The Final Problem

Anonymous asked: Just out of curiousity, since all 4 of your theories are pretty long and very in-depth in order to be understood, how long do you think they're going to take (in screentime) to explain everything? I guess I've been assuming that Sherlock would do a fast-talking run through while we were shown flashbacks and things we missed, but I feel like for something as big as this, that just wouldn't cut it. (Or we'd get 20 minutes of Sherlock trying to explain things to us idiots...)

(The four theories being referenced: the fall, the killers, the scream, and the final problem.)

I’m not sure why I haven’t been asked this before, because this is the question I ask myself. Sure, I tried to come up with a fall theory. Everybody tried to come up with a fall theory. But the others? I did not ask for them. I even tried rather hard to push the scream theory away at first. Partly because of what you’re asking about—how much time are they going to spend explaining all of this?

Since I can’t actually answer that question, here are the things I try to remember to make me feel at least a little less like someone who started making up complete nonsense three elaborate theories ago:

1. Series 3 was ordered at the same time as Series 2. So whatever they did in Reichenbach, they knew they’d be able to make it carry over to the next episode(s). It’s very likely there’s at least a detailed outline for the next episode already, and some of what we’re seeing now may fold neatly into the next half of the story of Sherlock’s “death.” I think the aftermath of the kidnapping may be one of those things, because it seems like Sherlock would need to deal with the remains of Jim’s spiderweb. They could set it up it so the information we’re missing comes out naturally as part of the new story.

2. It is so much faster to explain things with video. Especially on Sherlock, which uses some of the most efficient visual storytelling techniques I’ve ever seen. Something like the fall—which is the one thing I’m sure we’ll have to see again—can be explained fairly quickly if they recut the original scene with different footage revealing what we weren’t allowed to see the first time. I may have to write an essay to explain what I think broke Sherlock’s fall, but they can cover that in 3 seconds by showing us Sherlock’s fall being broken.

3. They don’t necessarily have to explain everything. That whole thing with sorting out the assassins from the gunmen? There’s a good chance they won’t need to get into that at all. There’s only one assassin left alive, so who cares about the others? And the nationalities thing? No need to explain how that had any connection to the wifi network. If there’s a Spanish guy, all they have to do is have him be Spanish. The rest can all be an Easter egg, there to prove how Sherlock figured things out if needed.