Certainly it was no doll that fell from the building: we saw Benedict's stunt double.

Molly is the secret keeper: she was the only one missing from the trailer.

Surely Molly is the one opening the locker who's in the white coat?

Yes, I took that to be Molly, too.

Silly of me: of course that's Molly.

I think the Moriarty-as-well-known-TV-personality thing was awful.

Re-watching it last night, the vibe I got was that Mycroft and Sherlock both knew ahead of time what was gong to happen. I think they hatched a plan to stop M embarrassing the establishment any further.

Comments from the production team indicate that they have done their research on how to pull off the fall. I'll be very disappointed if we didn't see the real Sherlock fall and, if we did, whilst I still don't know how it was done, there are only so many ways it could have been done.

EDIT - I also don't think "repel" sounded like "rappel", either time it was used.

Hi everyone!

Thought I'd chip in my thoughts on this... have tried to read the whole thread but haven't really had time so I do apologise if I plagiarise anybody's ideas!

OK so, my first question is, did Holmes know Moriarty was going to shoot himself? He certainly acted surprised and shocked when he did, and would no longer have needed to 'act' surprised at anything for Moriarty's benefit seeing as he was dead. If he didn't know M would kill himself, then he must have planned to fake his own death with the supposition that M would watch him fall from the roof... therefore would ideas such as him jumping into the rubbish truck and using a fake body really work? As in, surely M would see that happen and know it was fake?

Also, I can't help feeling that the dialogue scene on the roof just before M's suicide was strange. M is convinced that he has won and Sherlock is 'ordinary', and has just told Sherlock that he will never give the assassins the order to stand down. Sherlock then says something along the lines of 'I may be on the side of the angels, but don't think for one second I am one of them', then suddenly M is convinced that Sherlock has suddenly found a way to defeat him... but how? How does that line change M's mind and convince him that he needs to kill himself otherwise Sherlock will somehow force him to stop the assassins? Not sure if this is just me missing something obvious, or if it's actually significant.

Thirdly, I can't help feeling that IOU is definitely involved somewhere along the way... i'll be quite annoyed if it's just a red herring! It was graffitied on the wall outside of 221B when Watson runs back out for a taxi having discovered Mrs Hudson is not actually dying. What if when Holmes goes to see Molly to ask for her help, the 'you' he replies when she asks what he needs is not her as people have assumed, but the U bit of IOU? This is perhaps a little far-fetched :/

Finally, I think I remember reading somewhere on the thread that somebody suggested Holmes forgetting Molly's name earlier on in the episode and calling her 'John' is the significant clue that everybody missed that was out of character for him. Then somebody else suggested that actually this was just to show Molly's insignificance in Holmes' eyes (sorry for not having quotes for this, I can't find the posts again!). However, when Holmes goes to see Molly to ask for help he tells her she has always counted and he has always trusted her... therefore she isn't really insignificant so why would he have forgotten her name? Although if this is the clue I'm not sure what this would signify...

This has turned into a bit of a ramble rather than a proper theory, but just thought I'd share! What do people think?

I think Sherlock calling Molly 'John' in that scene is just Sherlock being Sherlock and being completely absorbed in his thoughts. In A Scandal in Belgravia Sherlock snaps out of his thoughts to find Irene staring at him and he is confused as to where John is because he thinks John is right there because to him he was there a few minutes ago - but John went out hours ago. It's in another episode somewhere too where John comes home after being out and Sherlock picks up on how he asked John for a pen ages ago (I can't remember exactly how this scene went) and John didn't get him the pen - and John points out that he wasn't there when Sherlock asked for the pen because he'd gone out - but Sherlock obviously hadn't noticed. I think Sherlock calls Molly 'John' because he doesn't have a clue who is talking to him - he is in too in his head.

Unless that scene with Sherlock asking Molly for help is a giant red herring Molly is a key part in all of this, but my feeling is that Sherlock realises that due to his lack of interest/behaviour towards Molly no-one knows that they really have any link - Moriarty only ever saw Sherlock being dismissive to/not interested in Molly, so would he have known that Sherlock cares for Molly? In that respect Molly (and Mycroft - I can't figure out if they've gone with canon on that or not) is the only person Sherlock can turn to because she isn't seen as being in his very small close circle. Notice Sherlock doesn't name Molly on the roof as one of the people Moriarty is threatening to have killed - he knows Moriarty hasn't thought of her as important. Which makes her very important.

My thoughts on that anyway. I still don't have a clue how he did it - even after seeing the filming pictures from S3 E1.

Ahhh, you may be right... I didn't rewatch the other two episodes in S2 so can't contextualise as much.

I'm also sure Molly must somehow be key, which is why I'm leaning towards the idea that Sherlock's 'out of character' moment is also somehow related to her.

