he latched onto her immediately. This is why he’s rushing into marriage with Mary so quickly, even though it doesn’t seem that his heart is truly in it—he’s frightened of what will happen if he doesn’t grab onto the lifeline that Mary seems to be offering him. I think John cares for Mary and feels grateful to her, but we’ll receive more and more evidence as the episode goes on that he doesn’t love her the way he loves Sherlock. Sherlock came first, and John’s love for Sherlock is still what’s driving his actions.

During the 221B scene, Mrs. Hudson acts surprised that John is seeing a woman (even though she saw him bring both Sarah and Jeanette to the flat in S1-S2—apparently Mrs. Hudson never took John’s half-hearted attempts to date women seriously). In response, John angrily insists that he’s not gay. For John, it’s infuriating and humiliating that people always seem to think that he and Sherlock were together when they weren’t. We know from John’s conversation with Ella at the end of TRF that John regrets that he never told Sherlock that he loved him. John was never able to have the life with Sherlock that he wanted, and it feels like Mrs. Hudson is rubbing it in his face. He’s trying to get over Sherlock, so why won’t people take him seriously? Oh, well. John will just have to propose to Mary this evening and see how it goes.

Now we get the disastrous scene at the Landmark.

Before Sherlock even reveals himself to John, this scene is full of clues that John is not in love with Mary the way he is with Sherlock.

First, @pastelcolorsandrain has written a wonderful meta that points out two callbacks to Sherlock and John’s first dinner together at Angelo’s in the Landmark scene, both of which serve to demonstrate that Sherlock and John’s story is the real love story here, not John and Mary’s.

In ASIP, Angelo told Sherlock and John that having a candle on the table was “more romantic.” In the scene at the Landmark, John and Mary’s table doesn’t have a candle, even though most of the other tables in the restaurant do. Moreover, when Sherlock first sees John from across the room, there’s a candle placed in the middle of the frame so that Sherlock sees it when he looks at John.

In addition, when John is looking at the champagne list, he says to Sherlock “it’s not really my area,” which is a direct callback to Sherlock telling John that girlfriends are “not really my area” in ASIP. Yeah, Mary isn’t really your area either, John!

Also! @victorianpining has pointed out that the Landmark is within very close walking distance of 221B Baker Street (which I saw for myself when I visited London last fall). John chose to propose to his girlfriend right near where he used to live with Sherlock. He is so not over him.

Do I even need to talk about how obvious it was that John’s heart wasn’t at all in his totally lackluster and awkward attempted proposal to Mary? It’s like he’s getting his teeth pulled. In particular, the way John stops and then starts again when he tries to say that meeting Mary was the best thing that could have happened to him makes it sound like he’s trying to convince himself that it’s true. Even as he’s proposing to Mary, John seems to be nervously trying to convince himself that doing so is actually the right decision.

While we’re speaking of Mary, I’ll take this opportunity to point out that the first two times we see Mary in TEH, in the graveyard and then descending the stairs at the Landmark, she’s introduced from behind and with her back to the camera. All of the villains on Sherlock are introduced like this: either from behind, or in shadow or in some other situation where we can’t clearly see their face. As soon as we meet Mary, we’re given subtle clues that she’s an antagonist in this story.

@221beemine has a very interesting meta about the lighting in TEH, which points out that after Mary sits down at the table with John at the Landmark, Mary is shot with dramatic lighting that gives her face a great deal of shadows. John isn’t shot in the same way, even though they’re sitting at the same table and realistically should be sitting in similar lighting. 221beemine also explains that female characters usually aren’t shot in dramatic lighting like this. I think we can take this as another subtle hint that Mary is a villain; she’s presented in a deliberately foreboding way from the very beginning, from the first scene where we see her face.

Meanwhile, when Sherlock first walks into the restaurant, he’s incredibly confident. He’s got this! He’s been waiting for this moment for a year and a half! He’s about to sweep John off his feet, John will be completely “delighted” to see him, and then they’ll run off and kiss passionately and have sex and it will be soooo romantic, the fulfillment of all of Sherlock’s dreams. But then when Sherlock sees John across the room, he stops in his tracks and sucks in a deep, nervous breath right as there’s another heartbeat.

(gif from here)

Seeing John again after all that time literally takes Sherlock’s breath away. And it’s in that moment that he panics and comes up with the idea of dressing like a waiter to surprise John—you can see Sherlock immediately regain his confidence once he comes up with this plan. The waiter gimmick seems ridiculous at first, but when you notice how nervous Sherlock is when he sees John, it actually becomes kind of heartbreaking, because we have to watch Sherlock bungle this moment so terribly out of nerves. More gifs and some brief commentary on this here.

Speaking of heartbeats, a few moments after this, there is another heartbeat after John finally looks Sherlock in the face, realizes it’s him, and stands up to face him. Of course, seeing Sherlock for the first time in a year and a half and realizing that he’s still alive makes this an incredibly emotional moment for John. But the heartbeat sound is there to remind us that this moment is all the more important for John because he’s in love with Sherlock. With the two heartbeat sounds—one from Sherlock’s perspective when he first sees John and one from John’s perspective when he first sees Sherlock—the soundtrack establishes that this is an important emotional moment for both of them because they reciprocate each other’s feelings.

And speaking of the soundtrack, the song that plays in the background throughout this scene is a cover of the song “¿Dónde Estás, Yolanda?” performed by the band Pink Martini. The Spanish lyrics to this song are about searching for a long-lost lover, which is fitting for the scene where John sees Sherlock again for the first time since his fall. Notably, though, the show’s creators didn’t use the first of the two versions of this song that Pink Martini has released. The band’s first version appears on their 1997 studio album Sympathique and features a man singing about a woman. Instead of using that version, they used the version from Pink Martini’s 2011 compilation album A Retrospective, in which China Forbes performs most of the vocals. So the creators deliberately chose a remade version of the song in which a woman sings about a woman. They chose a gay song about searching for a long-lost lover for Sherlock and John’s reunion.

So. Sherlock approaches John and tries to surprise him. LSIT pointed out to me that as Sherlock starts talking, we get another hint that he was initially planning to confess his feelings to John upon their reunion: Sherlock says “Bit mean, springing it on you like that, I know. Could have given you a heart attack, probably still will.” The “probably still will” suggests that Sherlock has something else to say that’s monumental, beyond revealing that he’s alive.

