On the final episode of series 2 of the BBC’s Sherlock adaptation, we see the eponymous character apparently willingly thrown himself to his death in order to save his three ‘friends’, John Watson, Greg Lestrade, and Mrs. Hudson.
Sherlock’s ‘death’ and subsequent survival should have come as no surprise even to those that hadn’t read the original Arthur Conan Doyle works. What interests me, however, is the supposition of the producers that the secret of Sherlock’s survival is there to be deduced, but merely that viewers will have ‘missed’ it.
There are several elements for consideration:
- A body hits the ground. It exudes blood. A subsequent post-mortem would have confirmed it as an actual person (but evidently not Holmes) as opposed to a convincing dummy. As identity for dead persons can be established with a visual confirmation by a relative, it can therefore be assumed that if not Holmes, the dead body looks very much like him. Enough to allow the misidentification to be considered fact.
- Earlier in the episode, the young kidnapped girl reacts to Holmes as if she has seen him before, leading the police to believe that he is the kidnapper. Since we take it as read that Sherlock is an authentic character and not a fraud, he was evidently not the kidnapper. Therefore, there exists a person that looks very much like him. A person that committed the kidnapping.
- John Watson conspicuously falls and hits his head just prior to seeing Holmes’ body. He is concussed, which makes it understandable that he would not be able to discern immediately that the dead body is not that of Holmes.
- Sherlock forcibly insists that John not move closer to the building, and to ‘Keep your eyes fix on me’. We should also note the the area directly below Sherlock is visually occluded from the position in which Watson is standing.
- The location in the episode – Bart’s Hospital, is in actual place, and indeed the actual scene of the episode is filmed here. Here is a Google streeview link to the position in which I approximate John Watson to have been standing: http://g.co/maps/t2b6b
- In the close up scenes of Sherlock speaking on the phone, we can see clearly the outline of the dome of the Old Bailey to his left. This is entirely consistent with the orientation of the building’s position relative to where Sherlock is supposed to be standing, so we can therefore state that it is indeed Sherlock, and not anyone else that is standing on this exact roof-top. It was possible but improbable that Sherlock was observing John from another location, while someone else was standing on the roof.
- Sherlock elicits the assistance the assistance of Molly Hooper (the pathology/lab technician lady), although we’re given no reason as to what kind of help he needs. he cryptically states he needs ‘her’. Futhermore, as Sherlock’s potential love interest (unrequited as it was), it seems odd that she should not have been present in any of the post-death aftermath shots. It is therefore probable that the assistance involved the faking of his death, and that she has colluded with him to this end.
- Finally, I’d like to present this screenshot (click on it to enlarge):
He we see the dead ‘Sherlock’, but we also can very clearly see an open-back lorry containing what looks like bags? Let’s assume nothing is accidental, so this lorry is potentially part of the narrative. It certainly looks like a potentially good place to hide a live Sherlock (although the mechanics of how he’d have survived to the ground level are unknown), and also a convenient receptacle from which a replacement ‘looks like Sherlock’ body can be quickly dumped onto the street.
A deduction based on the available data
In my opinion, the most likely explanation for the survival of Sherlock is as follows.
Moriaty had an agent who conducted the kidnapping. A person who looks, or was made to look, very much like Sherlock, in order to create the necessary suspicion. As many times previously demonstrated, Sherlock has been able to divine the identities of those involved in Moriaty’s schemes, so it’s likely he would have identified his impersonator. It’s also possible that having served his purpose, Moriaty would have killed this impersonator when he was done with him (or killed by one of the many international assassins kicking around in this episode), allowing Sherlock to discover this body (probably in an intervening time between leaving Watson and seeking Molly’s assistance), and think to use it in his plan to fake his own death. Molly, being a pathologist, would have been amenable to taking this body, tidying it up, and dumping it at the scene of Sherlock’s death at the appointed time to create the desired effect. ‘Molly, I think I’m going to die’. Thus, henceforth, and ergo, this is how Sherlock has faked his death.
The only remaining question is how he created the impression of jumping (to assume he did in fact jump) and survive the fall to the ground (or at least to the point of where Watson’s view is obscured). While a successful jump into the aforementioned lorry is unlikely, this IS still TV, and it’s possible some simple macguffin will have been employed to make this explainable.
Elementary? We’ll see….
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