I think both Magnusson and Moriarty are dead.

I gave the same argument before the broadcast of episode one. At that time, almost no one thought it was probable. I'll have to wait another two years to be able to say 'i was right' because it's not sure yet if Moriarty is still alive. Even if he is, it could have been not Moriarty on the roof and there was no faking.
Still new at this forum business, so not sure if i can boast. Sorry if it's inapropriate but as i said , we're not sure yet.

Had Sherlock just shot him at the first opportunity, i would agree. If someone goes through the intellectual process and the conclusion is that the only way is to shoot him, that's different. That's how i think they justify it. I'm talking in general. For exemple, Archimedes was a brilliant thinking man and yet he invented weapons. Because is nation was under threat and that was the only way to prevent destruction. It is also an intellectual process.
But as stated before, i'm not convinced it was ether necessary or a last resort. If it was somewhat part of his plan, it makes a little more sens.

The scenes in the cottage between them seemed very realistic. Especially the dialoge. Not like it was written but an actual argument.

He should have looked on the USB drive. He might have found her missing tax returns

The way to pushish him would be to kidnap him and perform a lobotomy. A man with so much info in his head and not being able to use it.

That was handled with the final deus ex machina (I know how some people absolutely hate that term being used on here) with Mycroft conveniently sorting out that issue for him.
Sherlock murders Magnussen, the unexpected intervention of the god(Mycroft) appears at the end in a machine (helicopter) to solve the seemingly unsolvable problem of Sherlock going down and doing time.
Tah Dahhh.

Once it was revealed that Magnusson stored all his secret data in his head alone then the British government had only two options: kill him or imprison him for life.

The problem with the latter is that Magnusson could easily blackmail a number of high standing people in control of the judicial system and be released.

That left killing Magnusson.

For a few days or weeks maybe, but not for two years. That's how it was in the original books, anyway.

It's also my opinion and I suspect several others also

Which would be perfectly fine if this was a Chuck Norris or Jean Claude Van Damme film.
As long as you're 'right' you can kill with impunity because you're the hero.

HLV was partly about tabloid press so let's go into their territory a bit. Let's talk porn!

When Magnussen visualised his victims bio with pressure points, there was a line about porn preference. Everyone i remember had the mention: normal. (something completely subjective; what is normal? one wank a month? anyway not important).

My point is that Sherlock too had the mention normal. I would have expected for him the mention'non-existent'.
Now we know he's like other men. Unless it's because he has to go to some site for cases. That's a nice excuse used by a lot 'i was doing research'. Yeah right!
I suppose Sherlock would be the only person i would accept that answer. But i stated before that he went to the crack house for a case but also for his addiction.
I'm writing this one as a jest. I won't accept that Sherlock is a ******!

Me too. I think (and hope) it's Sebastian Moran playing games and not Moriarty back from the 'dead'.

That is a problem, especially if they're going back to it. (I think it's going to be his brother, if he is back at all - I think this time they should keep it simple)

Sherlock didn't know if Moriarty would kill himself, even if he did calculate that it was an option.
Ok, he sait he had 13 or so plans and after Moriarty did kill himself he put Lazarus into operation but it's still a bit rich that he had all these people involved for this setup.
How many people were involved if they had to do one of the other 12 alternatives?

This was all covered in the series two finale itself.

Mycroft may very well have the resources to cover the vantage points of a very specific location for a brief period of time but this does not extend to offering complete protection for every second of every day. As Moriarty lays out in the episode itself his network is under orders to continue until Sherlock is dead. Not just those individuals currently in London targeting Watson and co. but his entire network. There are just two things that can change that – either Moriarty himself will call them off (which is why he kills himself to stop this from happening) or Sherlock has to die. Sherlock has to jump because as long as he's still alive those closest to him are the targets of Moriarty. This is also why he can't resurface as alive again until he has dismantled Moriarty's network and the reason he can't reach out to Watson and tell him that he's still alive, for fear that Moriarty's network will still be monitoring him (Watson) and thus putting everyone back in danger again.