John, of course, takes this terribly. By this point, TRF, MHR, and TEH have thoroughly established that John went through hell after Sherlock’s apparent death and grieved Sherlock deeply. When Sherlock reveals that he isn’t dead at the Landmark, John feels a deep sense of betrayal and anger over the fact that Sherlock let him grieve like that for almost two years. John stares at Sherlock and says “I thought…you were dead. Hmm? And you let me grieve. How could you do that. How?” John says this because he has known since Battersea that Sherlock knows that he’s in love with him. He’s furious and heartbroken because he’s asking, “How could you let me grieve like that when you knew I was in love with you?”

Throughout the show as a whole, Sherlock and John frequently resort to humor to diffuse the tension between the two of them when they get into emotionally-charged situations that they don’t think they’re prepared to handle. For example, in the pool scene after John offers to sacrifice his life to save Sherlock’s and Sherlock is freaking out about it and rubbing the back of his head with his gun, John tries to calm things down a bit by cracking this joke: “I’m glad no one saw that. You, ripping my clothes off in a darkened swimming pool. People might talk.” And it works! Sherlock makes an answering reply and smiles at John.

When Sherlock realizes that his big reveal at the Landmark isn’t going well, he tries to fall back on their pattern of resorting to humor by continuing to joke about John’s mustache and acting all nonchalant and smiley. But in this instance, it doesn’t work at all, and it makes John furious instead. As a result, in this scene and in the two other restaurant scenes that follow, John lashes out at Sherlock in anger.

Of course, I get where John is coming from, and I want to be fair to him and respect the emotional turmoil that he’s clearly experiencing. But his behavior in the string of restaurant scenes really isn’t okay. He doesn’t treat Sherlock fairly by trying to hurt him and by refusing to listen to him.

Like ASIB, TEH is an episode of miscommunications and things left unsaid. Part of the tragedy of Sherlock and John’s love story is that throughout the show, they keep hurting each other and themselves because of their inability or unwillingness to be fully honest with each other. And of course, this pattern gets so much worse in S3, starting with TEH.

Sherlock, John, and Mary keep getting kicked out of restaurants as John keeps trying to hurt Sherlock. At each restaurant, they keep talking about Sherlock’s fall…but not really talking about it.

As I mentioned in the TRF section, at the first restaurant after the Landmark, when Sherlock starts to explain to John how he faked his death and survived, he seems to be trying to tell John the same story that he later tells Anderson towards the end of TEH. If John had wanted to hear it, Sherlock would probably have told John the truth about the technical details of how he survived the fall—the inflatable, the corpse, and the squash ball—but not about the most important parts of the story. At the restaurant, Sherlock doesn’t tell John that the fake suicide plan was a dreaded Plan B that he didn’t want to use. Instead, tries to tell John that he was completely in control and had planned for every eventuality, that he’d been working with Mycroft on a grand masterplan to outsmart Moriarty, and that his fake suicide was a part of that larger plan.

Most importantly, Sherlock doesn’t tell John about the snipers. When John interrupts to demand that Sherlock tell him not how he faked his death, but why, Sherlock answers “Why? Because Moriarty had to be stopped.” This is a strangely evasive response that doesn’t actually answer the question. Sherlock could have said something much more straightforward, like “Why? Because Moriarty had snipers prepared to kill you, Mrs. Hudson, and Lestrade if I didn’t jump.” This is a moment when Sherlock could have shown John how much he loved him by telling him that he jumped to save his life—and that he even went undercover for a year and a half to take down Moriarty’s network to make sure that John would be safe. But Sherlock doesn’t take the opportunity.

I think Sherlock didn’t tell John the truth in that moment because he was scared of revealing that he was in love with him. At the Landmark, Sherlock had been prepared and even eager to finally confess his feelings to John because he thought John would embrace him with open arms. But John didn’t react to Sherlock’s return at all how Sherlock had expected and hoped he would. Sherlock thought they were going to have this beautiful romantic reunion, but John reacted with cold anger and even tried to hurt Sherlock. When Sherlock saw John’s furious initial action and then John tried to beat the shit out of him, Sherlock might have started to doubt that John had ever truly been in love with him, even given what he’d overheard at Battersea. And if Sherlock still believed that John had been in love with him once, he might have started to doubt that John still felt that way. Sherlock also sees that John is with Mary now, which complicates things.

As a result, Sherlock probably felt a lot of doubt when John asked him for the why, and he didn’t feel confident enough to tell John the truth. I think telling John that he jumped to save his life felt too close to a love confession for Sherlock, and after the Landmark, Sherlock just couldn’t do it.

This is very sad, because I have to believe that John would have behaved very differently in S3 if he had known. Relatedly, Sherlock also doesn’t seem to ever tell John that he wasn’t exactly having fun while dismantling Moriarty’s network and that he got captured and tortured in Serbia. Did John think Sherlock was off on a grand adventure without him, and just didn’t value or trust him enough to bring him along? Was that part of why he was so angry about Sherlock’s deception? Probably.

John does later write this on his blog: “Turns out he’d faked his death because Moriarty had threatened those close to him. Including me.” So Sherlock must have told John something that at least hinted at the presence of the snipers. But we never see it happen on screen, so we don’t know what Sherlock told John or how he phrased it. Who knows what he said. I mean, saying that Moriarty “threatened” John isn’t the same as telling him that there was an actual sniper right there that day, ready to take John out if John didn’t believe that Sherlock’s death was real. It also doesn’t communicate that Sherlock suspected there were other members of the network (Mary!) watching John in the months and years afterwards to make sure that Sherlock didn’t make contact with him. That thin scrap of information—that Moriarty had “threatened” John—also doesn’t explain that Sherlock had never wanted to use the fake suicide plan in the first place, that he never intended to make John watch, and that he never intended to be “dead” for so long without telling John.

In addition to hiding the full truth about the snipers, Sherlock also lies by saying that he and Mycroft planned everything out ahead of time. Sherlock doesn’t want to admit to John that Moriarty outplayed him so thoroughly. In Dartmoor especially, Sherlock seemed to worry that John is enthralled by him only because of his mysterious detective persona and his incredible smarts. As a result, at this point in TEH, Sherlock wants to seem far more cool and capable than he actually is. He knows that John is attracted to that, and he’s worried that John will think less of him if he knows how fallible he is in reality. Moreover, if Sherlock has started to doubt how John feels about him at this point, then he’s probably feeling especially anxious about how John perceives him. Sherlock wants to appear as impressive and in-control as possible, and he may fear that if he reveals how badly he failed, John will be even less likely to forgive him and to continue their friendship.

