Not if you were in the same position as Sherlock. Sherlock is in the position where Moriarty is holding his friends hostage and only suicide will save them. There is no reason why the same scheme couldn't work on someone else, as a last resort.
Just read up on "A Study in Pink" because I couldn't remember the exact details. Seems that forcing people to commit suicide is what Moriarty did for kicks, or to see how long he could get away with it before someone twigs. Unless the man who claimed to be his proxy was lieing it would make Moriarty a serial killer who distances himself from performing the actual deed. Using years of pop-psychology he places little value on life and part of it may be a result of his own suicidal impulses. I'm sure there are more than a few serial killers who killed themselves in a final attempt to deny the authorities the right to judge and punish them.

Only if Sherlock has surgery to disguise his face and allow him to be seen in public.
We all know, even those like me who only have passing memories of the originals, where Holmes appeared to die. The first thing I thought when he looked over the edge is where was he going to land. He even told Watson that "It's all a magic trick".

Absolutely- the ultimate 'victory' - Fred West, Harold Shipman.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeLho...eature=related

Curly haired guy wears a scarf to fall to his death. I see what Moffat did there.

Perhaps Moriarty will regenerate

And the nobody, who's name I won't mention, that killed the children in Dunblane.

Someone linked the price of Sherlock's coat, blimey. Since he'd bought another one for the graveyard scene or one for the corpse scene, on top of the funeral costs and that lovely headstone, I can't help but think he's going to be well skint when he gets back from the dead.

Unless Mycroft paid for it all...

On Moriarty, I think Jim is dead. Permanently. But with the brothers from the books, they could introduce another one ala Die Hard 3, one that conforms more to the fans' expectations, though I think AS did a fantastic job. I'm sure he'll be back in the flashbacks at the start of series 3

The Belstaff Coat is out of stock again, apparently.

Did we ever actually find out what it was he asked Molly to help with? Dont think we did.

She has access to corpse's so guess she provided one.

Hello everyone, great discussion going on. Just wanted to add my take on it too! I haven't watched it as much as others (only twice; once at the original airing and once after all the speculation began).

I think there were several red herrings in the episode to deliberately confuse!

My thoughts are, I think that Sherlock's brother was in on it from beginning. He has shown much concern for Sherlock and I think when Moriarty started to ask about Sherlock he wouldn't have just sold out his brother. They probably started to form a plan then and "selling" Sherlock's story was part of it. I don't think they may have known Moriarty's whole plan necessarily but they were not being naive.

I also agree with those who say that they don't believe Sherlock thought there was a code, there is no way he did. Far too obvious and unrealistic, if Moriarty could find such a thing, the government could find people who could too.

To be honest, I thought the four assassins that had move in around 221B were hired by Mycroft to protect his brother, but that he didn't want him to know that so he made it seem like they were working for Moriarty. I also thought that the "assassins" who were near Lestrade, Mrs Hudson and Watson were part of Sherlock and Mycroft's plan and were there to protect (said three) and so when the plan was seen through and Sherlock jumped they could stand down. That's how they knew where each would be and when.

I think the whole rooftop scene was a charade on Sherlock's part but real on Moriarty's part. It seemed to me that Sherlock was merely playing along with perfect timing. When Moriarty mentioned that his friends would die if he did not, they way Sherlock responded was as if to confirm how many assassins there were or to see how much Moriarty knew. I think he purposely left out Molly and his brother because he wanted to know if Moriarty knew that he valued them too.

Then I thought the bit where he asked Moriarty for privacy was almost to get him out of view? He looked down, if I recall, probably to check all was proceeding nicely. (I noticed how when he jumped there were no buses or people waiting even though it was a bus stop).


The out of character thing that Sherlock did? I think it was him contacting Moriarty. Usually Moriarty comes to him or contacts him but I don't think I have seen Sherlock contact Moriarty. It ties in with his plan because Sherlock chose the meeting place, obviously to exact his plan. Sherlock then made all the right noises to Moriarty to make him think he thought there was a code, etc. He then feigned extreme ignorance (for Sherlock) in:

1.pretending he thought there was a code
2.pretending he didn't know Moriarty wanted him to kill himself. Having said this, I think Sherlock was "leading" Moriarty. Moriarty wanted Sherlock to kill himself but Sherlock wanted to make sure that he "did it" by jumping off the roof by using leading statements. After all Moriarty did have a gun on him, why didn't he ask Sherlock to use it?

