His Last Vow

Ah, His Last Vow. The Last episode of Sherlock season 3. Where do I even begin? This is probably the most brilliant episode in the astoundingly perfect series.

The episode begins with Charles Augustus Magnussen stealing letters from an official in the British government and ends with a brilliant plot twist. Magnussen somehow knows the weakness of every single person, and uses it to blackmail people. Sherlock proposes to the man’s personal assistant to break into his office. He successfully enters, but is shot by his best friend John’s fiancé, a former CIA agent posing as Mary Morstan, a normal british woman. He manages to survive the bullet wound, and escapes from the hospital to trick Mary into revealing the fact that she was the one who shot Sherlock to a hidden John. Months later, at the Holmes family’s Christmas party, Sherlock and John drug the other guests, embarking on a foolhardy quest to lead the military intelligence department to Magnussen’s vaults of information. Once at his mansion, however, they find out that everything is stored in the man’s photographic memory. When the military come to arrest John and Sherlock for supposedly revealing government secrets to the enemy, Sherlock shoots Magnussen in the head to ensure John’s safety. Because of this, he is chosen for a suicide mission overseas. As he is about to leave, he is brought back by the possible resurgence of Moriarty, who was previously thought dead.

I am no cinema critic. I have neither the knowledge nor the will to discuss camera angles or what Sherlock’s pants symbolize in that particular moment. But if there’s one thing I do know how to do is weave stories. So I would like to comment on the plot, if I may.

First of all, John’s sweet and innocent love interest being revealed as a former CIA agent could’ve been a total disaster. It’s a hard thing to do properly, completely change the way the viewer perceives a character in the space of a few seconds. The trick is foreshadowing it perfectly. The viewer suspects nothing, but when the secret is revealed, they wonder why they hadn’t seen it sooner. The writer, Stephen Moffat, is very adept at the art of foreshadowing. He seems to have done this flawlessly.

That twist where it turns out that the Appledore Vaults are actually Magnussen’s mind? It was amazing. Sherlock had planned this out perfectly, and in theory, his plan would’ve worked. In fact, it was quite an ingenious plan. I applaud Sherlock’s ability to improvise when things don’t quite go the way he’d like them to. Killing Magnussen was an impulse. Many people have speculated what made him do this. Was it his bitterness over being bested? In the words of the detective himself, “bitterness is a paralytic. Love is a much more vicious motivator.” As much as I’d like to believe that he did it for John, Sherlock Holmes is a sociopath. Sociopaths do stupid, violent things for no reason at all. It could be one of those acts. But of course, I digress.

The one thing I didn’t enjoy in this episode was Charles Augustus Magnussen himself. “Yes, Dominique, but he’s a villain. You’re not supposed to like him.” Ah, let me explain. See, I like a good villain. Emphasis on ‘good’. I like my villains to have depth. To have complexity. To be actual people and not the evil scientist from the cliché superhero movie. But Magnussen… he’s completely sane. He knows exactly what he’s doing. Why he’s doing it? We have no clue. But he seems to be a pretty open and shut case of pure and unadulterated evil. I am a strong believer in the rule that every character should have some good and some bad in them. In A Study in Pink, the cabbie who was killing people was doing it to feed his children, and he gave each person a 50% chance to get out alive. As far as villains go, he was pretty nice. I’m not saying that they need to be like this every time, but each villain needs just a shred of humanity, And every hero needs to question whether taking this person down is really the right thing to do. It makes for a more interesting and complex story where the audience gets to pick a side rather than have the writer’s view shoved down their throats.

In short, it was a wonderful episode, but like everything, it had a few things that should’ve been debugged. Maybe Moffat will find this and possibly consider my ideas. Who am I kidding, on the off chance that he did read this, he’d probably laugh in my face. But I do believe that I have a point here. Keep up the great work, but next time, make some better villains, Moffat. XXX

Rated “OMG I’M LIKE TOTALLY DEAD FROM THE FEELS RIGHT NOW BECAUSE SHERLOCK IS OVER FOR ANOTHER TWO YEARS OR SOMETHING AND AISJHFKJDHFKDHFGJSKHDGAKL I LITERALLY CANNOT EVEN RIGHT NOW.” on the fandom scream meter. (Yes, I know that isn’t an option, but I enjoy mocking fangirls.)