As Sherlock, John, and Mary keep getting thrown out of restaurants because John keeps trying to hurt Sherlock, Sherlock continues to appear outwardly confident throughout the evening. But we know Sherlock better than that, so we know that what he’s displaying isn’t necessarily what he’s feeling.

In the third restaurant, Sherlock even admits “I’ve nearly been in contact so many times.” He tries to make this light-hearted by adding “I worried that, you know, you might say something indiscreet,” but this is nevertheless a sort of heartbreaking admission from Sherlock. We know that the real reason why Sherlock didn’t say anything to John wasn’t that he was worried about the rest of the world knowing he was still alive; he was worried that if John said or did “something indiscreet,” John would get murdered. But even while he was fearful for John’s safety, Sherlock almost couldn’t stop himself and thought about getting in contact with John “so many times.” Sherlock was thinking about John constantly during his time away and wanted to talk to him so badly.

When Sherlock realizes that he isn’t getting anywhere with John as they keep talking about his fake suicide, he reverts back to his tried and true method of trying to bring John back to him by drawing him into a case. In the third restaurant, Sherlock tries to change the subject from the suicide by telling John about the terrorist attack, and he says that he needs John’s help.

When that doesn’t immediately work, Sherlock breaks a little and gets more personal. It seems like he genuinely can’t understand why John isn’t happy to see him—they were in love with each other, damn it!—so he says to John, “You have missed this. The thrill of the chase, the blood pumping through your veins, just the two of us against the rest of the world.” This is such an intensely romantic thing to say? I think it’s Sherlock’s way of asking, “You have missed me, haven’t you? Just the two of us together, doing what we do best together?” And John answers by headbutting Sherlock in the face and giving him a nosebleed. The next day, when he’s talking to Mrs. Hudson, Sherlock says that John also told him to “fuck off.”

After this, Sherlock talks to Mary outside while John hails a cab. In the moment when Mary says “I’ll talk him ’round,” Sherlock’s expression changes. Mary’s comment initiates a shift in how he sees her, and he looks at Mary quizzically and begins to deduce her for the first time. Sherlock starts to take her seriously as he realizes that she’s different from John’s other girlfriends from before. In this moment, it seems like Sherlock is starting to realize that instead of him being John’s one and only, Mary might have taken his place; now, she might be the one John listens to and who has the ability to “talk him ’round.” This happens so soon after Sherlock said “just the two of us against the rest of the world” to John with such confidence that he and John would always be an unshakable pair. The change in Sherlock’s expression as he regards Mary shows his first horrible moment of realization, the moment when he starts to see that this might not be true anymore. The look on Sherlock’s face as he watches John and Mary leave in the cab together is absolutely heartbreaking…

(gif from here)

…as is the shot of him turning and slowly walking away down the darkened street on his own.

So. Sherlock returned thinking that he and John would have a really romantic, joyous, and fulfilling reunion, but it doesn’t go that way at all. Before Sherlock can confess his feelings, John reacts with anger at what he perceives as Sherlock’s betrayal and callousness towards him, because John doesn’t know the full truth. After that, Sherlock chooses not to tell John the full truth about the fall and his time away, and he doesn’t confess his feelings to John when he could have. John leaves with Mary, and Sherlock begins to fear that John is no longer in love with him—if he ever truly was in the first place. Sherlock probably even fears that John doesn’t even want to be friends with him anymore.

The next morning, Mycroft comes to visit Sherlock at 221B and we get more evidence of how heartbroken and lonely Sherlock feels after John’s rejection of him.

As Sherlock and Mycroft play board games together and make deductions based on the client’s hat, Sherlock tries to tell Mycroft that he must be lonely without friends. When Mycroft directly disagrees with this, Sherlock leans in deliberately and says heavily, “How would you know?” This is a callback to the exchange in ASIB where Mycroft replied to Sherlock’s confident “Sex doesn’t alarm me” with a smug “How would you know?” Sherlock is basically telling Mycroft something like this: You haven’t had friends, so you don’t realize that you’re lonely. Now that I’ve had John as a friend and lost what I had with him, I know that I’m lonely. Maybe you’ve had more sex than I have, but when it comes to friendship, emotional intimacy, and loss, I’m more experienced than you are.

Although Sherlock and Mycroft are talking about friendship, the fact that this dialogue is a direct callback to Mycroft needling Sherlock about his virginity also serves to imply that there’s long been the potential for something more than platonic friendship between Sherlock and John, something that Sherlock has never been able to reach. Sherlock may now feel that he’s lost that potential. And there’s a desire there that Sherlock has found it hard to admit to, just as he and Mycroft have long found it hard to admit that they’re lonely without friends.

Moreover, the fact that Sherlock’s question of “How would you know?” references Mycroft’s earlier quip about his virginity serves to demonstrate that the reason Sherlock is lonely now is because he wasn’t able to turn his relationship with John into something more than friendship back in S2. Sherlock wasn’t able to tell John that he loved him and wasn’t able to truly make John his own before his fall, so that John may have waited for him and would still be his now.

Here, I’d like to return to “The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor.” In that story, the wife directly says to Holmes and Watson that her first husband had a prior “claim” to her, since they were married. In TEH, however, Sherlock doesn’t have a similar claim to John, since he never made a move and he and John weren’t together before the fall. Ouch.

Things don’t get better for Sherlock in this episode.

Sherlock is lonely, so after Mycroft leaves, he invites Molly to solve crimes with him. Molly accepts, and Sherlock tells her “You’re not being John—you’re being yourself.” Sherlock has certainly come to appreciate and to respect Molly much more than he did in S1-S2, and he wants to establish a real friendship with her. But at the same time, he’s clearly still thinking about John.

In the scene where Molly and Lestrade watch Sherlock deduce the fake Jack the Ripper crime scene, Sherlock is not at all his usual confident self at a crime scene. Instead, he can hear John telling him off and criticizing him in his head. This demonstrates just how crushed Sherlock feels and how sharply his self-confidence has tanked after John’s rejection. Instead of John’s usual praise and encouragement at a crime scene, all Sherlock can hear is John’s criticisms. Sherlock seems to be starting to wonder if this is what John really thinks of him.

