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The “Mary is a Villain” Meta

Alternative Title: Redemption Arc, Schmedemption Arc

[also posted to reddit - go upvote!]

Mary might be Moran, or she might be Moriarty’s replacement, or she might be the real Moriarty, or his secret twin sister, or--whatever, the details aren’t important. What is important is that Mary is an evil person, and even though she died, the events of season 4 are fake (to an extent), and her story arc is far from over.

“But Mary sacrificed herself to save Sherlock!” you say, “They were all friends, the Watsons love each other!” I hear ya buddy. You can think that if you like, but there is undeniable proof that Mary is not as good a person as everyone thinks she is. (And I mean besides the assassin-for-hire part.) Mirroring and subtext tells us that her redemption arc was bullshit and you should not believe a word of her martyrdom because she was coded as a villain all the way up to - and after - her death.

And this meta is going to show that to you.

As a wee bab of a blogger way back in 2014, I wrote my very first meta about how seasons 1 and 3 are narratively similar and proved that Mary and Jim Moriarty served the same narrative purpose in terms of TJLC and Johnlock. Now, in light of season 4 (to be compared to season 2), I will use this meta to update that theory and expand on it better using my improved observational and meta-writing skills (thanks TST hell week!). In addition, I will list all the other ways Mary has been coded as Generally Evil in ways not directly connected to Moriarty, linked with appropriate metas written about those points!

This meta has 7 parts, numbered 1-7 for your convenience.

#1: The Part Where I Talk About Jim Moriarty #2: The Part Where I Talk About Mary Morstan (briefly) #3: The Part Where I Take a Short Break to Talk About the Abominable Bride #4: The Part Where I Talk About Mary Morstan (again) #5: The Part Where I Take Another Short Break to Talk About Shermit #6: The Part Where I Tie It All Together #7: Additional Potentially Superfluous but Equally Important Resources

TL;DR: Mary is a Villain. If you want to know how, you’re gonna have to read. [If you really must skim, the most important points I make are bolded, though I recommend reading everything for context.]

I apologize if a lot of this is copying off other metas, this is mostly building off things I’ve compiled in my “Maryarty” tag and sorting out thoughts about posts I’ve seen, but I will try to cite as many other metas as I can find that relate. If you find one already written about a specific point I mention, please link me so I can give proper credit!

The part where I talk about Jim Moriarty

Let's take a trip in the time machine and revisit the first season to explore Jim Moriarty's motivations. Moriarty is a consulting criminal that loves to play with Sherlock - he'll cook up the cases and Sherlock will solve them. That is, as long as he always holds the controls and Sherlock doesn't get too close - he'll have fun with the relationship as long as Sherlock doesn't find out what he's really doing behind the curtain. If he does, there will be consequences. The consequences for getting too close the first time involved strapping John to some semtex. Next time, he says he'll burn out Sherlock's heart.

On the roof at the end of season two, Jim admits he's become fed up with playing with Sherlock. Sherlock has become ordinary and boring like everyone else, and he's ready for the game to be over. But he's not going to just let him go. No, he's going to make sure the game ends with a bang. If Sherlock won't smarten up and play with him, then he can't be allowed to continue with anyone. (Sounds a lot like a Jealous Ex-Girlfriend if you ask me.) Jim has taken his friends hostage in order to get him to do what he wants, and he seals Sherlock's fate by shooting himself in the head and destroying Sherlock's only chance of saving them. By killing himself, Jim ensures that Sherlock dies too.

Jims narrative purpose in these two seasons was to present him with the opportunity to live his life removed from the mundane drivel of regular people that he’d gotten himself acquainted with. (Of course on a subtextual level, "people" means John.) With Jim, they could dance around each other playing clever games that no one else could hope to understand. Both Jim and Sherlock think Sherlock wants to be intellectually superior, above feelings and emotions, infinitely clever, but we both know that's not quite true. By choosing to jump and save his friends, Sherlock seals the deal that he doesn’t want what Jim is offering.

Conclusion: Jim represents the life that Sherlock thinks he wants. Jim realizes that Sherlock prefers his new life with John instead, and he is willing to kill John in order to keep Sherlock to himself.

