Sherlock's back in London and is granted freedom by Mycroft pulling some strings to doctor the footage of him shooting Magnussen so he gets off scott-free, as it appears that Moriarty, or at least someone working with him or for him, is back. He fails to find a real connection to Moriarty as life goes on, with John and Mary welcoming the birth of their daughter, Rosamund Mary Watson. A seemingly random but interesting case from Lestrade brings Sherlock to the mystery of someone smashing Margaret Thatcher busts, and he suspects it may have something to do with Moriarty. He's on the trail, but it turns out that it had to do with someone looking for Mary, all along. Sherlock nearly gets drowned by the man smashing the busts, but he manages to survive the fight and retrieve an A.G.R.A flash drive, the same flash drive that Mary had given John, that John had thrown into the fireplace. Sherlock confronts Mary and finds out more about her past, and she explains who A.G.R.A. was and who the man looking for her is. Sherlock sadly informs her that the man, Ajay, is trying to kill her. Mary then, with a chloroform paper, drugs Sherlock and escapes to throw Ajay off her scent and keep her family safe. Ironically, she finds Sherlock and John in Morocco, much to her shock and surprise, as they were tracking her with a bug in the flash drive. Ajay confronts them there and in the ensuing confusion is killed by a Moroccan police officer. Sherlock convinced Mary to come back to London, where he can help keep her safe.
Sherlock figures out who truly betrayed the A.G.R.A team and rushes to confront them in the London Aquarium. He invites both John and Mary, but John sends Mary along first while he's trying to find a sitter, since it she's the one who needs to see the conclusion of this case. It turns out the person that betrayed them is none other than a simple secretary, Vivian Norbury, who was selling secrets, and in Sherlock's pride and desire to show off, he completely destroys her verbally with his deductions. She shoots him, and Mary jumps in front of the bullet before he has a chance to do anything. John comes in at that moment, and there is nothing he can do, as it's a mortal shot. Mary says her tearful goodbyes, even apologizing to Sherlock for shooting him before. She dies after a few minutes.
Sherlock is in shock. He's made his vow to protect them, and he's failed. It was, in a way, his fault that Mary was dead--if he hadn't provoked Norbury, she might not have shot him--a shot that Mary took. Someone had actually saved his life--Sherlock has always had low self-esteem, and here Mary, his dear friend, has just given up hers for him.
John is furious with Sherlock. He refuses to see him, even when Sherlock comes to call to see if maybe he or Rosie needed anything. This is a knife twisting in his heart, all he wants to do is help John, but he's failed.
Sherlock's ego and pride have taken an enormous blow, and he's humbled by the events. He even prompts Mrs. Hudson to tell him if he ever gets too cocky and arrogant to just say the word "Norbury" to him, to remind him of this.
To Sherlock and Mrs. Hudson's shock, they find a DVD from Mary with instructions on how to 'save John Watson.'
After some weeks, Sherlock turned to drugs. A recent client, Faith Smith, comes to his door and he ends up spending the night with her to dissuade her from committing suicide. She disappears mysteriously in the morning.
Not long after Sherlock has some kind of drug-induced breakdown, Mrs. Hudson comes driving wildly to John's appointment with his therapist with a disoriented and clearly drugged-out Sherlock in the trunk of the car. He begs John to help him with one last case, as he's sure that Culverton Smith is a serial killer, from the note that Faith left. John reluctantly agrees, as long as Sherlock is checked out by Molly Hooper. Sherlock displays an extraordinary use of his skills, predicting that all of the events would happen correctly.
Smith invites them to a TV commercial shooting where he pretends that the 'serial killer' tweet that Sherlock sent is really part of a viral marketing scheme to sell actual cereal. Sherlock steals his phone and sends a text. Smith takes him to a children's hospital where he goes on a very disturbing and creepy tirade in front of children talking about serial killers, and shows Sherlock and John his 'favorite room', the morgue. Sherlock's plan falls apart when Faith Smith comes in, having gotten the text Sherlock sent with Smith's phone.
She's not the same person that came to his flat. Sherlock's terrified he hallucinated the whole thing, and he completely loses it and tries to attack Smith with a scalpel, thinking that Smith was the one holding the scalpel.
