What utter teasing fuckers about the third series!
Actually I'm impressed ? Moffat, Gatiss, Cumberbatch and Freeman have all been asked repeatedly about Series 3 and have all managed to give straight-faced equivocal answers all this time.
I thought last night's episode was fab. Genuinely sombre feel, I liked the darkness of the plot strand about 'is he a fraud?' and how easy it is to plant a seed of doubt and watch it grow (and found MYSELF doubting him for a moment!). Loved the scenes between Sherlock and Molly ? Louise Brealey was terrific IMO. In fact everyone was on top form ? Benedict brilliant after being very slightly off his game in 'Hounds', Gatiss and Una Stubbs great, Andrew Scott as Moriarty extraordinary, and of course Martin Freeman. An awful lot of the emotion of the episode was riding on his performance and I thought he was outstanding.
Knew Sherlock wasn't dead when he told Molly he needed her (and, in retrospect, had a little suspicion before that, when he said 'I think I'm going to die' but the momentum and the conviction of the performances carried me along so much that I was STILL on tenterhooks throughout the whole rooftop scene.
Agree that he faked his death with help from Molly, his homeless connections, and possibly others (fake paramedics maybe). I don't know, though, if Moriarty is really dead and if so why? Was he really so tired of 'staying alive' that he preferred to die in the hope that it would provoke Sherlock to kill himself? And did he really believe that Sherlock would kill himself rather than put his friends in danger? For all the growing that Sherlock has done this series, I still don't quite believe that he would ? and clearly he never intended to. Was that Moriarty's fatal mistake? Or is there a bigger story arc that we're not quite seeing at the moment? I still have a little theory that the individual Jim Moriarty is just a representative of a huge, shadowy movement/body code-named 'Moriarty' that will continue to terrorise Sherlock.
V long, so I'll stop now! and re-watch all six episodes