After Sherlock and Molly finish talking to Howard (the client with the hat who likes trains), Sherlock suggests that the two of them get dinner together. Molly isn’t very receptive to this idea, though, and their conversation shifts and becomes more serious as Sherlock thanks Molly for helping him and congratulates her on her engagement. After they finish talking, Sherlock looks extremely sad as he walks out of the building on his own. Instead of him and Molly leaving together, they exit separately so that we can see Sherlock’s heartbroken expression as he steps outside and then another shot of him walking away all alone, similar to the shot from the night before. That this comes right after he and Molly have talked about Molly’s new relationship serves to emphasize Sherlock’s loneliness without John. Moreover, in the next scene at Baker Street, we see that Sherlock went out for fish and chips on his own after Molly indicated that she didn’t want to get dinner with him. As @asherlockstudy has explained, Sherlock consistently uses food as a metaphor for emotional intimacy. Sherlock actually did want to get dinner with Molly so that they could share closeness as friends, but Molly turned him down because she’s still in love with him and getting dinner together would be too much for her. The fact that Sherlock ate dinner alone after working on a case gives us more evidence of his emotional isolation and loneliness without John; he and John used to always get dinner together after cases, but now he doesn’t have anyone to share emotional intimacy with in the same way that he once did with John.

Also. In TLD, Sherlock tells Faith “You’re suicidal, you’re allowed chips. Trust me, it’s about the only perk.” So when Sherlock gets chips on his own the day after his disastrous reunion with John, that’s a hint that Sherlock might be feeling borderline suicidal after John’s rejection of him. At the very least, he’s devastated and heartbroken.

As Sherlock is getting ready to eat his feelings to try to stave off suicidal thoughts, Mary turns up and shows him the skip code that indicates that John has been kidnapped. Sherlock panics and rushes off to try to save John, and he ends up running into the bonfire to pull John out of danger without thinking of his own safety at all. The bonfire scene is one of the many times in S3 where we see Sherlock’s single-minded determination to always protect John, no matter what.

Of course, the motorcycle/bonfire sequence is really emotionally intense for Sherlock. There’s a loud heartbeat sound right when Sherlock sets out to save John, indicating that this is all about Sherlock being in love with John. Then as Sherlock gets closer to the church and John struggles underneath the kindling, the soundtrack is laced through with several more heartbeat sounds and similar-sounding drum beats. These occur in the shots that are from Sherlock’s perspective and the ones that are from John’s, since they’re both in love (like how we heard a heartbeat for each of them at the Landmark). Also, remember “Amazing how fire exposes our priorities,” and “I will burn the heart out of you”? John getting trapped in a fire that Sherlock has to save him from is meant to hit us over the head with the fact that this is a scene of major romantic significance for Sherlock because Sherlock is in love with John.

There are also a lot of parallels between Sherlock rushing to get to John in the bonfire scene and John rushing to Bart’s and trying to get to Sherlock in TRF. The bonfire scene is sort of like a flipped version of the fall, one where Sherlock and John have switched places and Sherlock actually is able to save John. This comparison demonstrates the depth of Sherlock’s love for John and the emotional significance of this scene for Sherlock—it’s like Sherlock is experiencing the fall from John’s perspective.

The next day, John comes to visit Sherlock at 221B. And even after Sherlock and John have just had this incredibly intense and emotional scene where Sherlock saved John’s life, the two of them still don’t open up to each other about how they feel. They’re both rather awkward during John’s visit, and Sherlock is clearly very nervous.

When John shows up, Sherlock anxiously shoves his parents out the door so that John won’t talk to them. By rushing his parents out when John turns up unexpectedly, Sherlock is trying to hide the parts of him that are vulnerable—and especially that are ordinary, as John calls Sherlock’s parents after they leave. It’s the equivalent of Sherlock approaching John in his swirly coat the morning after their fight in Dartmoor. He’s trying to slip back into the impressive detective persona that he thinks John is drawn to because he thinks that’s the best way to get John back.

John becomes upset that Sherlock’s parents knew he was alive when he didn’t, and Sherlock says “Sorry, sorry again!” in a slightly frustrated and exasperated voice. But when John doesn’t say anything to that, Sherlock looks down before nervously looking up at John again, biting his lip, and saying “Sorry” again in a much softer voice that sounds very genuine.

Still, though, Sherlock feels like he’s stepping on eggshells with John. John doesn’t thank Sherlock for saving his life the night before and doesn’t say anything else especially forgiving, so Sherlock is still nervous about where he stands with John. And as a result, when John tries to ask Sherlock why someone kidnapped him—even asking “Is it someone trying to get to you through me?”—Sherlock still doesn’t tell John about the snipers and the way that Moriarty was able to back him into a corner by threatening John. He also doesn’t tell John anything about how terrified he was the night before.

Instead of revealing his more vulnerable side to John or confessing his feelings, Sherlock tries to draw John back into his life by talking about the terrorism case. We’ve seen this before, again and again: when confronted with an emotionally difficult situation with John, especially one where he’s worried that he’s made a mistake, Sherlock will try to pull John back to him by pulling him into a case instead of directly telling him how much he loves and needs him.

Heartbreakingly, Sherlock is missing crucial information about John’s side of the story, just as John is missing information about Sherlock’s. From what we see on-screen in TEH, it seems like Sherlock never realizes that John tried to visit him at 221B the day after their disastrous night of conversations in the restaurants.

Let’s back up for a bit. I’ve mostly been talking about the scenes after the Landmark from Sherlock’s perspective so far, so let’s rewind to talk about the events after the night of Sherlock’s return from John’s perspective.

After going home with Mary, John lies awake in bed that night staring at the ceiling, obviously thinking about Sherlock. The next morning, he shaves off his mustache. When Sherlock asks him about it later, we get this exchange:

Sherlock: See you’ve shaved it off, then. John: Yeah. Wasn’t working for me. Sherlock: Mm, I’m glad. John: What, you didn’t like it? Sherlock: (smiling) No. I prefer my doctors clean-shaven.

There is so much queer subtext in that exchange.

John’s line is a callback to Molly’s “it wasn’t working for me” comment about her lipstick in ASIP after she failed to get Sherlock to say yes to a date. Molly’s “it wasn’t working for me” line confirms that she put on the lipstick to try to attract Sherlock romantically, but she failed because he rejected her when she asked him out. Since Molly is a mirror for John, John’s “wasn’t working for me” clarifies that he shaved the mustache off in an effort to get closer to Sherlock romantically.