As for John being drugged, maybe this is so, he was sleeping in the lab oddly when he was with Sherlock maybe that's when it happened?

I haven't read this whole thread yet, but have a theory on this bit - I think he asked her to identify the body as being him. Somebody must have identified the body and said it was him...

There are two things which are going to turn out to be significant, I think. One is the mannequin he had hanging from the ceiling earlier in the episode. The other is Holmes' reaction when the little girl screamed earlier upon seeing him - he commented on the "power of suggestion". Everything John saw was what Sherlock wanted him to see.

I've heard theories elsehwere that Moriarty didn't actually shoot himself (power of suggestion again?), and that it was, in fact, him who fell from the building...

He didn't kill himself because he was bored.He played games because he was bored ( just like Sherlock solves cases to kill boredom). In one case, the behaviour is destructive and the other, constructive. And don't forget, Moriarty started the game back in Series 1 in the episode titled, what else, The Great Game. This episode is basically the conclusion of the The Great Game. Moriarty decided to end it by having Sherlock 'die in disgrace'. And he definitely wanted to walk out of that encounter alive. However he made a mistake and let slip that he could cancel the order to kill Sherlock's friends. Oops..Big mouth ! Sherlock manages to turn the tables on him by convincing Moriarty that he was capable of extracting the code to cancel the order from him. How ? He was willing to go the distance to do it. Unlike Mycroft, who was also potrayed as being less smart as his brother. You need to realise, Moriarty never doubted Sherlock's intellect. What he and most evil geniuses in general, were scornful of, was the hero's moral code which usually stops them from doing bad, ie. crossing the line to the other side. "You're ordinary because you're on the side of angels." So when Sherlock retorts, "don’t think for one second..that I am one of them!", he's basically saying, "oh, you haven't seen my dark side now, have you ?" So Moriarty DID fear he would get the code out of him. The only certain way to ensure this didn't occur, was to kill himself and win. Better to die and win than be defeated and live.The motivation to win at all costs comes down to pride. And pride comes before the fall. Ahh, I love this. It's so ironic. The very weapon he used to bring on Sherlock's downfall ( "that’s your weakness.. you always want everything to be clever" ) by destroying Sherlock's reputation, led to Moriarty's ultimate demise.



This "key code" plotline is actually a plothole, as has been pointed out in numerous previous posts. Looks good on the surface, but once you dig in, the whole thing falls apart. Even if there was such a code, it would be so long that Sherlock would have to tap it out for hours. Whether Sherlock is supposed to have seen through it, well, I'm not sure unless the writer wanted to mislead us with that moment when John drumming his fingers made Sherlock realise it was a binary code that Moriarty tapped out. Plus that whole conversation with John about using it against him. However, I suspect, he would not fall for the same trick twice ? In their first encounter back in The Great Game, Sherlock got Moriarty to come out and play by using the Bruce-Partington plans as bait. He thought Moriarty had all those bomb cases thrown at him to distract him from the real case of finding the plans. He was wrong of course. Moriarty had no interest in it. So, when he invited Moriarty to the rooftop, he used again a bait, the binary code. Hmm.. wrong again.... on purpose this time?


I actually never said that Moriarty was his arch-enemy. They were, more or less, equals, it's just that they were on opposite sides of the fence and them crossing each other's path was kinda inevitable. It makes for a good plot and hence irresistible to writers. But I'm glad that you also prefer he dies for good.
Last edited by farquharstreet : 20-01-2012 at 17:18

I agree that Mycroft was in on it all frm the start.
I think it was all an elaborate plot that led to Moriarty's suicide - Holmes is a reader of character so he knew what made Moriarty tick, and how to push his buttons.
I think Moriarty had his assasins in place but it makes sense that Mycroft and Holmes also had marksmen in place - this being one of the reasons Holmes wanted Watson to stay exactly where he was.
The out of character thing for me was likely to be his reaching out to Molly and showing vulnerability - part of the plan to convince Watson that he really was broken enough to kill himself, so that Watson wouldn't guess he wasn't dead and go looking for him? Or simply a clue that Molly helped him effect some kind of body switch?
I'm not sure about that part - I can't believe how observant some of you are either! I've watched the episode twice now and still haven't picked up on the stuff some of you spotted!

