The series finale, The Final Problem, puts heart above brains and it works. Its not the perfect episode but it is one of my best episode as it puts our beloved sociopath through hell, shreds him apart and then puts him to the test.
So spoliers, if you have not seen the episode yet.
Welcome to the final problem.
Those fans still wishing that every single episode of Sherlock involved a stranger knocking on the door of 221b and recruiting Holmes and Watson to solve a case might well have found this fourth (and final?) series frustrating.
But what's easy to miss is that our dynamic duo are still very much solving mysteries: it's just that these mysteries no longer arrive from outsiders, but are deeply ingrained in the central characters' own backstories.
For me that brings another dynamic edge, to the already complex detective. It feels fitting that in his last bow (for now, at least) Sherlock must face his own dark mirror image.
Even more so than Moriarty, Eurus (Sian Brooke) is Sherlock gone wrong – all cold, hard logic and no feeling, her emergence highlights her brother's humanity and just how emotional he can be.
While Brooke delivers a hypnotically dead-eyed turn, 'The Final Problem' features Cumberbatch's most humane performance yet, as Sherlock learns to use his biggest asset to win out – not his mind, but his heart.
A child prodigy with an intellect greater than Isaac Newton's, the young Eurus was also seriously disturbed and obsessed with her younger brother to such an extent that she murdered his best friend – plot twist!
Mycroft (Mark Gatiss) would later lock Eurus away in the prison island of Sherrinford to keep Sherlock safe, but her supreme powers of manipulation still allowed her to collaborate with Moriarty on everything, before he died.
A side note: Moriarty's return – to the strains of Queen's 'I Want to Break Free' – is so outrageously over-the-top that you can't help but love it. It's a neat trick, too, inserting a flashback into the episode in such a manner that we're briefly fooled into thinking he's actually back from the dead.
Mark Gatiss might've rejected comparisons between The Six Thacthers and the super-spy antics of James Bond – quite rightly – but once Sherlock, John (Martin Freeman) and Mycroft take the trip to Sherrinford, 'The Final Problem' starts to absolutely reek of agent 007's adventures.
A supervillain with a phenomenal brain, an army of soldiers and a top-secret HQ? This is unquestionably Gatiss and co-writer Steven Moffat having their cake and eating it by telling a Sherlock Holmes story that also indulges their Bond fandom. To tell you the truth, I loved every bit of this detective being Bond. Tell me in comments who want to see our Dr. Strange as 007.
But once it becomes clear that Eurus has assumed control – the lunatic quite literally running the asylum – this breathless adventure transforms again, taking inspiration from another, very different film franchise...
It's Sherlock does Saw as we get to the meat of the episode: an absolutely superb second act that goes to some seriously dark places, as our heroes – reduced to rats in a maze – are set a series of harrowing challenges.
Art Malik delivers a hugely sympathetic performance as the tragic governor of Sherrinford, but it's the desperately cruel manipulation of Molly (Louise Brealey) that takes the biggest emotional toll.
Cumberbatch and Brealey are both wonderful in this stand-out sequence – weaving an emotional pay-off to their relationship into a pulse-pounding, race-against-time narrative, it's quite remarkable that the scene was a last minute addition.
But after all the pulse-racing, heart-pounding sequences, the climax of the series, of the episode fell flat for me. Don't get me wrong whole episode was superb, gut-wrenching scenes but Eurus is arguably the most clever and calculating adversary that Sherlock's ever faced. She's tortured him, John, their friends and family. She's murdered dozens of innocent people. And all it takes to stop her is a hug?
The whole thing's so swift and simple that, as Eurus is whisked back to Sherrinford, you find yourself waiting for one last twist... but it never arrives. It's a resolution which highlights that, for all its good qualities (and there are many), 'The Final Problem' is a story oddly without consequences.
With this quite possibly being the show's final episode, it's understandable that Moffat and Gatiss wanted to end on an uplifting note – Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, the Baker Street boys, out solving mysteries... forever. But after everything that's happened, they're required to hit the reset button to deliver that jolly final tag. I loved the whole montage of them rebuilding the whole Baker Street, kind-of showing the reset they need.
I loved the idea that Sherlock can never be more intelligent than Mycroft or Eurus, but him having emotional context, makes him a stronger person who will always prevail.
The way, they left things, there can be a season 5 but the cast and crew have said if they do it, it would be not for another 2 years.
Tell me what you loved in the episode.
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