I've just watched the last episode again does anyone else think it's significant that Moriarty had gunmen trained on John, Lestrade and Mrs Hudson, but not Mycroft?

I just remember those scenes because they made me giggle at Sherlock's complete unawareness of anything he sees as insignificant going on around him.


Yea, I wonder about that. Because Moriarty can't get to Mycroft? Because he doesn't want to get to Mycroft? Because he doesn't think Sherlock cares about Mycroft?

Sherlock doesn't list Mycroft on the roof scene either - John, Lestrade and Mrs Hudson. No Molly or Mycroft. Two people we know he cares about but he doesn't believe Moriarty has thought to threaten - and who he isn't going to tip Moriarty off about.

Argh. Too many questions. Too long of a wait.

Didn't get the end of the reichenbach episode. I suppose they both survived but how..Maybe a case for Jonathan Creek ! Maybe they could have both survived the plunge over the falls but this is just too far fetched

Sherlock is seen at the end so he definitely survived (hence all the speculation), Moffat has said that Moriarty hasn't survived, I think they want to move on to a different villain.
Funny you should mention Jonathan Creek, Alan Davies has said that he knows how it was done.
In the books they both fall and only Holmes survives, in the TV show only Holmes falls.

Moriarty won't return

Jonathan Creek has already solved the problem

Thats a shame. The character was great. Won't be the same without Moriarty. He could have had a fake gun and an exploding pack of blood at the back of his head !

It is so frustrating that we will have to wait so long for the answers. I agree about Molly, I wonder if mycroft was involved as he looks indifferent about sherlocks demise. I also think there was a lot of 'chewing' going on with Moriarty - gum (on several occasions) apples and also lots of shots of china cups... or have i reached the stage where I am just clutching at straws???

Yes you are.

Awww at this photo of Benedict on set (it isn't a spoiler):

http://the-future-mrs-cumberbatch.tu...-taking-over-a

A message I think to all the hordes of photographers hanging around the Sherlock set.

Oh Benedict! You are such a sweet, intelligent, sensitive man!

Just came to post that! A very thought-provoking and polite way to tell the photographers to **** off. I'm sure other people would have lowered themselves to that level, looking at Benedict's body language in that pic, and knowing how annoying the paparazzi are, I don't think I'd have blamed him!

Agreed. Very well said.

It must be very hard to be subjected to such intense scrutiny - especially by people whose sole aim is to sell and make money with their pictures. They don't even ask permission either.

This picture of Benedict struck me for the reasons you say, and also because I had never seen one like it before. But apparantly this is becoming quite popular with actors and celebrities. For example:

http://www.examiner.com/article/adam...cross-to-90999

and

http://www.today.com/entertainment/c...-win-1B5941250

Even though I don't know who these people are; I like their idea of bringing more important issues to the fore, rather than what the intentions of the paparazzi are. It's very clever.

ETA: There's supposed to be a split with the Tumblr Cumberbatchers over Benedict's pic though.

I hadn't seen those other pics before, it must be so frustrating to have everyone so fascinated by every aspect of your life. I don't know why people wouldn't like Benedict's pic, I'll admit it made me laugh a little, "go photograph Egypt" sounds like a wonderful end to an argument, along the lines of "go fly a kite" and the other, less tame version

My guess on the IOU is that it isn't IOU at all, but... a one, a zero and a half-zero.
We know the plots always involve computers, and I was convinced by the end of the last series that either Moriarty or Sherlock has come up with a new form of code, based on binary, which can hack into anyone's computer and read, steal or over-write anything they want it to read, steal or over-write... and the new code is formed of a one, a zero, and a wildcard (half-zero) kinda thing.

Not buying it, sorry. I believe it's possible that Moriarty did make a computer code to break into computers and his bribing of the guards etc was a double bluff but I don't believe it to be so. Considering the emphasis they put on IOU, it could well be important somehow.
I know only a little about binary but to my knowledge you usually need 8 zeros or ones (bits) (7 for ASCII) to form one character so I can't imagine that you would code like that (the string of numbers would be enormous), far easier to just use programming software. Also, although the plots have involved computers I would say that more often than not, they don't.

It would be interesting to see if the code that Sherlock tapped out does actually mean anything? We would have to assume that we see it from the start and how many numbers to group together. I'm going to see if someone cleverer than me has done that...

ETA: Yep, there's always someone out there on the www with too much time on their hands! http://finalproblem.tumblr.com/post/...here-is-no-key

The Bach theory is worse than the Byte one, hah.

Sherlock was filming in London today. Benedict held up some handwritten signs to the media about our government and civil liberties:

http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-ra...ondon-sherlock

Don't know if anyone wants to read this article on Steven Moffat giving clues about that Fall - perhaps:

Has Steven Moffat Explained the Ending of Sherlock series 2?

From the Fringe Festival a couple of days ago.

I always was suspicious of the lorry which appeared!