The Part Where I Talk About Mary Morstan (briefly)

Fast forward through The Hiatus and we meet Mary, whose usefulness as a character effectively ends when Sherlock comes back to life unless she’s a villain. John mentions several times that Mary was a rock for him as he was grieving Sherlock's death, that she really turned his life around. But he doesn't stop there - for the record, there were only two people who have ever done that for him, and Sherlock is the other.

The comparisons between Mary and Sherlock are rampant in The Sign of Three, with John saying "The two people I love most" (with no distinction between platonic and romantic love), Mary saying "Neither of us were the first" (again, the first what?? Friend?? Romance?? No distinction is made.) and Sherlock using the word "companion" in reference both him and Mary back to back (again again, with no distinction between platonic and marital companionship). Sherlock and Mary are equivalent in everyone's eyes - Mary is replacing Sherlock just as much as Sherlock could easily fit into Mary's role as the bride.

As you can see it's pretty hard to talk about Mary's role in the show without also talking about Johnlock, but that's not why I'm here. It is important to understand, though, how much Sherlock threatens Mary's life with John. Enough, apparently, to take advantage of a golden opportunity when Sherlock finds her in a compromising position. By shooting and killing Sherlock, she kills two birds with one stone - she eliminates the competition, and she gets to reprise her old role of being John's shoulder to cry on.

Conclusion: Mary represents the life that John thinks he wants. Mary realizes that John prefers his old life with Sherlock instead, and she is willing to kill Sherlock in order to keep John to herself.

Sound familiar? This conclusion allows us to assume that in season 4, Mary will continue to follow Jim's season 2 arc by dishing out the consequences of John's choice. (The consequences in Jim's case was The Fall.)

Except, that's not really what happens, is it? Mary dies a martyr in episode 1, helps John come to terms with his guilt surrounding his almost-affair, and lovingly narrates the culmination of this penultimate season, sending her two Baker Street Boys into the adventurous future with a smile from the Great Beyond.

Of course, we would accept this as truth if it weren't for all the evidence presented to us that continuously suggests the opposite.

The Part Where I Take a Short Break to Talk About The Abominable Bride

Before we dive into season 4, we need to take a short detour to The Abominable Bride, which served as a bridge between the two seasons and a sort of "decoder ring" for a lot of what happens in the show - it’s a dream that can be used to interpret what’s going on in “real life”, just like our dreams. It set up mirrors and parallels so that we saw certain characters (*cough* Mary) a certain way and could interpret their confusing and misleading actions and behavior the way they were meant to. The surface reading of season 4 is not a truthful one, and TAB is a big part of understanding why that is.

The title The Abominable Bride refers to the bride Emelia Ricoletti, who shot herself in the head, and then seemed to come back from the dead. It's foreshadowed throughout the episode (the he/she mixup, "virus in the data") that Sherlock is really just trying to figure out how Moriarty could have come back to life from shooting himself in the head. In the end, the bride draws back the veil to reveal that it really was Jim all along! This explicit reveal, which was the point of the entire episode, gives us an obvious comparison: Emelia Ricoletti is Jim Moriarty. She even dies to kill her husband, like Jim did on the roof. Sherlock subconsciously connects Emelia to Jim, so we should too.

But there's another mirror to be found here. A subtexual one: Mary is also a bride.

The show even reminds us of this as Bride Mary confronts Sherlock with her gun in his mind palace in HLV, instead of like, the assassin gear she's actually wearing when she shoots him. Sherlock subconsciously sees Mary as a bride, so we should too.

Even before the episode aired, this connection was made, and people speculated that Mary was The Bride that is referenced in the title of the episode. As it turns out, they were only partially wrong. When she is introduced in the episode, she's dressed as a widow (purely for the purpose of impish humor, but the subconscious connection of a being a wife is still there), and many first believed that this "client" was The Bride from the case. But when the veil is pulled away - shocker, it's Mary!

Using this evidence and the Transitive Property of Equality, we can assume that Mary is supposed to be subtextually compared with Moriarty. If Emelia = Jim, and Emelia = Mary, then Mary = Jim.

(In addition, even though Mary is shown not to be a part of The Conspiracy, it's shown to us through out the episode that Mary fits right in with them: she's joined the women's suffrage movement, feels neglected by her husband, and is far cleverer than anyone gives her credit for.)