John knocks it out of Sherlock's hand and slaps him to get him to wake up, but goes too far and after a punch that lays Sherlock out flat, starts kicking him viciously. Smith even tells John to stop at this point. Sherlock says that John is entitled, because he killed his wife, and John agrees.
Sherlock absolutely does believe this, and hasn't raised a hand to fight back or defend himself against John. He lets John beat him, as he feels he deserves it.
The detective ends up in the hospital, and John says goodbye while he's sleeping and leaves his cane there as a parting gift. Smith enters Sherlock's room via a secret door, and it turns out that he is, indeed, a serial killer and has rigged the hospital with secret passages, and has come to kill Sherlock. Sherlock suggests a method of execution, the medicine in the IV turned up. Culverton obliges, and they talk for a little bit, before he gets impatient and tries to smother Sherlock to death.
That someone else, John comes in at the last second, bashing the door open as he'd seen the DVD that Mary left and realized that Sherlock had put himself in danger to save him. Fortunately there was actually just saline in the IV, and despite Culverton removing three recording devices from Sherlock's belongings, there was a fourth in John's cane that recorded the truth spoken by Culverton.
Back at Baker Street after Sherlock has recovered somewhat from his injuries--and is being monitored by his friends to help him detox from drugs--he and John finally have a proper chat.
There's a text from Irene Adler and John realizes that she's still alive. It all breaks down into John confessing that Sherlock did not, in fact, kill Mary and she made the choice on her own. Sherlock tells him, "In saving my life she conferred a value on it - it's a currency I do not know how to spend." John breaks down and tells him and his vision of Mary that had been haunting him in his thoughts that he cheated on Mary, and that he wasn't the good man that she thought he was, even though he wanted to be. He wasn't going to go back to Sherlock, but he did anyway because it's what Mary would have wanted.
John finally starts crying in grief, and Sherlock gets up and embraces him, saying "It is what it is." Sherlock's in pain too, he'd been this whole time and had been mourning Mary in his own way, and mourning what could possibly be the loss of his friendship with John, the best thing in his life, but he pushes that aside to care for his friend.
Later, John discovers, much to his horror, that his therapist was actually Sherlock's secret sister, and that she was the same woman who he had texted with, as well as the false Faith Smith that came to Sherlock's flat.
John tells Sherlock about this and they stage an elaborate prank on Mycroft's house to spook him into confessing the truth, that they do have a sister. Mycroft is forced to come to Baker Street as a client and he tells what happened in their childhood. Eurus was an 'era-defining' genius, but she had behavioral problems growing up. Sherlock can't remember her but as Mycroft tells the story he begins to remember a song and some images of kids playing. It looked like she drowned Sherlock's dog then burned their family home down, so she was sent away. She's been kept in a facility called Sherrinford all these years, locked away, and Mycroft had told their parents that she died.
Their conversation takes a terrifying turn when a drone crashes into their flat with a motion-sensor grenade. They figure they have a chance to survive in the small window of time before it explodes, and they wait until Mrs. Hudson is in the safest spot below. Sherlock and John jump through the windows of the flat as it explodes behind them.
Sherlock and John take over a small fishing ship and they sneak their way into Sherrinford. Mycroft and Sherlock are in disguise and Sherlock makes his way down to Eurus' cell to confront her. Mycroft and John figure out that she's the one in charge of the facility about the same time Sherlock does, and both John and Sherlock are knocked down and out. John wakes up and finds all three of them back in a cell, along with the governor of the island.
They're part of an experiment. There's a phone call from a little girl trapped on a plane with no one awake but her. To be able to talk with her and help her figure out what to do, they must follow Eurus' orders.
The first task is that either John or Mycroft has to shoot the Governor or his wife dies. Sherlock offers Mycroft the gun but Mycroft refuses. He offers it to John next, and while John tries, at the end he can't. The Governor grabs the gun and kills himself, telling them 'remember me.' Eurus kills the wife anyway, making Mycroft throw up with the horror of it all, and upsetting the rest of them. Sherlock's keeping it together, but just barely.