There’s even more to it than that, though. As @weeesi has explained in this awesome meta, in the Victorian era, being clean-shaven was a homosexual signifier for men, and having facial hair was seen as a sign of normative, heterosexual masculinity. John’s decision to grow a mustache after Sherlock’s apparent death is therefore important symbolically. It shows that John was attempting to move on from Sherlock by burying his same-sex desires and embracing a traditionally masculine, heteronormative lifestyle with Mary. As soon as Sherlock came back, though, this “wasn’t working” for him anymore! With Sherlock back, John recognized that he couldn’t just bury his attraction to Sherlock and pretend that it doesn’t exist. So he gave up part of the façade by shaving off his mustache. Wow!

Moreover, the fact that Sherlock is always clean-shaven (even in TAB) and says to John that he “prefers my doctors clean-shaven”—aka, prefers men to be clean-shaven, aka prefers gay men—demonstrates yet again that Sherlock is gay, very much aware of it, and very comfortable with it. Sherlock has never even tried to conform to normative masculinity.

After shaving, John leaves for work and we get a “back to work” montage that cuts between shots of Sherlock working on cases at 221B and John working his job at the clinic. Although Sherlock tells Mrs. Hudson during that montage that John made his feelings quite clear the night before by telling him to “fuck off,” as the audience we see that John actually cooled off quite quickly. The day after Sherlock came back, John resolved to visit Sherlock after work and spent the whole day watching the clock while visibly lamenting that his job is so boring compared to the life that he used to have with Sherlock. Seriously, the main point of this scene is to show us that John hates his mundane job and that he wants to be solving crimes with Sherlock instead.

There’s also a lot of sexual imagery in the “back to work” montage, which gives us additional insight into what’s going on in John’s head. To loosely quote LSIT from her M-theory meta, John has a busy day of performing prostate exams and rejecting heterosexual porn…while the camera keeps cutting back to Sherlock. Again, seriously, we’re getting shots of John touching another guy’s genitals and then shots of Sherlock looking all innocent and demure as he stares at his crime wall in 221B. It’s pretty clear what John wants to happen here, even if he’s struggling to admit it.

At the end of the work day, John gives Mary a perfunctory kiss and they go their separate ways so that John can finally go over to Baker Street to see Sherlock. When he arrives outside 221B, John pauses and stares at the door for several moments, trying to decide whether to go in. This is really significant because of something Sherlock says in TSOT. In TSOT, there’s a scene where John stands at the window of the sitting room and watches a potential client trying to make up her mind as to whether to come in. As John narrates her movements, Sherlock says “I’ve seen those symptoms before. Oscillation on the pavement always means there’s a love affair.” John’s hesitancy on the pavement in TEH thus shows that he’s still in love with Sherlock, even now that he’s in a relationship with Mary. He’s essentially caught up in a love affair, and he’s feeling conflicted about it and unsure of what to do. John wants to be with Sherlock and knows that he’s in love with him, but he also feels loyal to Mary because of how serious their relationship is.

There’s also another heartbeat right when the camera transitions from showing us Sherlock thinking about the train case to John oscillating on the pavement. Love! Affair!

(gif from here; you can also see the comparison with TSOT here)

So to recap, here’s what we have of John’s side of the story so far. Before Sherlock returned, John was still mourning Sherlock and trying to convince himself that he should move on by embracing his relationship with Mary, which he was struggling to do. When Sherlock first came back, John was initially angry at Sherlock for deceiving him and didn’t immediately run into Sherlock’s arms, but he also calmed down very quickly and became eager to see Sherlock again the next day. John is still desperately in love with Sherlock and can’t keep away. But at the same time, he’s not ready to open up to Sherlock. He feels conflicted about what to do because he’s in a relationship with Mary, and he doesn’t want to just drop her.

Before John can go in to try to talk to Sherlock, though, he gets kidnapped by Magnussen’s men out on the pavement. (And Sherlock wasn’t home anyway—it’s still light out when John gets there, and it’s dark by the time that Sherlock gets back with his chips later that evening. That’s why Sherlock didn’t notice John getting kidnapped. Although he also didn’t notice in TBB when he was standing nearby lol.) When John and Sherlock see each other for the first time again after the bonfire, John doesn’t say anything about having tried to visit Sherlock the day before. So Sherlock might have never realized that John actually cooled off very quickly after his initial outbursts in the restaurants and tried to see him less than twenty-four hours later! When John showed up the day after the bonfire, Sherlock might have thought that John was only willing to talk to him again because he had just saved his life, but in reality, John only needed one day at work to cool off! An episode of miscommunications and things left unsaid!!

When John finally makes it to 221B to see Sherlock the day after the bonfire, Sherlock and John talk for a bit in the sitting room and start to edge closer to discussing things seriously.

Sherlock is clearly very, very nervous in this scene, but he’s also fairly gentle. Sherlock very tenderly asks John how he’s feeling. John tries to make a joke about it (“a bit…smoked”), but then he turns serious and demands to know why someone targeted him by putting him in the bonfire. Specifically, John asks, “Is it someone trying to get to you through me?”

That hits a bit too close for comfort for Sherlock, who must still be reeling from John’s harsh rejection two nights before. And to be honest, John doesn’t come across as all that warm to Sherlock in this scene, even though Sherlock just saved his life the night before. You can hardly blame Sherlock for not understanding where things stand between the two of them and for getting so nervous.

When John asks that question, which directly probes at Sherlock’s feelings for him, Sherlock steers the conversation away. At this point, Sherlock must be seriously starting to freak out about the fact that John got put in a bonfire as soon as he returned to London. Sherlock really thought that he got all of Moriarty’s network and that Serbia was the last link. But after he got back to London and told John that he was alive, John got kidnapped and almost murdered the very next day. Sherlock doesn’t know who kidnapped John and put him in the fire, so he’s probably starting to worry that he missed part of Moriarty’s network and that there are still people watching John and ready to hurt him. (Thanks to LSIT for talking some of this through with me.)

Sherlock doesn’t want to admit to John that he’s in love with him, and he also doesn’t want to admit that he’s starting to fear that he might have missed part of Moriarty’s network. So he doesn’t answer, and he tries to draw John back to him through a case. Sherlock starts talking to John about the imminent terrorist attack, and John is receptive to this approach, as always. The two of them have a video call with Howard the Train Guy, and then they set off for the unfinished underground station at Sumatra Road.

