9 Questions We Have After The Sherlock Season 4 Finale

Sherlock's fourth season came to an explosive end last week - and might just have taken the whole show with it. The episode, suitably titled "The Final Problem," endeavoured to wrap up every lingering plot thread the series had created and act as a possible end to the show, in the event that Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman's busy schedules - basically doing lots of Marvel movies - means that they're not free to do Sherlock again. Perhaps in its haste to give the series an action-packed finale, the episode did leave us with a lot of questions after it was done. While it was certainly a tense and thrilling ride, you have to admit that it had a lot of plot holes and elements that didn't quite add up. And so, on that note, here are 9 things that we're left scratching our heads about after watching the Sherlock finale. Obviously, a full spoiler warning is in effect here if you haven't yet caught up. If you have though, read on! 9) How Exactly Did Sherlock And John Turn Mycroft's Home Into A Haunted House? "The Final Problem" begins with Mycroft enjoying an old movie on a projector in his house. Things quickly turn spooky, though, when ghostly children start running up the stairs, a sword-wielding clown attacks him and the portraits on the walls start weeping blood. In the end, it turns out to be a rather cruel prank by Sherlock and John - along with a couple of stooges - who wanted to scare Mycroft into telling the truth. Seems a bit unnecessarily cruel to me, but the big question is how they set about pulling off the prank in the first place. Sure, Sherlock has displayed many amazing talents over the course of the show but, up until now, he hadn't displayed an aptitude for brilliant set design and stage direction. Everything here can be explained away, but it's odd that we didn't get a scene showing us how clever Sherlock had been in setting it all up. If nothing else, we imagine that making the portraits weep blood must have been tricky to do. 8) Why Did Eurus Destroy Baker Street? Later on in the episode, Sherlock, John and Mycroft are in Baker Street when a drone flies through the window. It's carrying a "patience grenade" that will detonate once one of them moves. As such, their best shot at survival is to jump towards the stairs and out the window when it explodes. We could ask just where the Holmes' boys evil sister Eurus got the grenade from, but the more pertinent question is why she's trying to kill them? We later find out that Eurus has been playing a very long game that's been leading to her testing her brothers and John with a series of cruel experiments in the Sherrinford facility. Why, then, would she risk all that planning being for aught when she almost kills them here? There was no way she could know that they would survive it, right? Speaking of which, how do all three of them make it out alive without nary a scratch on them? We can presume that some time has passed by the following scenes but it can't be have been that long. 7) How Did Sherlock Not Notice The Missing Glass? Once they arrive in Sherrinford, Sherlock has a chat with his little sis where she keeps teasing him for missing the obvious. Eventually, he puts his hand to the glass of her cell... only to realize that there's none there. She only made it look like there is by using a few suspended signs and a microphone that feeds her voice through the speakers. This is undoubtedly a clever rug-pull for us as the audience and a nice way of revealing that Eurus is really in charge of the facility and can leave whenever she pleases. However, it makes no sense whatsoever that Sherlock wouldn't have noticed that there was no pane of glass only a few feet away from him. Obviously, he's undergoing a very traumatic experience at the time - he's meeting a sister he never knew he had for the first time - but his deductive capabilities can't have deserted him so completely. 6) What Was The Point In Eurus' Disguises? The reveal of Eurus' true nature in "The Lying Detective" is one of the best mind-blowing moments in all of Sherlock. Despite the truth being right in front of us, few of us realized that the woman who flirted with John on a bus, the client who had chips with Sherlock and the German therapist were all the same person. As Eurus' fiendish plan unfolds in "The Final Problem," however, it becomes clear that pretending to be those people had no relevance on her big evil scheme. Sure, it produced a great moment and did a good job of showing actress Sian Brooke's range, but we're not sure that raiding her dress-up box actually had a purpose. The only thing we can think of is that, after six years of planning, her scheme was finally ready to go. All she needed to do was alert Sherlock to her existence and lure them to Sherrinford. So, what she did was run rings around them for a while and then run back to her lair, waiting for them to come and get her. 5) Did Moriarty Plan To Fail? "The Final Problem" finally revealed the truth about Moriarty's apparent resurrection at the end of season 3. He did indeed blow his own brains out in season 2's finale but, prior to that, he had helped Eurus with her plan to mess with