They're forced to go to a new room, where they must solve a crime about three suspects. Sherlock gets help from both John and Mycroft and solves it. Eurus has dangled the three suspects out of the window over the cliffs of the sea. Sherlock is forced to condemn the killer, but she drops the two innocent ones, much to their shock. Cutting the third one loose, she says, feels about the same.
The next room has a coffin in the middle, and Sherlock tries to deduce who it would belong to as it's someone who knows him, and Mycroft brings the lid of the coffin over. It says 'I love you,' and it's actually supposed to belong to Molly Hooper. Eurus has rigged Molly's flat to explode and will phone her, and unless Molly says 'I love you' to Sherlock in three minutes, she will die. Sherlock cannot tell her what's really going on or that she's in danger. The first call is ignored, but she finally picks up on the second. Sherlock is desperate, he's trying frantically to convince Molly, but she refuses, as it's cruel. Sherlock is absolutely losing his mind here, he's doing everything he can to get her to say it, and she can't, because it's true.
She tells him that he has to say it first. Sherlock stammers through it, this is tearing him to pieces inside. Eurus is literally cutting him open and seeing how his heart works. But he does it, as painful as it is, for someone who's kept his emotions locked up inside for so long. 'I love you.' But the second time he says it...the second one is a realization. There's emotion there, Molly's not going to say 'I love you' back unless he says it like he means it. He wouldn't have had a difficult time saying it if he didn't mean it on some level. Finally, she says 'I love you' with seconds on the clock. Eurus claims Sherlock didn't win--there were no explosives at her flat, and pointed out 'all those funny little emotions' and how he 'lost.'
Sherlock takes the lid of the coffin and places it back on, touching the words on it almost tenderly.Then after a second, he smashes the coffin into pieces with his bare hands, using his fists and ripping it to shreds, screaming out in pain. What he'd just done to a woman that deserved every happiness in the world, that on some level he realized he did have love for, whether that was romantic or platonic he didn't know. This is the first time he's lost his temper this badly in ages, maybe even his whole life. Eurus has forced him to rip himself open, to rip Molly Hooper's heart open, and he hates it. He can't take it back, he can't take the emotions he just expressed back, and it feels like an open wound in his chest. He calls it vivisection, being cut open to see how he worked inside.
John tries to get Sherlock back in the game. Sherlock manages to collect himself and they move onto the next room.
The task here is the worst one of all--Sherlock must choose who he wants to go on with him, and he has to kill either Mycroft or John. Mycroft claims that logically, the smartest--he--needs to go on, and John is horrified but agrees. Mycroft begins to berate and insult John, trying to goad Sherlock into shooting himself. Sherlock sees right through it, but points the gun at his brother, who politely requests not to be shot in the face. This is torture beyond measure for Sherlock, despite his differences with his brother he really did love him, and this would destroy Sherlock, if he managed to pull this off. This would turn him like Eurus, this would break him in half. No, he can't do it. He says he's going to remember the Governor like he requested, and puts the gun on himself, and begins to count down. He'd rather die than kill John or Mycroft. Eurus becomes upset and agitated and immediately shoots Sherlock and John with darts, and they pass out before anything can happen.
Sherlock wakes up in a room with a device in his ear that puts him through to the girl on the plane, and switches back to John, who's been chained up in a well with rising water. Sherlock figures that the room isn't actually real, and it's just a facade/trailer. It opens to show that he's been brought back home--Musgrave Hall, where he has to figure out Eurus' song to find John. He's struggling with the riddle, until Eurus reveals to him that Redbeard, the dog from his childhood that she supposedly drowned, wasn't a dog at all--it was Victor Trevor, his best friend. This completely unlocks the rest of Sherlock's repressed memories and it gives him what he needs to solve the song and save the girl on the plane. He finds Eurus in her room. She's been the girl on the plane the whole time, figuratively and literally trapped in her mind. Sherlock reaches out with compassion instead of threats, having finally learned over all these years to use his great heart as well as his head. She finally does tell him where John is, and he's able to be rescued, as well as Mycroft from the facility.