The scene between Sherlock and John in the train car is probably the most important scene in TEH. It’s also the most devastating, because it’s when we see real vulnerability from Sherlock and when John makes a crucial choice that carries significant repercussions for the rest of S3.

My understanding of this scene has been informed by this post with commentary by @monikakrasnorada and @asherlockstudy, as well as abrae’s analysis of the scene in their S3 meta here. Thanks to all of them for their metas!

These authors have different takes on how much Sherlock knows about John’s feelings at this point, and I come down somewhere in the middle. I think that by the time of the opening montage of ASIB, Sherlock knew that he and John had an incredibly special friendship. After the Battersea scene, he started to believe that John might return his feelings for him and might be in love with him, too. Sherlock held out hope for years after that, but then when he returned to London in TEH, he realized that his fake suicide hurt John far more than he had expected and that John wasn’t ready to accept him when he came back. Sherlock has also had to experience John’s anger at his deception. Although John has calmed down a bit by the time they go to the underground station together, he hasn’t apologized to Sherlock for trying to hurt him the night when Sherlock returned, and he certainly hasn’t come anywhere close to telling Sherlock that he loves him and wants to be with him now that he’s back. So at this point, I think that Sherlock is really doubting John’s feelings for him.

In the train car scene, Sherlock tries to figure out whether John is still in love with him and whether he would be willing to leave Mary for him. Sherlock knows that John is terrible at talking about his feelings and that he’s extremely unlikely to reveal them willingly. So, he hopes that if John truly believes that they’re both about to die, he will finally open up, tell Sherlock how he feels about him, and maybe—hopefully—also say that he wants to be with Sherlock instead of Mary.

Here’s the dialogue between Sherlock and John:

Sherlock: Forgive me. John: What? Sherlock: Please, John, forgive me, for all the hurt that I caused you. John: No, no, no, no, no, no. This is a trick. Sherlock: No. John: Another one of your bloody tricks. Sherlock: No. John: You’re just trying to make me say something nice. Sherlock: Not this time. John: It’s just to make you look good even though you behaved like… (He breaks off, and there’s a pause). I wanted you not to be dead. Sherlock: Yeah, well, be careful what you wish for. If I hadn’t come back, you wouldn’t be standing there and…you’d still have a future…with Mary. John: (pointing at Sherlock accusingly) Yeah. I know. (Another pause.) Look, I find it difficult—I find it difficult, this sort of stuff. Sherlock: I know. John: You were the best and the wisest man that I have ever known. Yes, of course I forgive you.

And that’s it. John doesn’t say anything more.

Sherlock’s facial expressions throughout this scene are absolutely heartbreaking. I think Sherlock’s expressions are completely real as he looks up at John, begs John to forgive him, and begins crying openly. We know from the timestamp on the bomb—which is 1:29, by the way, referencing the day when Sherlock and John first met and first saved each other’s lives—that Sherlock had already switched off the bomb before he initiated this conversation. So Sherlock is deceiving John here, and he’s trying to manipulate John into saying things that he might never admit otherwise. But I think that even though Sherlock chose to have this conversation, all of this is still incredibly painful for him. As the dialogue progresses, Sherlock’s expressions reveal his genuine remorse for what he has done to John, his desperate longing that John will tell him that he loves him, and his devastation when John chooses to say so little.

I’ve matched a few screencaps from abrae’s meta and some gifs with some of the lines of dialogue so that we can see this more clearly.

Sherlock: Please, John, forgive me, for all the hurt that I caused you.

After Sherlock says this, his face does this:

Sherlock: If I hadn’t come back, you wouldn’t be standing there and…you’d still have a future…with Mary.

John: Yeah. I know.

And Sherlock’s face does this:

He’s openly crying now.

John: Look, I find it difficult—I find it difficult, this sort of stuff.

Sherlock: I know.

(gif from here)

John: You were the best and the wisest man that I have ever known.

Sherlock’s face does this:

(gif from here)

John: Yes, of course I forgive you.

And after there’s a long pause, such that it becomes evident that this is all John is going to say, Sherlock’s face does this:

This gif gives us a closer look (gif from here):

More gifs here if you want to see John’s and Sherlock’s expressions lined up.

Benedict Cumberbatch is an incredible actor, but Sherlock is not. This is not what Sherlock looks like when he’s acting for a case. Even though Sherlock is manipulating John in this scene, I really do believe that the emotions we see from him are genuine. Sherlock chose to have this conversation, but it’s still overwhelming for him because he loves and needs John so much. He’s so desperate to hear that John feels the same way.

And Sherlock’s dialogue is also just so sad. There’s one line that’s incredibly important. Sherlock deliberately tells John that if he hadn’t come back, he would still have a future with Mary. Sherlock adds “with Mary” to the end of that sentence so deliberately, with a little pause beforehand, and then he really loses it after he chokes out those two words. Sherlock hoped that by saying this, he could prompt John to tell him whether it’s a future with Mary or a future with him, Sherlock, that he truly wants. As asherlockstudy writes, “Sherlock really hoped for a romantic happy end that night.”

But John doesn’t open up. When John says “Look, I find it difficult—I find it difficult, this sort of stuff,” he demonstrates that he’s still struggling to face the prospect of telling Sherlock that he loves him, even when he thinks they’re both about to die.

In response to that, Sherlock says “I know,” in a calm, accepting voice that’s heavy with sadness. He briefly looks up at John before lowering his head and casting his eyes down again, like this is too much for him. I mean, go back and look at that gif again and watch it until the end. This hurts my heart so much, because this is Sherlock acknowledging that he knows that John has been in love with him for a long time, and he also knows that John has never been able to fully face that and has never felt ready to say it.

John’s line—saying that he finds it difficult, this sort of stuff—makes it sound as if he’s about to reveal something big. But then he doesn’t. John simply says, “You were the best and the wisest man that I have ever known” and tells Sherlock that he forgives him. With this, John actually reveals even less about his feelings for Sherlock than he did at Sherlock’s grave in TRF.

I think asherlockstudy is right that Sherlock truly wasn’t prepared for how betrayed and hurt John would feel after his return. Sherlock was desperately hoping for more in this scene, but John wasn’t ready to give it. John may have forgiven Sherlock, but he still doesn’t feel ready to fully open up to him about his feelings.