The Part Where I Talk About Mary Morstan (again)

Ok so that short break wasn't really so short, but hopefully you've got a better understanding now how they show Mary's connections to Moriarty because it's time to move onto season 4!

Kind of. There's a lot of confusing stuff that happens in this season. Most of it has to do with subtext that seriously conflicts with Mary's "redemption" arc in The Six Thatchers. I think the easiest way to do this is to put everything in a list:

During setlock, shark imagery was seen that viewers began to associate with Mary because of the scenes they appeared in. There's a shitload of sharks swimming around when Sherlock narrates the tale of Samarra, a tale which turns out to be about Mary. Previously, Sherlock describes CAM as a shark from the London Aquarium, where Mary dies. This makes it sound like Mary is a victim and the Villainous Sharks are coming to get her, but if you take a look at this series of tweets from Mark Gatiss to Amanda Abbington, you'll see that the context changes entirely: Mary is the shark. Mark also describes Moriarty as a shark, so if he and Mary fulfill the same narrative purpose, then, well....

"You can't arrest a jellyfish." There's a huge tank of jellyfish behind Mary as she leaps to save Sherlock.

Mary is a receptionist. So is the villain of the episode, it turns out. Also worth nothing that Ajay thought Mary was the one who betrayed A.G.R.A.

Sherlock's made-up story about Mr. Kingsley's wife being a spy sounds a lot like Mary. (Mr. Kingsley’s reactions to his deductions are also a bit unconventional, like John’s are.)

As Sherlock follows Ajay's Thatcher trail, he assumes that Moriarty is behind the whole thing. It turns out he's wrong, and it's about Mary.

Mary jokes about her daughter being the devil, then the antichrist, which would make her the devil.

She shows up to the desanctified church all ready to go with a paper full of chemical sedatives, just in case, right?

She assumes the identity of Gabrielle Ashdown, who is a character in The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes that Sherlock does not trust.

Honestly the whole "running away" scene just screams that Mary is not done with her past as an assassin. If she really was a repentant housewife she wouldn't be so eager to return to her old ways of espionage.

She even insists on naming her daughter after herself and her "real" name that she used in the good old days of A.G.R.A. Yep, definitely done with that dark past, ready to leave it behind for good.

Sherlock never actually tells Mary to meet him at the aquarium. He tells John, but his message to Mary only reads "The curtain rises. The last act. It's not over." which is a line he uses to when presented with Moriarty's first pip in TGG, and in TAB when he's about to dive into Moriarty’s Emelia Ricoletti's case.

Again, Norbury, the villain, says she's the merchant in the story, but we just finished watching the part where Mary attempts to escape her fate at the hands of Ajay. And then Mary dies.

A DVD shows up at Baker Street marked "Miss Me?" - Moriarty's trademark phrase. But who's on it? Mary. “To Sherlock: Please watch this. From, Mary” would have worked just as well.

An after-credits scene has Mary telling Sherlock to "Go to Hell", which is completely out of context, but it still caused us to doubt the seemingly benevolent message of the DVD for an entire week before TLD aired.

TL;DR: We are supposed to second-guess Mary’s intentions for the entire duration of this episode. Mary’s redemption arc and death are not what they appear to be.

Even after Mary dies, she continues to have a pretty dominating presence in the show. She haunts John subconsciously, not dissimilar to the way the ghost of Moriarty haunts Sherlock. She also sets the entire events of The Lying Detective in motion with a single, pleading DVD. A DVD which purposely leads Sherlock to his death.

The Part Where I Take Another Short Break to Talk About Shermit

Ok well not specifically Shermit, but the #SherlockLive twitter event held on January 10th.

For those unfamiliar, this was an official event Sherlock (Mark and Steven) "hijacked" the official BBC One twitter account. He used the time he had to present us with a case he had recently solved in order to test our detective skills. You can see the case’s conclusion here, but in the end, it was revealed that the victim had done it! Just like Sherlock predicted in his Clue game with John.

Daniel Collard was a man who "had a violent past, but apparently has redeemed himself and isn't that person anymore,"; however, evidence proved that he was still an unpleasant person (see above bullet points). His wife, Sophie, was unhappy with him and was secretly in love with someone else, “Joey”, an affair that Daniel soon found out about.