Eurus is placed back in Sherrinford (under better security) and despite everything, Sherlock comes to play violin with her, as that's the only way she communicates now. He understands how her intelligence has kept her so isolated and lonely, and he does what she's been wanting this whole time--for him to play with her. He finds an extraordinary amount of compassion, even though she'd killed his best friend--she was unable to comprehend human morals and the rules of society, and didn't know what was right or wrong. Mycroft gets chewed out by their parents.
Everything's back to normal at Baker Street, Molly has forgiven Sherlock and he and John go on many cases, John raises Rosie, and everyone lives happily ever after.
Until when he and John are running through Rathbone place, and he gets ported back--
CANON UPDATE (SEASON 4 SPOILERS)
Sherlock figures out who truly betrayed the A.G.R.A team and rushes to confront them in the London Aquarium. He invites both John and Mary, but John sends Mary along first while he's trying to find a sitter, since it she's the one who needs to see the conclusion of this case. It turns out the person that betrayed them is none other than a simple secretary, Vivian Norbury, who was selling secrets, and in Sherlock's pride and desire to show off, he completely destroys her verbally with his deductions. She shoots him, and Mary jumps in front of the bullet before he has a chance to do anything. John comes in at that moment, and there is nothing he can do, as it's a mortal shot. Mary says her tearful goodbyes, even apologizing to Sherlock for shooting him before. She dies after a few minutes.
Sherlock is in shock. He's made his vow to protect them, and he's failed. It was, in a way, his fault that Mary was dead--if he hadn't provoked Norbury, she might not have shot him--a shot that Mary took. Someone had actually saved his life--Sherlock has always had low self-esteem, and here Mary, his dear friend, has just given up hers for him.
John is furious with Sherlock. He refuses to see him, even when Sherlock comes to call to see if maybe he or Rosie needed anything. This is a knife twisting in his heart, all he wants to do is help John, but he's failed.
Sherlock's ego and pride have taken an enormous blow, and he's humbled by the events. He even prompts Mrs. Hudson to tell him if he ever gets too cocky and arrogant to just say the word "Norbury" to him, to remind him of this.
To Sherlock and Mrs. Hudson's shock, they find a DVD from Mary with instructions on how to 'save John Watson.'
After some weeks, Sherlock turned to drugs. A recent client, Faith Smith, comes to his door and he ends up spending the night with her to dissuade her from committing suicide. She disappears mysteriously in the morning.
Not long after Sherlock has some kind of drug-induced breakdown, Mrs. Hudson comes driving wildly to John's appointment with his therapist with a disoriented and clearly drugged-out Sherlock in the trunk of the car. He begs John to help him with one last case, as he's sure that Culverton Smith is a serial killer, from the note that Faith left. John reluctantly agrees, as long as Sherlock is checked out by Molly Hooper. Sherlock displays an extraordinary use of his skills, predicting that all of the events would happen correctly.
Smith invites them to a TV commercial shooting where he pretends that the 'serial killer' tweet that Sherlock sent is really part of a viral marketing scheme to sell actual cereal. Sherlock steals his phone and sends a text. Smith takes him to a children's hospital where he goes on a very disturbing and creepy tirade in front of children talking about serial killers, and shows Sherlock and John his 'favorite room', the morgue. Sherlock's plan falls apart when Faith Smith comes in, having gotten the text Sherlock sent with Smith's phone.
She's not the same person that came to his flat. Sherlock's terrified he hallucinated the whole thing, and he completely loses it and tries to attack Smith with a scalpel, thinking that Smith was the one holding the scalpel.
John knocks it out of Sherlock's hand and slaps him to get him to wake up, but goes too far and after a punch that lays Sherlock out flat, starts kicking him viciously. Smith even tells John to stop at this point. Sherlock says that John is entitled, because he killed his wife, and John agrees.
Sherlock absolutely does believe this, and hasn't raised a hand to fight back or defend himself against John. He lets John beat him, as he feels he deserves it.