I definitely think that Mycroft was in on it, particularly as Moffat and Gatiss seem to be sticking pretty closely to the books.

One thing that alerted me was when John confronted him, Mycroft tried to defend himself with, "I never imagined...". Mycroft, who is even more intelligent than his brother, whom he cares about probably more than anything else, didn't forsee the possibility that the obsessed maniac might use the information given to him? I don't buy it. I also don't believe that he didn't alert Sherlock to what Moriarty was requesting.


Also, I watched the episode with my sister today and I'm starting to think that the laundry truck might be a red herring. We watch Sherlock gently topple off the roof - he doesn't jump - and the truck's quite a way away from the side of the building! He'd need to travel quite a distance and under the circumstances it would be difficult to hit suck a relatively small target accurately.

Having rewatched the final scenes again, did anyone else notice that in positioning John where he did, there was a smaller brick building that would have obscured his view of Sherlock's body hitting the ground from the fall in the last few feet?

So perhaps a second body was thrown out by Molly at the same time from a lower window, and Sherlock did indeed fall into the truck. Any bystanders would have seen the body Molly threw out, not noticed him land safely in the rubbish, John would ave not have seen the switch due to the small building blocking his view of the fall and then bam, he gets knocked over long enough for the fake body to be taken away.

Now, where the rubber ball comes into this, I have no idea...

I've just had another thought...

What if the whole scenario was orchestrated by Mycroft? After all, he had the man that no-one could catch in custody, gave him the information to exact his revenge on Sherlock and then released him when he could have been held indefinitely - Moriarty has worked with terrorists, after all... Would Mycroft have been that naive? Or was he simply playing Moriarty into the hands of Sherlock?

What would be really funny is if Sherlock casually walks in to 221b Baker Street in series 3 as if nothing had happened, and to see John Watson and Mrs Hudson's face drop.

Sherlock: Hey guys, whats for dinner?
Watson: Sherlock!
Sherlock: Hi john, hows it going?
Watson: You're supposed to be dead!
Sherlock: No you idiot I faked that
Watson: You what?
Sherlock: Well you said we needed to keep a lower profile, how much lower do you want

Watching it again atm as hubby works away during the week and hasn't seen it. Noticing new things this time round with the benefit of hindsight.

yes, but what things???

Sorry, I don't get it. I can understand why Moriarty might wish to commit suicide and why Sherlock should want to fake his but I don't see what the motivation is for an actor posing as Moriarty to commit suicide unless it was for a reason which has not been shown or set up. For that to be the set-up and to have it revealed only later is disingenuous.

Moriarty is Moriarty he isn't an actor. At least thats what I thought. He was just pretending to be Brook to make Watson turn against Sherlock. Right?

That's right. It is a real life building outside of the real Barts.


I did point out a few days ago that we see two separate falls though both are in fact from the top. One faller descends past the third and second floors. The camera breaks to Watson getting up then we see a similar figure pass the third floor windows again from a slightly different perspective. I had imagined it was just bad continuity but perhaps not?

That's how I saw it, I was challenging how an actor, a proxy for the real Moriarty would be motivated to kill himself.
The Rich Brook device was just to fool the tabloid-buying public through Kitty Riley et al.

And Reichenbach Falls equates to Rich(ard) Brook falls, falls as in keeping with the original as described above and now playing a part helping SH in faking of his own death?

To quote SH, "The art of disguise is knowing how to hide in plain sight".

However the story gets resolved many of the ideas put forward here would be quite suitable, just depends how the writer decides to do it, and we won't know that till we see it on the screen!

According to something in the Guardian today, everyone has missed a major clue...