Sherlock, let's leave it at The Final Problem

As the curtain came down on another Sherlock series, I had mixed feelings on how the season four finale came to its conclusion and switched the television off with one overriding feeling: I hope this is the last episode they make.

[a serious amount of Sherlock cross-season spoilers to follow, so if you haven't seen any of it but want to, do not read this post; you have been warned]

When I first saw the title they had decided on for the final episode of the series, I had my reservations, mainly because they had already adapted 'The Final Problem' at the end of series two. That episode was called 'The Reichenbach Fall' and ended with Holmes jumping from the top of St. Bart's Hospital after his nemesis, Jim Moriarty, had blown his own head off. 

I knew, therefore, that large elements of this new episode would have to be completely original and had no idea what to expect from it...but for three quarters of 'The Final Problem', I was hooked. Afterwards I realised that elements of the plot were taken from another Holmes short story, 'The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual.'

The east wind of which Benedict Cumberbatch's character had spoken with such dread on a couple of occasions during the series was introduced in the form of his secret sister, Eurus Holmes. As Watson explains during the episode, Eurus is the God of the east wind in Greek mythology. 

This was an unexpected twist revealed at the end of the previous episode, 'The Lying Detective', and it was cleverly played given that everybody was fixated on the word 'Sherrinford' and the possibility that a third Holmes brother was about to be introduced (with some fans of the series speculating that this brother would be played by none other than Tom Hiddleston).

No T-Hidds for you, Sherlock fans. Just go watch The Night Manager instead, it's class. Source: thestudioexec.com

________________________

As a point of interest, Holmes' most notable reference to this east wind in Arthur Conan Doyle's canon was in 'His Last Bow', the final short story in the collection of the same name, published in 1917 but set in 1914, with the world on the brink of the First World War:

"There's an east wind coming, Watson."

"I think not, Holmes. It is very warm."

"Good old Watson! You are the one fixed point in a changing age. There's an east wind coming all the same, such a wind as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, Watson, and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it's God's own wind none the less, and a cleaner, better, stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared."

________________________

As it was, the introduction of Eurus - portrayed by Sian Brooke, whose performance has surely catapulted her to a whole new level of fame - proved to be a more than adequate plot twist in the absence of Hiddleston. She led her two siblings and Watson through a torturous trial, with some posthumous help from the late Moriarty, and lived up to her billing as being everything that Sherlock feared from the ill-fated east wind.

The Holmes character of the series just past has been far more emotionally involved than the Sherlock of previous episodes, being particularly concerned with mortality (as seen in 'The Six Thatchers' where he tells the tale of the Appointment in Samarra, which is essentially about a man trying and failing to outrun death).

The timing of this transformation is apt given that the first episode ends with the inevitable death of Mary Watson, played by Amanda Abbington. This comes full circle as Holmes discovers at the end of the series the truth behind Redbeard and his fate. This is a name which has been mentioned sporadically throughout Sherlock and which was originally taken to mean the name of Sherlock's childhood pet dog.

In fact, it was actually the pirate nickname of his childhood best friend who was killed by Eurus...drowned in a well near the old Holmes family house.

Eurus Holmes, Sherlock's secret sister, portrayed by Sian Brooke. Source: thesun.co.uk

Despite the shock of this twist, the ending of the finale as a whole was anti-climactic. The whole reason Sherlock, Mycroft and Watson were forced to endure the ordeals Eurus put them through in Sherrinford - the name given to the island institutional facility where she and a number of other "uncontainables" are held - was the plight of a little girl trapped on an airplane falling from the sky.

Everybody else on the plane is unconscious, so it is down to the trio to help her guide it away from heavily populated areas in order to minimize the casualties. The problem is that they only get snippets of conversation with the girl before they are cut off and forced to endure another test of their morality at the hands of Eurus. 

Yet, in the end, this problem turns out to be nothing more than the inner child of Eurus Holmes crying out for a friend. There was never a girl trapped on a plummeting plane full of dead adults. This becomes apparent long before the viewers are supposed to realise as the plane remains airborne without any sort of guidance for far longer than is perhaps realistically possible, even with plentiful fuel supplies.

A race to stop the inevitable is wrapped up in about five minutes, with Holmes finding Eurus in their old childhood home and managing to convince her to return to Sherrinford of her own free will. This after she, presumably, orchestrated his presence there in the first place; she was the one who tranquilized him so she must have arranged for him to be put in a fake room right beside the house.

Meanwhile, Watson was trapped in the same well which drowned Redbeard; he discovers the bones of Sherlock's childhood friend and so is the one who reveals this to him, allowing the detective to recall this of his own accord and experience the trauma of the memories he had suppressed. It also enabled Holmes to finally solve the riddle Eurus had made up years before.

This brings us to the one issue a series about Sherlock Holmes was always going to struggle with once it had exhausted its most obvious avenues: a lack of notable villains in the canon. The whole point of Moriarty was that he was Holmes' intellectual equal and polar opposite; his consulting criminal to Holmes' consulting detective. He was supposed to be at the heart of every criminal act in London, the spider at the centre of the web.