The detective ends up in the hospital, and John says goodbye while he's sleeping and leaves his cane there as a parting gift. Smith enters Sherlock's room via a secret door, and it turns out that he is, indeed, a serial killer and has rigged the hospital with secret passages, and has come to kill Sherlock. Sherlock suggests a method of execution, the medicine in the IV turned up. Culverton obliges, and they talk for a little bit, before he gets impatient and tries to smother Sherlock to death.
That someone else, John comes in at the last second, bashing the door open as he'd seen the DVD that Mary left and realized that Sherlock had put himself in danger to save him. Fortunately there was actually just saline in the IV, and despite Culverton removing three recording devices from Sherlock's belongings, there was a fourth in John's cane that recorded the truth spoken by Culverton.
Back at Baker Street after Sherlock has recovered somewhat from his injuries--and is being monitored by his friends to help him detox from drugs--he and John finally have a proper chat.
There's a text from Irene Adler and John realizes that she's still alive. It all breaks down into John confessing that Sherlock did not, in fact, kill Mary and she made the choice on her own. Sherlock tells him, "In saving my life she conferred a value on it - it's a currency I do not know how to spend." John breaks down and tells him and his vision of Mary that had been haunting him in his thoughts that he cheated on Mary, and that he wasn't the good man that she thought he was, even though he wanted to be. He wasn't going to go back to Sherlock, but he did anyway because it's what Mary would have wanted.
John finally starts crying in grief, and Sherlock gets up and embraces him, saying "It is what it is." Sherlock's in pain too, he'd been this whole time and had been mourning Mary in his own way, and mourning what could possibly be the loss of his friendship with John, the best thing in his life, but he pushes that aside to care for his friend.
Later, John discovers, much to his horror, that his therapist was actually Sherlock's secret sister, and that she was the same woman who he had texted with, as well as the false Faith Smith that came to Sherlock's flat.
John tells Sherlock about this and they stage an elaborate prank on Mycroft's house to spook him into confessing the truth, that they do have a sister. Mycroft is forced to come to Baker Street as a client and he tells what happened in their childhood. Eurus was an 'era-defining' genius, but she had behavioral problems growing up. Sherlock can't remember her but as Mycroft tells the story he begins to remember a song and some images of kids playing. It looked like she drowned Sherlock's dog then burned their family home down, so she was sent away. She's been kept in a facility called Sherrinford all these years, locked away, and Mycroft had told their parents that she died.
Their conversation takes a terrifying turn when a drone crashes into their flat with a motion-sensor grenade. They figure they have a chance to survive in the small window of time before it explodes, and they wait until Mrs. Hudson is in the safest spot below. Sherlock and John jump through the windows of the flat as it explodes behind them.
Sherlock and John take over a small fishing ship and they sneak their way into Sherrinford. Mycroft and Sherlock are in disguise and Sherlock makes his way down to Eurus' cell to confront her. Mycroft and John figure out that she's the one in charge of the facility about the same time Sherlock does, and both John and Sherlock are knocked down and out. John wakes up and finds all three of them back in a cell, along with the governor of the island.
They're part of an experiment. There's a phone call from a little girl trapped on a plane with no one awake but her. To be able to talk with her and help her figure out what to do, they must follow Eurus' orders.
The first task is that either John or Mycroft has to shoot the Governor or his wife dies. Sherlock offers Mycroft the gun but Mycroft refuses. He offers it to John next, and while John tries, at the end he can't. The Governor grabs the gun and kills himself, telling them 'remember me.' Eurus kills the wife anyway, making Mycroft throw up with the horror of it all, and upsetting the rest of them. Sherlock's keeping it together, but just barely.
They're forced to go to a new room, where they must solve a crime about three suspects. Sherlock gets help from both John and Mycroft and solves it. Eurus has dangled the three suspects out of the window over the cliffs of the sea. Sherlock is forced to condemn the killer, but she drops the two innocent ones, much to their shock. Cutting the third one loose, she says, feels about the same.