When you think about it this actually dovetails rather nicely with the series three finale.

In series two Sherlock 'kills himself' to protect those closest to him. In series three Sherlock commits murder to protect those closest to him.


It isn't irrelevant that he tried to kill him in previous episodes though. You need the earlier attempts along with the mountain of other plot developments and set up that come before it to push Walt and several other characters to that point.

Additionally I'd point out that I think you're missing the point of what they were trying to do in Sherlock.

The idea here is that its not supposed to be a clever way of killing him. Unlike Walt's killing of Gus in Breaking Bad you aren't supposed to view Sherlock's killing of Magnusson as planned. It wasn't Sherlock's plan all along to get there and shoot him. This was his last desperate action because he had no clever plan. He had no other options. All that was left open to him was brute force. Imposing a clever death to make it a bit cooler would completely undermine what they were trying to do with the story and the characters.

As I said previously I think the problem with the episode was that they didn't do enough to show Sherlock's plan unraveling and to illustrate his desperation in having no other option. Of not being able to think his way out of the situation. Although I think Cumberbatch actually does a rather brilliant job of portraying that it might have been nice to have a explicit demonstration of it. Perhaps him running alternative scenarios in his head that all fail or something.

Its a very common TV and film trope to have a normally moral hero faced with such an unusual villain that he has to step outside normal hero rules and do something immoral. I quite like the trope as long as its only used once per character - if you use it more than once it does indeed turn into Chuck Norris.

I'll stick out one rubbish theory.
Fake back of head filled with an explosive blood bag.
Gun isn't an actual gun but just a detonator to explode the fake back of head.

No, not at all.

I did find the episode hard to follow, yes. I thought it was quite convoluted. But I've still only watched it once, so far. For me, there was a marked contrast in how HLV was written and presented to us in comparison to all the other episodes, in my estimation; and that threw me a bit, I think.
I'm hoping it will all come together for me upon a second viewing.

Hey is that a crack at me!
I said that (post 848 of part two of this thread) but with a blank in the gun. Got answered a blank was too risky.
Still believe with todays movie FX it would be easy

This went from being one of the greatest shows ever produced to absolute mediocrity in one season.

Thought this will be up there with some classics in the future but after season 3 I really don't want to see any-more. Looks like ego got the best of the writers.

The problem now is, if it isn't Moriarty and people have to wait 2 years to find it isn't there is going to be a certain amount of uproar and you can lay odds that the Moff way would be to declare its not Moriarty and skip over the fact that the return of Moriarty was what got Sherlock off the hook this time.

On another note I think one thing I've realised is that, when they tweak a Holmes story from the original they tend to go off the rails a bit.

The fake death in the original was that Holmes threw Moriarty to his death in a fight at the falls but then had to go into hiding because Moran was after him. They try and do something clever with the new version and it ends up a convoluted mess with apparently no one dead.

In the original CAM story it was the blackmailed woman who shot CAM and Holmes let her off..far more satisfactory for me.

I love the originals but perhaps wrongly categorised them as up market pulp..It's only when you see where they could have gone wrong (thanks Moff) that you realise how good they were.

Episode 3 for me was superb right up to the last 5 minutes and then they dropped the ball big time.

In which case then, he is definitely staying true to,the spirit of Conan Doyle, who said

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/b...hin-jokes.html

Another thing is the need to dig into the incidental in the original and expand them to no great value.

Mary doesn't need to be so prominent and to my mind neither does Mycroft..he should be a more shadowy figure. It's getting to be more like Friends than Holmes.

Even Moriarty, who was really just bought in to kill Holmes off originally gas been expanded to the point of ridiculous.

Imo !!!

I agree. I thought it was getting back to how it was in the first two series but they just can't help themselves can they?

I just thought it was because John can't dissemble to save his life.

So, if there were people who were watching him for Sherlock clues, the only way to convince them that he thought Sherlock was dead would be for him to actually believe Sherlock is dead.