He was security, faceless heavy belonging to Magnusson.

Janine was her friend, she knocked her out.

...until...oh look it's Moriarty, do us a favour love sort this out for us.....

That's different. He was a white supremacist so nobody cared about him, Janine was Mary's bridesmaid and Sherlock's pretend girlfriend so her life counts.

ETA: And come to think of it Mary didn't clearly kill him anyway. Sherlock shouts to John that another person has been attacked, John asks if he's still saveable, and Sherlock replies that he's an ex-prisoner with white supremacist tattoos so who cares about him?

Thanks, I didn't get that bit, must've been feeding the cat (who was driving me nuts).

I gave the cat a giant bowl of food five minutes before it started to avoid exactly that.

1. Do we know the other guy is dead? I'll need to watch again to see if this is "clear."
2. I don't recall the dialogue from Holmes and Watson that said Janine was close to death. Need to check. However, I do know that by the time Holmes regained consciousness and made the decision not to immediately tell John, he knew Janine was alive, well, and loving it.

So, subject to checking those points, the explanation for why "Holmes was quite happy for his bessie mate to stay married to Mary even though she had cold bloodily attempted to kill Janine," given that when he was quite happy was after he knew Mary didn't cold bloodily attempt to kill Janine, is wholly logical and rational. You don't agree. Fair enough. You may have other criteria by which you judge these things.

For me, Martin Freeman gave the standout performance in His Last Vow as he did in last season's finale, The Reichenbach Fall.

His acting is exemplary.

For me personally - Most other shows I watch > Sherlock Season 1 > Season 2 > > > Season 3.

Whilst good, one problem I had with the first two seasons was their over usage of Moriarty. So they kill him off, have one poor season and then need to make him relevant again to keep people interested. Dire stuff.

I agree, his performance was pretty much the only good thing about this season.

Realy enjoyed it.
After being 'prepared' for the new Sherlock in the first two episodes, this one was realy satisfying.
Was surprised by a lot of things. Most of the details that were theorised here that happened to be right happened early in the episode.
Still have a lot of posts to read before i go in detail analysis. But three things:
-near the end, i realised all my theories (wrote a lot of observations but only a few real theories) were wrong. Until the extra clip at the end. Moriarty is not dead!
-Billy is not a made up new character; he appears in 'The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone'
-Moffat said this episode was inspired by two original stories: The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton and His last bow. But the opening scene comes from 'The man with the twisted lip'.

She wasn't a friend, Mary had used her (as Holmes did) to get to CAM. When Mary was desperate to get to CAM it is unlikely she would have time to differentiate between those standing in her way.

Yes, the criteria by which I judge these things is what I see on the television in front of me.

I'm starting worry that every series is going to have a cliffhanger that tries to top the last until it gets ridiculous... and the Moriarty thing isn't far off. Maybe one day we'll get a proper, conclusive ending to a series of Sherlock.

In another exemple, they both agree about it.
Extract from the plot resume on Wiki of the story 'The Adventure of the Abbey Grange', (note: the Mary mentionned is not the same as tonite's episode):
-Holmes tells Crocker that the police don't yet know the truth, and that he will wait 24 hours before revealing it, allowing Croker to get away. Croker indignantly refuses the offer - he will not leave Mary to "face the music" as an accomplice. He offers to agree to any version of the case that will leave Mary out of it.

But Holmes was only testing him, and is impressed by his loyalty to Mary. He has given Hopkins "an excellent hint" and doesn't feel he must do more. He designates Watson as the "jury", and asks him to "render a verdict". Watson declares Croker "Not guilty."

Holmes tells Croker he will keep silent unless someone else is charged, and that he may come back to Mary in a year.

Even Mrs. Hudson.

Some wrote that it's not sure that Moriarty isn't dead and mention the possibility of brothers.
Even if this is true, they can't be all the same. They would work together but one has got to be top boss.
So it's also possible, that it was one of the brothers who died on the roof. If he died.
As i said before, if Sherlock is capable of faking his death, so can Moriarty.
About his organisation being destroyed; i'm sure Sherlock destroyed everything he could find. Not sure if he found everything!

This wasn't a cliffhanger though was it really.
Series 2 had a massive one, with Sherlock assumed dead.

Here we just had Sherlock being recalled home because Moriarty is back.
It was obvious it would happen too affer he met a basically trivial end in series 2.