Once it becomes clear that John isn’t going to say anything more, Sherlock looks absolutely devastated for several moments. Then he drops the deception and switches to humor to try to end the tense moment between the two of them. As I mentioned before and as this post explains, humor is one of Sherlock’s go-to methods for diffusing emotional situations that he doesn’t think he and John can handle. And unlike at the Landmark, this time it works! John starts laughing along with Sherlock pretty much immediately. John tries to act like he’s still angry at Sherlock, but he also keeps smiling and biting back laughter.

Just as things would have been very different in S2 if Sherlock had decided to tell John how he felt after Battersea, things would have been very different in S3 if John had decided to seize his second chance with Sherlock as soon as Sherlock returned. The initiative might have been Sherlock’s to take in ASIB, but it isn’t any longer in TEH, at least not in the same way. And I think Sherlock knows this. No matter what Sherlock had hoped for before he returned to London, after he sees John again and witnesses John’s initial reaction, Sherlock recognizes that he can’t just come back, reveal to John that he’s not dead, and then promptly confess his love to him after learning that John has a fiancée (well, almost-fiancée). Sherlock tries to manipulate John in the train car scene, but he does so in a way that ultimately leaves it up to John to make the decision about where things will go next.

I don’t want to be too harsh on John, since it’s clear that he’s experiencing a lot of emotional turmoil in the days immediately after Sherlock’s return. And for good reasons! But I think that even if he wasn’t ready to do it in the train car, John made a monumental mistake in S3 by not leaving Mary for Sherlock afterwards. I think John knew that what he felt for Mary was not the same as what he felt for Sherlock, and staying with Mary in spite of this was the wrong thing to do to Mary, to Sherlock, and to himself. Even if John didn’t really know what he wanted at the time of the train car scene—which would be entirely understandable, given how much of a shock Sherlock’s return was—he could have reflected on it and made different choices in the days or even weeks afterwards.

Why doesn’t John open up more, and why isn’t he willing to leave Mary for Sherlock once he realizes that Sherlock is still alive? I think there are three potential reasons.

First, by the time Sherlock returned, John felt fairly committed to Mary and most likely felt some sort of loyalty to her. Although John and Mary weren’t technically engaged yet, they were clearly at the stage in their relationship where they were discussing marriage. Mary didn’t seem very surprised when John started trying to propose to her at the Landmark. The fact that she even started laughing at John as he struggled through his proposal shows that she didn’t feel any nerves in that moment—she felt sure of her place in John’s life. John probably found it difficult to seriously contemplate ending a relationship that had reached that stage. Not impossible, but difficult.

Second, John might still be uncomfortable with his queer sexuality. John started to grapple with his feelings for Sherlock back in S2 and realized then that he was in love with him, but recognition and acceptance are two very different things. In S3, Mary offers John the respectable, heteronormative lifestyle that John probably thinks he’s supposed to want. Notably, by the time Sherlock returned to London, John had already started to seriously imagine a marriage with Mary, not just a relationship. John might find the conventional, heteronormative future that now appears to be within his reach very difficult to turn away from, even if he doesn’t truly want it. (And I think Sherlock might know that John is struggling with this. That’s another reason why I find this all so heartbreaking. As a gay man who’s very comfortable with that side of himself, this must be very hard for Sherlock to have to witness.)

Most importantly, though, John doesn’t know that Sherlock is in love with him. Sherlock has been consistently trying to hide the fact that he’s in love from John, and after John didn’t act overjoyed to see him at the Landmark, Sherlock felt too nervous and insecure to reveal his true feelings. As a result, John still thinks that his own love is unrequited, so he doesn’t see how confessing his feelings to Sherlock could do anything more than just get himself hurt. John knows how intense and overwhelming his love for Sherlock is, and Sherlock hurt him terribly with the fall. Even when John has forgiven Sherlock for the fall, it’s terrifying for him to contemplate opening himself up to Sherlock even more after that. It’s terrifying to imagine making himself so vulnerable to Sherlock by confessing his love to him when he doesn’t think that Sherlock feels anything like that for him in return.

I think the fact that John believes his love is unrequited is the most important reason why he remains so incredibly reluctant to admit his feelings for Sherlock in S3. John probably thinks that no matter what he feels for Sherlock, Sherlock will never love him back, so he should ignore his feelings for Sherlock as much as possible, consign Sherlock to the role of best friend, and pursue a much safer romance with Mary. And this is honestly so heartbreaking, because Sherlock has been so far gone on John since the day after he met him in ASIP.

So that’s where I’d place John at the end of TEH. John is still in love with Sherlock and knows it, but he’s struggling with it and he’s unwilling to reveal his feelings to Sherlock because he doesn’t realize that Sherlock loves him back. In TSOT and HLV, however, we’ll see that John’s willingness to make a move begins to shift as he faces down his imminent marriage and starts to face just how desperately he wants to be with Sherlock instead of Mary.

Meanwhile, Sherlock takes John’s statements in the train car as a final, definitive rejection. John has chosen a future with Mary. Even if he was once in love with Sherlock, he either doesn’t feel that way any more or is determined not to act on it because he believes that Mary is the better option. As a result, after the train car, Sherlock resolves to bow out gracefully and to stay out of the way romantically. He will let John marry Mary, and he’ll do his best to bury his own feelings so that he can avoid making John uncomfortable and can simply be the best friend to John that he is capable of being. I think that after everything that happened in TEH, Sherlock felt grateful that John was willing to take him back as a friend at all, and he didn’t want to do anything that would risk their friendship.

Sometime after Sherlock and John escape the train car and successfully foil the terrorist plot, Sherlock goes to see Anderson and gives him his super tidy Mycroft-and-I-planned-everything-perfectly explanation of the fall. Anderson was filming Sherlock as he spoke, so we can assume that Anderson intended to distribute the recording of Sherlock’s explanation and that the story Sherlock gives to Anderson is the version of events that he wants to present to the public. (I’ve discussed this explanation of the fall and what it does and doesn’t leave out in the TRF section of this meta.)

After this, the end of TEH leaves Sherlock and John in a tenuous place. John has told Sherlock that he forgives him and they’ve reconciled as friends. They’re also back to looking at each other absolutely radiantly. Here I will point us back to the hallway scene in 221B, which I am not going to shut up about and which you will be hearing about from me again in just a moment. And when Sherlock and John go to speak to the reporters in front of 221B, John is back to standing by Sherlock’s side and looking like Sherlock’s proud spouse, the way he did in TRF.

