The following review contains full spoilers for this week's episode of Sherlock.
If there isn’t to be another season of Sherlock, The Final Problem provided a fitting conclusion to Moffat and Gatiss’s incarnation. Not only did it provide fresh insight into what made Sherlock the way he is, it also left him in a stronger, happier place, and also much closer to the character we know from other adaptations.
Last week's episode concluded with the reveal of Eurus, the forgotten sister of Sherlock and Mycroft, who has been posing as various characters throughout the season and manipulating her brothers. The closing scene saw her shoot John. In true Sherlock fashion, that cliffhanger is quickly pushed to one side (it was apparently a tranquilliser, though you never get to see how it played out). Anyway, Eurus – we learn that she was the youngest of the Holmes children, and was considered by a variety of professionals to be an 'era-defining genius' – comparable to Newton – but her prodigious intellect placed her beyond 'small' moral concepts, like good and evil.
We also discover the reason Sherlock has no memory of her is due to a traumatic incident that occurred during their childhood. As a young girl, Eurus drowned 'Redbeard' – eventually revealed not to be the family dog but Sherlock’s childhood friend, Victor Trevor – and in the process, Eurus created the Sherlock we know. Cold, analytical, detached – he was forever changed by that event. That was, of course, until he met Dr. John Watson in A Study in Pink.
Situated within this new context, Holmes and Watson’s friendship acquires a renewed and more powerful significance. John has been giving Sherlock back something he lost violently as a child. The whole show can now be read as the story of Sherlock returning to a place where he is ready to have a friend.
Friendship, family, and the messy emotional entanglements they create dominate the episode. We learn that Mycroft locked Eurus away in a secret facility known as Sherrinford – a place, according to him, where demons are kept. He even lied to their parents, telling them Eurus has died in a fire. (Incidentally, Sherrinford was one of the names Conan-Doyle toyed with for Sherlock, and has been used to refer to a proposed elder brother in the extended Holmes canon.)
The majority of the episode takes place within this grim prison located on a remote Scottish island. But we soon learn this is far from a prison. Eurus's genius allows her to 'reprogram' anyone she comes into contact with – it's how she was able to visit London in secret, whether it was to flirt with John on a bus or share a bag of chips with Sherlock. The madwoman is, in fact, running the asylum, and Sherlock, Watson, and Mycroft quickly become her prisons. What follows is a series of elaborate and cruel conundrums designed to test Sherlock’s deductive and reasoning faculties. (It’s as if the Jigsaw killer has been left to run amok in a Bond villain’s lair.) And at the end of each problem, Sherlock is dropped a bigger problem: he can talk to a little girl who's on a plane that’s rapidly losing altitude. Everyone else aboard is unconscious, and he must race against time to work out a way to save her.
In the final act, Eurus is revealed to be the terrified girl aboard the plane – her outrageous intellect translates her experience into a metaphorical puzzle for Sherlock to solve. It was a cry for help in a cryptic language she knew he would understand. It’s a surprising and interesting reveal, though perhaps a little hard to swallow. In a single moment Eurus pivots from a cold murderer – beyond all morality – to a terrified girl who needs a hug from her big bro to make things better. She's soon returned to Sherrinford, where she's allowed visitors, as if she's no longer poses a danger despite her near-supernatural ability to control the minds of others.
“This isn’t torture. It’s vivisection," Sherlock says during Eurus's wicked tasks. And I guess that’s the point of this episode: through suffering Sherlock discovers why he's the way he is, and more importantly, how he can change.
Season 4 has been an uneven and wayward journey, but The Final Problem has great momentum and focus. Once they arrive on Sherrinford, the episode progresses through a series of puzzles with escalating stakes that really allow Sherlock to shine – but more importantly, and really for the first time this season, Watson is properly by his side. Furthermore, the presence of Mycroft – a much bigger presence this season – adds an enjoyable extra dynamic to these scenes.
No longer working through the messy aftermath of Mary’s death, the episode also has more room to have fun, from the horror-infused opening, replete creepy dolls and killer clowns, to some pantomime disguises. There was even time to smuggle in a cameo for Andrew Scott’s Moriarty. In a flashback sequence, we learn that one of Eurus’ Christmas treats was five minutes with the Napoleon of Crime, unsupervised. There’s a degree of ambiguity here: did Eurus ‘reprogram’ Moriarty? Was she always behind his actions? It’s maybe not the most satisfying resolution to the Moriarty cliffhanger of three years ago, but it’ll do, and it was nice to see Scott’s electrifyingly weird and wicked Professor one last time.
The closing ten minutes definitely had the feeling of a goodbye. Over a montage of 221B Baker Street being rebuilt after an explosion had demolished it earlier in the episode, a recording of Mary celebrates Sherlock and John’s friendship, which The Final Problem revealed to be the solution to inscrutable mystery that is Sherlock Holmes. Watson reconnects Holmes to an earlier version of himself, before Eurus's crime changed him. At the end of the episode, he's more comfortable and human than we've ever seen him – he holds John's baby without visible discomfort, there's even a smile, and finally he remembers Lestrade's first name.
The Verdict
The wandering drama of Moriarty, Mary, and Eurus has finally been put to rest, and Sherlock and Watson have been returned to a simpler place. The duo stand ready to accept new clients and embark on fresh adventures.
The final shot sees the pair dashing out of Rathbone Place – not only is this a nice nod to the great Sherlock actor, it feels like Moffat and Gatiss’s way of saying they've finished their origin story of the character. He's now closer to the Sherlock we already knew.
The future of Sherlock has yet to be decided, but if this proves to be Cumberbatch’s last bow, The Final Problem feels like a fitting and sincere goodbye.
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