Then, being the clever man he was, Daniel came up with a plan to get revenge involving doctored photos, phony tweets, and faked security camera footage that framed his wife's secret lover for his death. Since Sophie was not content in their marriage, Daniel meant for his death to destroy the relationship she really wanted.

Now, looking at the other details of this case, a very easy connection can be made between Daniel and Mary: "brilliant sociopath commits suicide in such a way that it is intended to frame and destroy spouse and spouse's lover, conveniently initialed S and J, while incidentally implying that brilliant sociopath was also having an affair that ended when one of the parties became pregnant". [see: The Baby Isn't John's.]

The Part Where I Tie Everything Together

While reading this, it might have become clear to some of you that there is a recurring theme here, which I will point out to you soon, but in order to fully understand what I'm about to drop on alla-y'all right now, you need to understand how mirrors work as a literary device (because recently this lack of understanding has been causing some fandom drama). If you already understand this, feel free to skip the next paragraph.

A mirror is a character that is used to highlight certain traits in another, typically more important character. We can draw parallels between these two characters based on traits they have in common and make inferences and predictions about them based on what they don't have in common or what happens to them. Sometimes the story will explicitly tell us that the two characters are similar, but a lot of the time it will be more subtle, such as having the characters wear very similar outfits, or having them say the exact same conversation with/phrase to the same character. As a literary device, mirrors can foreshadow events, reveal background information that was previously unknown/unconfirmed, or show us how a character really feels about a situation without having them tell us outright. See here for some quick examples.

Now I will lay it out for you as clearly as I can:

Moriarty killed himself on the roof in order to condemn Sherlock to suicide after he became too boring as posthumous revenge.

This mirror alone should be enough to conclude that Mary's death was intentional and served a bigger purpose. But TPTB were kind enough to provide us with yet another mirror:

Emelia Ricoletti faked her death - with witnesses - so she could kill her neglectful husband as posthumous revenge.

Emelia and Moriarty's deaths both had similar meanings, so since Mary mirrors both of these characters, it's actually kind of obvious that Mary's death did not have good intentions. HOWEVER!! TPBP were extra super kind enough to provide us with YET ANOTHER mirror!

Daniel Collard killed himself in a way that framed his wife's lover in order to ruin their relationship as posthumous revenge.

This one occurs after Mary's death in The Six Thatchers, as if to frame it from both sides that there's more to it than meets the eye.

And if you take that last one into consideration when thinking about Mary’s role last season, Jim’s role in season 2, and The DVD, it becomes almost painfully obvious that Mary’s death served as a way to separate John and Sherlock permanently.

Additional Potentially Superfluous but Equally Important Resources

Before I link you to all the resources I've amassed, I think that it's vital to point out that it's been two months since Mary's arc finally ended in The Lying Detective, and BBC is still putting out new content related to Mary, as if they don’t want us to forget about her just yet:

First, after she died in The Six Thatchers, they released some promo pics which, before the context of The Lying Detective, suggested that Mary was still alive.

Then was her completely unnecessary second DVD in The Final Problem. The last thing they present to us in this season finale is a voiceover of a character that is long-dead and irrelevant, as if they want her presence to stick in our mind

For the special cinema screening of The Final Problem, they included extra bonus content that was basically a mini documentary about Mary.

The BBC worldwide Showcase on February 20th gave us this charming little dancing-Sherlocks routine in front of a backdrop of... Mary deductions...

Masterpiece PBS posted this video on February 28th, in which Martin and Amanda talk about their characters' relationship, accompanied by clips that don't really support their claims. At all.

There's a lot more that points towards Mary's villainy other than the parallels and connections I've pointed out above, but frankly the issue has already been beaten to death, so instead of reiterating what's already been said, I'm going to link you to as many metas as I can - metas that inspired this post and contributed to it as I was writing it up. They do not have any direct connection towards what I've already said, but simply exist as more proof that Mary is a villain on the show.

If you have a favorite that I’ve missed, please let me know and I can add it!

In no particular order:

Mary and Jim are not only narrative equals, but also serve to symbolize the two biggest obstacles in homosexual relationships; Mary represents heteronormativity, and Jim represents homophobia.