It must also be remembered that he was also created to be the end of Sherlock Holmes. When Doyle wrote that both men went off the edge of the Reichenbach Falls in the short story titled 'The Final Problem', he intentionally meant to kill the character off for good. Holmes was never meant to better Moriarty; he was supposed to die trying.

It was public clamour which forced Doyle to resurrect the character, which is just as well as some of the greatest Holmes stories still had to be written, like The Hound of the Baskervilles and the short story collection, The Return of Sherlock Holmes, which features the tales of Charles Augustus Milverton and the adventures of 'The Empty House' and 'The Six Napoleons' - all of which have been given the modern day adaptation treatment in Sherlock.

Jim Moriarty would have been the end of Sherlock Holmes had Arthur Conan Doyle had his way. Source: thewordnerds.wordpress.com

Once Sherlock had told its version of the battle between Holmes and Moriarty, it was always going to be difficult to go bigger and better than that. Yet being a highly acclaimed television series, it had to try. So, for series three, Charles Augustus Milverton became Charles Augustus Magnusson, a media tycoon who specialized in blackmail based purely on the fact he possesses incriminating information about various people in power across the world, all of which he has stored away in his 'mind palace'. 

He was an excellent villain, given a magnificent portrayal by Lars Mikkelsen, and certainly more dangerous than Milverton, the print equivalent upon whom he was based whose blackmail extended only as far as petty extortion. Yet in pursuit of going bigger and better, the series was forced to make Sherlock Holmes a murderer in its series three finale, which perhaps did fit with his characterization as a self-proclaimed high functioning sociopath at that point.

Culverton Smith, of the short story 'The Adventure of the Dying Detective', is the latest canonical Holmes villain to appear in the series. In his story, he was found to have murdered his newphew, but in episode two of series four, he is a wealthy, well known philanthropist masking the fact that he is a serial killer. The manner in which Holmes entraps Smith is similar to Doyle's story, though the scale of the television version is obviously much larger.

Yet Smith, played by Toby Jones, wasn't the big bad of series four at all as it transpires that Eurus Holmes has been lurking in the background all this time, waiting for her chance to orchestrate a meeting with her famous brother. This is where the series' struggle with finding suitable villains becomes clear as the writers were forced to come up with a whole new one to outdo everything they had done up to this point. 

________________________

In the canon, there was no secret sister, nor was there ever mention of a third brother. At one stage, Holmes does reveal that he is from a family of country squires and this led many Sherlockians to infer that there must have been a third brother, an older one, who stayed at home to help the family manage the estate as was the way at that time period. This hypothetical third brother frees both Sherlock and Mycroft to live their own lives in London.

As has been publicized since the big pre-series reveal that it was a key word to watch out for in series four, 'Sherrinford' was a name Doyle considered for his main protagonist before he eventually settled on Sherlock. It was first proposed by Sherlock Holmes scholar William S. Baring-Gould, in his fictional biography, Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street, that this was the name of the hypothetical third Holmes brother.

________________________

And, of course, let's not forget that Eurus also had the help of Holmes' greatest foe, Moriarty. The rehashing of the Moriarty character has been common in the series; he has a tendency to appear during times of great stress for the detective. The point is valid that having a villain such as Moriarty would leave a permanent mark on one's mind, so it is only natural that Holmes could never truly forget him. This just serves to aid the show as everybody tends to get excited when they see Andrew Scott's face appear on screen once again.

Another thing I have noticed as the show has progressed, particularly in series four, is that the presentation of Holmes' problem solving skills has became less prominent, with the character becoming less super sleuth and more action hero. It seemed to me that there were more fight scenes and stand-offs in this series than ever before as the show sought keep fans on the edge of their seats for as long as possible.

The manner in which the finale ended was also telling, given that there was no cliff-hanger or set up for a next installment. At the end of series one, we knew Moriarty was inbound for series two; at the end of series two, we knew Sherlock had faked his own death, so the "How?" question was the cliff hanger; and at the end of series three, the late Jim Moriarty's face was plastered all over London repeatedly asking "Did you miss me?", setting up series four.

Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch as John Watson and Sherlock Holmes. Source: themarysue.com

What the most recent finale gave us was a second posthumous DVD of Mary telling Holmes and Watson to continue their "legend". There was no hint of what was to come; no immediately pressing future threat; no shocking revelation; just a montage of various scenes of Holmes and Watson running about, doing their thing. 

There was also a nice little homage paid to Basil Rathbone, the actor who portrayed Sherlock Holmes in the 1930s and 40s - Sherlock and Watson are seen leaving a building called Rathbone Place in the final shot.

While there are plenty of stories left in the canon which could make incredibly interesting on screen adaptations, the lack of that looming shadow, that evil villain who will push Sherlock to his very limits, could see a lot of fans lose interest. As somebody who loves the original stories, I wouldn't like to see the show go down the road of creating a host of new villains just to prolong its shelf life as, for me, this would eventually defeat the whole point of having a Moriarty-type nemesis in the first place.

I would be satisfied enough to see adaptations of other Holmes stories for their individual, singular elements alone, but this might not be enough to justify prolonging the series, while there is also the well documented issue of the hectic time schedules of both Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman.

With all that said, it may be best to leave Sherlock where Arther Conan Doyle intended to leave his character in 1894: at the end of 'The Final Problem'.