Sherlock, John and Mycroft. Those videos of him saying "Miss me?" were just recorded before his death. This begs the question: did Moriarty always know he would fail in his plan to force Sherlock to launch himself off the rooftop at St. Barts' Hospital? If he'd succeeded in killing her brother, Eurus would have been pretty annoyed that he'd mucked up her evil plans. Plus, she does say that Moriarty wasn't that interested in "staying alive" as long as Sherlock's life was made a living hell. It's possible, then, that he knew that Sherlock was planning to fake his death but let it happen and killed himself because he thought Eurus' plan to make it look like he was still alive was more fun. Also, while we're at it, why did Mycroft think that pairing up the two most dangerous people in the world would be in any way a good idea? Yes, Eurus was doing him some favours by deducing where and when terrorist attacks would take place, but he should have expected something bad to happen. 4) Did Molly Recover From The "I Love You" Scene? One of the most emotional scenes in the finale is Eurus' cruel experiment involving Molly Hooper. Apparently having rigged Molly's house to explode, Eurus forces Sherlock to make Molly admit her long-standing feelings for him. If she doesn't say the words "I love you," she'll die. He succeeds, but Molly - and Sherlock himself - is left devastated by the admission. The lovestruck pathologist has garnered a strong fanbase over the years, so her supporters will be miffed at the fact we don't get any kind of reconciliation scene between the pair later on in the episode. Did Molly get over this ordeal? In the last few moments of the episode, we can briefly see her smiling in Baker Street, but are things really A-OK between them? Interestingly, even Sherlock's cast and crew can't agree on this one. Steven Moffat thinks she easily got over it while actress Louise Brealey disagrees and thinks it would have left an emotional scar. 3) How Exactly Does Eurus "Recruit" People? While Sherlock is pretty damn smart and Mycroft is even more remarkable, their evil sister Eurus is said to be on another level entirely. Apparently, her mental prowess was professionally tested and she was described as an "era-defining genius." Pity she's a bad guy, ain't it? Her sheer brain power gives her the ability to "recruit" people - simply talk them into doing her bidding. This allows her to take control of Sherrinford and enact her revenge plan against her brothers. In effect, it acts like a form of super-charged hypnotism, but doesn't seem to affect higher-minded people like her brothers or Moriarty. "The Final Problem" asks us to accept this power at face value, but we really would have liked it to be explained a little bit. Is Sherlock falling back on the old "we only use 10% of our brain" myth? Like Matilda and Scarlet Johanson's Lucy before her, does Eurus possess superpowers because she's 'unlocked' extra portions of her brain? 2) How Much Of This Episode Had Been Pre-Planned? The revelations of "The Final Problem" turn our view of Sherlock's character on its head. Previously, we'd been led to believe that his big childhood tragedy was the loss of his dog Redbeard - but it's here revealed that this was his young mind covering up the fact that his best friend Victor was murdered at five years old. It's a shocking twist - but we have to wonder how much of it had been in the works and how much developed as it went along? Certainly writers Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss knew they were going to introduce a third Holmes sibling by the end of season 3 - as Mycroft oft-handedly mentions "the other one" in that season's finale "His Last Vow." However, there isn't anything in that season to suggest that Redbeard is anything other than a dog, or that Sherlock has gaps in his memory, so that seems to have popped into Moffat and Gatiss' heads later on. One small moment from way back in 2012's "A Scandal in Belgravia" does suggest there was at least a vague plan all along. That's because at one point, Mycroft mentions to John that Sherlock used to want to be a pirate. The camera then stays on him as his expression slips into sorrow. This can only be a reference to the fact that something terrible happened in Sherlock's childhood. 1) Will Sherlock Return? Mary's posthumous monologue to Sherlock and John ends the finale with a touching speech about how their adventures will continue forever - the implication is that, even if Cumberbatch and Freeman don't return to these roles again, there will always be stories about Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. But will there be more Sherlock? Going by comments from the writers and the stars (or even dubious tabloid rumours), it seems that genuinely no one knows for sure as it all depends on whether they can all make time for another season. Perhaps a better question, then, would be if Sherlock should come back. After all, now that his past has been unearthed and his journey from high-functioning sociopath to hero is pretty much complete, is there even any story left to tell? The show's worldwide fanbase will certainly be hoping so, but for now, it looks like we'll just have to wait and see.