Sherlock Season 4 Recap: The Six Thatchers
By Ani Bundel
After a long hiatus, the BBC’s modern take on Sherlock Holmes returns with a brand new mini season and “The Six Thatchers.”
It’s been a long time since we last saw Sherlock. “His Last Vow,” the final episode of Season 3, aired way back at the beginning of 2014. Since then we’ve had only the Christmas special, which was both an extension of Season 3’s cliff hanger and a weird fantasy standalone. Now, after another year has passed, we return to discover that we have managed to leave the weirdness of the Christmas special behind. We’re back in the real world again, post Charles Augustus Magnussen incident. The scene begins to bring Sherlock’s drug use from the Christmas special to the fore, but that is quickly abandoned. It’s really just to introduce us once again to Lady Smallwood and her people, before sending Sherlock back out into the world.
"Sherlock: “Motherhood’s slowing you down.”Mary: “Pig!”"
The case of Moriarty’s “Miss Me?” return will have to wait. First, Sherlock is going to montage through a plethora of Easter eggs of cases, as the show has loved to do every season. Oh and Mary has to have her baby in the car on the ride to the hospital, all while Sherlock is buried in his phone, of course. He’s buried in his phone throughout the christening ceremony too. All this leads up to Lestrade arriving with the beginnings of an episode loosely based on one of my favorite Holmes adventures, “The Six Napoleons.”
The six busts in this case are not of Napoleon, as this is 2016, not 1896. The busts are instead Margaret Thatcher. (Of course they are.) And all the while, Sherlock has premonitions that this bizarre and slightly baroque case is tied to Moriarty. There are even a dozen references to the Black Pearl of the Borgias, as the “other” case that Moriarty was trying to be involved in, that Sherlock’s been ignoring. All of this leads us to believe that the Thatcher statue will contain it when all is said and done, just like the Napoleon bust did in the original story.
"Craig: “Thatcher’s like Napoleon now.”"
But death stalks this episode from the opening gambit. The theme of the inevitable death floats lightly throughout the pacing of the lighter turns of Sherlock. All the comedy bits, with Sherlock and the baby, the random hacker, the dog, even the opening case with the dead boy in the car, are all designed to lull us into a false sense of security. It comes crashing down the moment Sherlock breaks open the bust. After a fistfight worthy of a Bond film, complete with underwater pool shots, flying through glass walls and fisticuffs that suggest that all that training for Doctor Strange is being put to good use in other franchises, we break open the bust and discover no pearl. Instead, there is a memory stick, with the letters AGRA. Same as the one we saw Mary give John that contained her whole past, that he burned in “His Last Vow”. And the man after said memory stick is looking for her — with plans to kill her.
Suddenly the repeating of the story of “The Appointment in Samarra” becomes far more sinister, along with Sherlock’s repeated insistence that he took a vow to keep Mary and John and their baby Rosie safe, especially once Mary’s response to learning of all this is to leave and go on the run. (Her impersonation of my Jewish mother on the plane was a highlight of her get ups.) But like the man in the story, she arrives in Morocco only to find that Sherlock and John are waiting for her, along with her would be killer, AJ.
"Sherlock: “I never could resist the touch of the dramatic.”Vivian: “I just come here to look at the fish.”"
But this is not where death was waiting — that’s just where she saw it first. In the end, London, where she was promised that Death would not touch her, is where her fate was waiting. Death, like in Samarra, is is the form of a woman, one no one notices: the secretary cat lady, Vivian Norbury, who we met in the opening scene with Lady Smallwood. She was the real betrayer of AGRA, the “Englishwoman” AJ heard talk of and mistook to be Mary. The mousy one who no one noticed. With her arrest at hand, and Lestrade and Mycroft frowning on, she pulled out a gun and aims it at Sherlock. When told “Now be sensible“, she replied “No, I don’t think I will,” and pulled the trigger.
And Mary jumped out in front of him, and took the bullet instead.
Death was waiting, for her, in London, at the appointed time. And with that, Sherlock returns with a shocker death that will keep tongues wagging, while Gatiss and Moffat have finally solved the fact that since introducing Mary, they’ve had an awkward third leg to have to work into every adventure. Her death was convenient for all involved (after all, her actress and Martin Freeman aren’t even dating anymore). But at least she wasn’t fridged, but met Death head on, by her own decision.
"Sherlock: “Work is the best antidote to sorrow.”"
Sherlock’s insistence over and over that he made a vow was for naught. He would never have really kept her safe, as much as he desired. Watson’s guilt, by the way, is compounded due to a might have been brief affair with a hippie dippy girl on the bus — whom I suppose we haven’t seen the last of. But of course, in his pain he lashes out at Sherlock. After all, he vowed to keep her safe. (For the record, Freeman’s work here, with the animalistic near screams of rage over her body are chilling. So chilling that even Sherlock cannot find anything smart or bloodless to say in the moment.)
Next: 16 Times Sherlock Drove Us All Crazy
We close the episode with a video from Mary, delivered to Sherlock after her death. She charges him with a new case: Keep John Watson safe. Not as easy command to follow, since Molly Hooper informs him that Watson wants the help of anyone but Sherlock Holmes. But like the mustache last season, we know eventually John will shave for Sherlock. He won’t be able to help himself. There are two more episodes to go this season, and though Mary’s death will hang heavy over “The Lying Detective” and “The Final Problem” in the next two weeks, the driving force of her death as failure will spur Sherlock, and Watson on. After all, from somewhere beyond the grave, Moriarty awaits.