Redbeard: my impressions of that was that Sherlock did something to that dog when he was young. Because when Mycroft said at the end in the chopper 'Sherlock what have you done' and we were shown Sherlock as a kid.

The other one: they were talking about Mycroft being sentimental and he defended himself of it by saying 'you know what happened to the other one'. My conclusion is that he was reffering to his predecessor who 'suffered of sentimentalism' and paid the price for it. But perhaps it's something else.

One further thought; i was surprised we saw Lestrade so little tonite

This is why I think it would have felt right if Mary had shot him.
It would make more sense narratively as the crux of the story was about Mary trying to get him off her back. It didn't appear that Magnussen 'owned' Sherlock.

In respect to Sherlock protecting John and Mary because Magnussen had 'bad' secrets about Mary. Well that's not good enough.
If Mary did bad things then that's the way the cookie crumbles. Surely it would be expected that she come clean about what she's done and who she is to John? Or does Sherlock believe that murdering Magnussen is a good thing because it allows everyone to bury their heads in the sand as though nothing happened?

Mary was an assassin. Did Magnussen kill anybody? He made it clear in the episode that he was a businessman, not a murderer, and had the opportunity to kill people if he saw fit, but didn't.
How would people feel if Sherlock decided to shoot Mary in the head as he felt it was justified as Mary was a murderer who deserved to die?
Magnussen was slimy and horrible, but I'm not sure given what was revealed in the story about him that it is good enough justification in itself for him to be murdered by Sherlock.

I'm not sure if it was made clear how the Watson and Mary strand ended up.
Is it the case that John is simply not going to ask Mary about her past anymore and wants to live in denial instead?
Surely realistically many of the issues from earlier in the episode when John found out that he had been deceived still would have stood between John and Mary?

And Mary and John are to live happily ever after all that? Mary is an assassin, is that going to sit well with Watson who is supposed to be a humane moral compass in this show? He's fine with that is he?
I just don't buy it. It seems a bit too far-fetched and convenient. It doesn't feel like a realistic portrayal of people.
The problems which were evident when John found out are still there.

But at that point in regard to Mary the cat was already out of the bag. It was too late to put the clock back.
So the idea is that John would live a life of ignorant bliss and just bury his head in the sand without wanting to know who Mary really is and what she'd done?
You know, his wife?

Watson himself killed a man in the very first episode. In a later episode he tells Sherlock, (while half strangling him), "I was a soldier, I killed people."

I don't think Watson is as squeamish about assassins as you think.

When he arranged for Watson to be put in the fire, if things had gone wrong, i would have called that murder.
But i agree that even if Magnusson is a murderer, does that give the right to Sherlock to execute him?
It has been said that it was the only option. It was the only option for that precise moment, perhaps. What we learn from that is Sherlock made a huge mistake and he found himself cornered to kill him.
I would agree with that if Magnusson had revealed a back up that Sherlock didn't think of. But the truth is that everything is in his head, there is no proof. Why kill him?
Magnusson said 'i don't need proof, i just need to print it'. It might be true for some personal relations when, for exemple, spouses already had suspiscions. But for the rest i think my response would have been 'print all you want, bastard, i'm sueing for diffamation and you have no proof in court so there goes you're credibility for everyone else'
I think the killing of Magnusson is weird but still enjoyed it
Both the killing of Magnusson (when he pissed in Sherlock's fireplace ) and the episode

1. There is no conversation between Sherlock and Watson to the effect that Janine is near death. Sherlock asks if she's fainted. Watson says it's a blow to the head, that she breathing and he calls Janine's name. Janine groans.

2. It is not "clear" the other guy is dead. He has no sign of gun shot wound, no pooled blood and no sign of death other than the fact that he isn't moving which would be the case if he were unconscious or dead.

I note you judge by what's on your screen but I can't help you any further in explaining how you heard or saw things that weren't there.

And I don't think in reality it would be true comfort. This idyllic life would be about having to live a life of pretend because you are too afraid to face up to the truth.
Sherlock murdered Magnussen to prevent Mary and John having to deal with the truth?
That's just not really good enough.

You could say that in real life lives are ruined all the time by people in positions of power. How would you feel if in real life somebody made an attempt on the life of David Cameron by doing what Sherlock did?
Would that be right?

Or in the phone hacking scandal, where somebody like Magnussen, Rupert Murdoch, is murdered like this?
Would it be justified?