Season Three (2014)

The Evolution of the Mind Palace

The third season is about how much Sherlock has grown and changed in the face of his humanization, and how people have learned who he is and begun to change around him.

This season has come under some criticism for its Freudian undertones, which critics argue weren’t a part of the original books; but if a story is to be moved into the 21st century, human emotion and psychology are bound to take a larger role. The one thing the writers evolve throughout season three is Sherlock’s mind palace, a place that has been revealed bit by bit over the seasons. And when his world changes through one significant event in John’s life, Sherlock’s control over that mind palace unravels, and it’s only in building it back up again that he regains that control, with things becoming so clear to him that he commits a drastic act at the end of the season.

Sherlock has always been a man of intellect, leaving all of the sappy emotions and feelings to lesser mortals. In previous episodes, he has talked about personal connections being a hindrance to the greater intellectual games he prefers to play, but by slowly allowing people into his life, he’s unwittingly become attached to other human beings. And yet, ironically, while these attachments are the very things causing a breakdown of the great mind of Sherlock Holmes, they are also what keep him afloat amid drastic changes in his life.

In one of the last Holmes stories, “The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane,” Holmes himself takes up Watson’s pen and tells the reader that he’s retired to a cottage and a life of beekeeping and, in his later years, that ordered “brain-attic” of his has become slightly disorganized. “My mind is like a crowded box-room with packets of all sorts stowed away therein,” he writes, “so many that I may well have but a vague perception of what was there.” On the show, this much younger Sherlock faces the same cluttered rooms, but if he’s going to save his friends, he needs to reorganize them — fast.

MANY HAPPY RETURNS

On December 24, 2013, BBC Online released a webisode to promote the return of Sherlock on January 1, 2014. Featuring the characters of Anderson, Lestrade, John, and Sherlock, the seven-minute video showed the fallout of Sherlock’s death on three of the people he left behind. Anderson is guilt-ridden and distraught and appears to have been let go from the force (as Lestrade leaves the pub he mentions that he’ll put a word in about his case). By tracking odd events from Tibet to New Delhi, Hamburg, Amsterdam, and Brussels in the hope that Sherlock is out there somewhere, Anderson has become Sherlock and John in one, not only searching the clues and trying to map out Sherlock’s return through his deductions, but giving names to each case and recounting them as if they’re Victorian adventures rather than news events.

After leaving Anderson, Lestrade goes to John with some of Sherlock’s personal effects that he found at the station. When he opens the box, we see a yellow mask, a pack of Nicorette patches, a toy replica of an L.M.S. Railway car, and a pink phone. The last is obviously from “A Study in Pink,” the railway car could be a reference to the rail lines that Sherlock was investigating behind John’s back in “The Great Game,” the Nicorette patches were probably grabbed by the police during the drugs bust in “A Study in Pink,” and the yellow mask could be a reference to “The Blind Banker,” where a yellow cipher was written across a face in a painting. But it’s more likely a reference to Doyle’s story “The Yellow Face,” a scene from which will appear in season three. It’s the story in which Watson most overtly expresses the intimate relationship between him and Holmes. John looks like he’s trying very hard to keep things together, and when Lestrade leaves, he puts on a DVD of outtakes of a video birthday card Lestrade made with Sherlock to wish John a happy birthday. It’s at times funny and sad, and even though John pours himself a generous glass of Scotch to steel himself ahead of time, he’s clearly moved, saddened, and angered by it. He mutters that Sherlock should stop being dead, and then we zoom in on Sherlock on the DVD making the final plug for series three: “I’m sorry I’m not there at the moment — I’m busy — but many happy returns, and don’t worry, I’m going to be with you again very soon.” Wink.

You can watch the video on YouTube.