(gif from here)

But things between Sherlock and John are still unsettled and painful, as we see from their last conversation together in this episode. Before heading outside to talk to the reporters, Sherlock and John stand in the entryway and John asks Sherlock if he’s ever going to tell him how he faked his death and survived.

There are several things to note about this scene. First, John’s question suggests that John doesn’t believe the public explanation that Sherlock put out through Anderson. Like Anderson, John knows that something is off. He can tell that Sherlock is hiding something to appear clever, because he really is quite good at reading Sherlock (even if he often messes up spectacularly when it comes to Sherlock’s romantic feelings).

When John asks Sherlock how he did it, Sherlock has his back turned so that John can’t see his face, and he looks so. Incredibly. Sad.

(gif from here)

When Sherlock first returned, he was eager to tell John his sanitized and aggrandized story about how he did it. But after the train car, he’s now lost all of his previous enthusiasm for telling John this story to show off for him, because doesn’t think it matters anymore. John didn’t confess his love for Sherlock in the train car, and he’s chosen Mary. Although John forgave Sherlock and they’re friends again, Sherlock thinks that his fall and his time away have taken away his chance at ever having a romantic relationship with John.

Right before this in the entryway, John also asked Sherlock who put him in the bonfire, and Sherlock admitted that he didn’t know. Sherlock is getting seriously worried that there might still be parts of Moriarty’s network that he missed and that are a danger to John. So in this scene, Sherlock doesn’t feel triumphant about the fall any more. To paraphrase something LSIT said to me, at first Sherlock tried to portray himself as having achieved an impressive and decisive victory over Moriarty, but now he’s feeling heartbroken and he feels like Moriarty won.

Sherlock’s fear that there might still be parts of Moriarty’s network in London might be a reason why he doesn’t want to tell John the truth about the fall. But I still think the bigger reason is that he’s terrified to tell John that he would have done literally anything to save him from Moriarty. If Sherlock weren’t scared of revealing his love to John, he could tell John that Moriarty trapped him with the snipers, that he faked his death and hid his survival from John in order to protect him from Moriarty’s network, and that he’s now worried that he missed something and that John still isn’t safe. Then he and John could try to figure out what to do about it together. But now that he feels that John has rejected him romantically, Sherlock doesn’t feel like he can admit all of that.

Another thing to note about this: Sherlock’s explanation to Anderson is intercut with the train car scene. LSIT suggested to me that this might be meant to indicate that Sherlock’s reasons for not telling John the whole truth about the fall are connected to the fact that John didn’t reveal his love to him in the train car. Since John didn’t make a love confession, Sherlock is back to feeling like he isn’t ready to make one, either.

After John asks Sherlock if he’ll ever tell him how he faked his death, Sherlock tries to brush him off: “You know my methods, John. I am known to be indestructible.” John pushes harder, though.

John: No, but seriously. When you were dead, I went to your grave. Sherlock: I should hope so. John: I made a little speech. I actually spoke to you. Sherlock: I know. I was there. John: I asked you for one more miracle. I asked you to stop being dead. Sherlock: I heard you.

They look at each other, then Sherlock draws a deep breath and puts on a falsely cheerful air.

Sherlock: Anyway! Time to go and be Sherlock Holmes.

John opened up an opportunity for him and Sherlock to have what could have been a very deep conversation there in the entryway. They skirted the edges of it and Sherlock played along for a bit, but then Sherlock cut them off. Before this, John said to Sherlock teasingly, “Don’t pretend you’re not enjoying this. Being back. Being a hero again. […] You’d have to be an idiot not to see it. You love it. […] Being Sherlock Holmes,” and Sherlock said in response “I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean.” So when Sherlock cuts off the beginnings of a very deep conversation with “Anyway! Time to go and be Sherlock Holmes,” this essentially means that he feels that it’s time for him to put on his mask. And he does so, taking a deerstalker down from somewhere near the door and putting it on before he and John head outside to face the press. Sherlock feels like he can’t reveal his true feelings to John, so he has to avoid getting into a real and intense conversation with him and he has to slip back into his cool detective persona instead.

I will try to end this section with two slightly more hopeful thoughts. As I mentioned in the TRF section, in S3 Anderson serves as a personification of the fandom, and in MHR and TEH, he was very busy theorizing about how Sherlock survived the fall even though other people didn’t believe him. This is one of the many subtextual clues throughout the show that directly references TJLC. It’s there to assure us that an on-screen, fully actualized romantic relationship between Sherlock and John is the show’s endgame.

Then there’s the hallway scene, before Sherlock and John go into the sitting room of 221B to talk to everyone else and then go outside to talk to the reporters. It’s a brief moment, but it’s absolutely beautiful and it’s one of my favorite moments in the show.

Please see the gifs here and here and these screencaps of John and Sherlock looking at each other as Sherlock walks down the hallway towards John.

(screencaps from here)

John’s and Sherlock’s expressions in this scene are very different from so much of what we see between the two of them throughout the rest of S3. In this moment, Sherlock and John are both unguarded and they allow their love for each other to shine through on their faces while they’re looking at each other face-to-face. There’s such gentleness, joy, and admiration in their expressions. It’s so much more like how they used to look at each other in S1-S2.

This scene takes place after the train car. In this moment, John has forgiven Sherlock for lying to him and for leaving, and they both believe that they have a chance at being best friends again.

I think this moment shows that after Sherlock’s return in TEH, Sherlock and John still had a chance of recovering their relationship and of returning to what they had together in S2 before Sherlock had to leave. Moriarty didn’t actually have to win in the end. Everything goes to shit after this in S3, and Moriarty’s actions in TRF created the circumstances that drive Sherlock and John apart throughout the rest of S3. But Moriarty isn’t omnipotent, and he didn’t irrevocably seal their fates that day on the rooftop. Sherlock and John could have recovered from that. And if Sherlock and John could have recovered from what Moriarty did to them in TRF, then I think that if S4 hadn’t happened the way it did, Sherlock and John could have recovered from the rest of S3, too. So overall, I think this scene gives us evidence that Sherlock and John could have still found their way back to each other after S3 and could have ended up together. And it would have been utterly beautiful.

Next: The Sign of Three

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