The next room has a coffin in the middle, and Sherlock tries to deduce who it would belong to as it's someone who knows him, and Mycroft brings the lid of the coffin over. It says 'I love you,' and it's actually supposed to belong to Molly Hooper. Eurus has rigged Molly's flat to explode and will phone her, and unless Molly says 'I love you' to Sherlock in three minutes, she will die. Sherlock cannot tell her what's really going on or that she's in danger. The first call is ignored, but she finally picks up on the second. Sherlock is desperate, he's trying frantically to convince Molly, but she refuses, as it's cruel. Sherlock is absolutely losing his mind here, he's doing everything he can to get her to say it, and she can't, because it's true.
She tells him that he has to say it first. Sherlock stammers through it, this is tearing him to pieces inside. Eurus is literally cutting him open and seeing how his heart works. But he does it, as painful as it is, for someone who's kept his emotions locked up inside for so long. 'I love you.' But the second time he says it...the second one is a realization. There's emotion there, Molly's not going to say 'I love you' back unless he says it like he means it. He wouldn't have had a difficult time saying it if he didn't mean it on some level. Finally, she says 'I love you' with seconds on the clock. Eurus claims Sherlock didn't win--there were no explosives at her flat, and pointed out 'all those funny little emotions' and how he 'lost.'
Sherlock takes the lid of the coffin and places it back on, touching the words on it almost tenderly.Then after a second, he smashes the coffin into pieces with his bare hands, using his fists and ripping it to shreds, screaming out in pain. What he'd just done to a woman that deserved every happiness in the world, that on some level he realized he did have love for, whether that was romantic or platonic he didn't know. This is the first time he's lost his temper this badly in ages, maybe even his whole life. Eurus has forced him to rip himself open, to rip Molly Hooper's heart open, and he hates it. He can't take it back, he can't take the emotions he just expressed back, and it feels like an open wound in his chest. He calls it vivisection, being cut open to see how he worked inside.
John tries to get Sherlock back in the game. Sherlock manages to collect himself and they move onto the next room.
The task here is the worst one of all--Sherlock must choose who he wants to go on with him, and he has to kill either Mycroft or John. Mycroft claims that logically, the smartest--he--needs to go on, and John is horrified but agrees. Mycroft begins to berate and insult John, trying to goad Sherlock into shooting himself. Sherlock sees right through it, but points the gun at his brother, who politely requests not to be shot in the face. This is torture beyond measure for Sherlock, despite his differences with his brother he really did love him, and this would destroy Sherlock, if he managed to pull this off. This would turn him like Eurus, this would break him in half. No, he can't do it. He says he's going to remember the Governor like he requested, and puts the gun on himself, and begins to count down. He'd rather die than kill John or Mycroft. Eurus becomes upset and agitated and immediately shoots Sherlock and John with darts, and they pass out before anything can happen.
Sherlock wakes up in a room with a device in his ear that puts him through to the girl on the plane, and switches back to John, who's been chained up in a well with rising water. Sherlock figures that the room isn't actually real, and it's just a facade/trailer. It opens to show that he's been brought back home--Musgrave Hall, where he has to figure out Eurus' song to find John. He's struggling with the riddle, until Eurus reveals to him that Redbeard, the dog from his childhood that she supposedly drowned, wasn't a dog at all--it was Victor Trevor, his best friend. This completely unlocks the rest of Sherlock's repressed memories and it gives him what he needs to solve the song and save the girl on the plane. He finds Eurus in her room. She's been the girl on the plane the whole time, figuratively and literally trapped in her mind. Sherlock reaches out with compassion instead of threats, having finally learned over all these years to use his great heart as well as his head. She finally does tell him where John is, and he's able to be rescued, as well as Mycroft from the facility.
Eurus is placed back in Sherrinford (under better security) and despite everything, Sherlock comes to play violin with her, as that's the only way she communicates now. He understands how her intelligence has kept her so isolated and lonely, and he does what she's been wanting this whole time--for him to play with her. He finds an extraordinary amount of compassion, even though she'd killed his best friend--she was unable to comprehend human morals and the rules of society, and didn't know what was right or wrong. Mycroft gets chewed out by their parents.
Everything's back to normal at Baker Street, Molly has forgiven Sherlock and he and John go on many cases, John raises Rosie, and everyone lives happily ever after.
Until when he and John are running through Rathbone place, and he gets ported back--