She's first shown to us with a black hat on (which makes her look like Sherlock for one thing), but in Old Western movies, viewers are able to easily identify Baddie Outlaws from the good guys by the colors of their hats. (See: Westworld)

Mary is The Woman in Green, a villain from another Holmes adaptation, and a femme fatale.

She's frequently shown onscreen in her fiery red coat/cardigan, which is not necessarily the type of color that is warm, comforting, or inviting. Brown is non-threatening, blue is trustworthy, red is warning, wrong, bad.

She says "You should put that on a T-shirt", which is later mirrored by Magnussen.

Mrs. Hudson is a John mirror, so Mr. Hudson (the criminal) is meant to symbolize Mary - John and Mary had known each other for less than 6 months before he proposed.

The scene at the end of The Abominable Bride parallels almost perfectly with that of Mary's reveal in his Last Vow: "Isn't that right Lady Carmichael/Smallwood?" but is actually Moriarty/Mary.

They left out the Garridebs brother named John in their canon nod in TFP, which makes Mary Killer Evans, the villain from the story.

Mary is Eurus and the true East Wind.

Mary is a "shoot first, ask questions later" kind of girl. And she might have actually killed the flight attendant.

Mary lies. A lot.

Her arc and musical themes mirror those of Irene, another villain.

There's a lot of stuff here if you want to just scroll down to "These are the facts", they've got the links laid out very nicely.

References to Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe indicate that Mary is a plant by Moriarty to get between Sherlock and John.

Mary's death was posthumous revenge, video proof.

Sherlock texts Mary the same way he texts Jim.

The Six Thatchers is an inverted retelling of ACD's The Final Problem, with Mary as Professor Moriarty.

Remember that time when John had something strapped to his chect and a villain compared him to a pet?

Mary's view of what "trust" is isn't exactly encouraging, and she uses love as a weapon. I know there are other more extensive metas out there, so if anyone would like to link me to them I'd be grateful!

Certain musical motifs used at certain times indicates malicious intent.

Mary is described as satanic in the script. And guess what? So is Moriarty.

A short list of why we should be side-eyeing Mary's redemption arc and death.

Mary's single tear and trembling gun hand in the His Last Vow script (which doesn't make it into the aired version) conflicts with what happens immediately after.

Mary's death scene is.... weird.

Parallels to Lady Smallwood gives us more reason to think Mary is trying to drive Sherlock and John apart

If we assume that Mary is American, then it's possible that she could have plans to stalk/menace John after framing him for her death.

After some pretty great foreshadowing, Mary's redemption arc is very poorly executed.

Making those DVDs is actually super irresponsible and doesn't make any sense narratively.

Mary was never nice to John before The Six Thatchers.

There's a trademarked Villain Head Tilt in the show, and Mary does it.

Sherlock is really only dramatic in the presence of Mary.

Mary's death being faked is foreshadowed using canon hints.

The Black Pearl of the Borgias case draws parallels between Moriarty and Mary.

More parallels between Norbury and Mary.

There are Moriarty symbols in the nursery.

Mary is probably responsible for Tablisi going "wrong"

Honestly her death was just really unrealistic.

Connections between Mary and the number 58 suggest she's evil, but Sherlock can't see it because he's in love with John.

The game is never over, John. But there may be some new players now.

I cited a LOT of meta (71 links total!!) in here that I tried my best to link back to OPs and major contributors that I’ve tagged here. Thanks for having such great analyses!

@rominatrix @inevitably-johnlocked @sussexbound-main @welovethebeekeeper @toxicsemicolon @darlingsubstitution @jenna221b @sherlockianbee @hubblegleeflower @incurablylazydevil @allroadsleadbacktobakerstreet @beejohnlocked @watsonshoneybee @abitnotgood @silentauroriamthereal @deducingbbcsherlock @cheuwing @holmesianscholar @loveismyrevolution @sherlock-overflow-error @may-shepard @marcespot @kinklock @johnsjawline @havetardiswilltimetravel @redwidows @the-blue-carbuncle @tjlcisthenewsexy @visionandperception @swishyspock @weeesi @finalproblem @miadifferent @wssh-watson @thefinalrugpull @cartopathy @riteofashkente

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