Discussion Post: Mary and John in “His Last Vow”
For just the squeeing, please see this post. And now for a little discussion of Mary and John-related things in this episode:
A month?!
This is a point on which I would like clarification from someone who has studied it more: Has John been ignoring Sherlock for a month, or has Sherlock just not contacted John because Sherlock’s been on a case? On the one hand, Sherlock and Mary have been in contact regarding John’s weight and how long it’s been. On the other hand, when John confronts Sherlock in the drug den, he yells, “A month. That’s all it took. One.” Is he talking about the amount of time it took from John going out of contact to Sherlock doing drugs again? Either way I don’t like it.
Explaining Mary
Mary shooting Sherlock is a scene I find hard to watch, despite the Sherlock whump capacity. Her logic makes me really sad. She shoots Sherlock to buy herself time to negotiate Sherlock’s silence in keeping her past a secret from John. She could have shot Magnussen and then explained or said, “You just have to trust me, I’ll explain later,” to Sherlock, but she couldn’t because then John (or Sherlock) would be a suspect in shooting Magnussen. (John’s not going to be a suspect in shooting Sherlock.) That’s why Mary asks Sherlock if John’s in the building.
Better yet, though, she should have trusted her husband and his partner from the very start. The fact that she didn’t is...extremely saddening, to say the least. But maybe she felt she couldn’t take that risk that her child’s daddy would walk out on her. Because make no mistake: if John finds out and Sherlock isn’t on Mary’s side, John is gone from her life. John makes that very clear by downgrading her to “client” status. “This is where you sit and talk, and this is where we sit and listen, then we decide if we want you or not.” Ouch.
So I think she shoots Sherlock to show him she is dead serious about protecting her life as it is now, and I think they’re friends again at the end of the episode because he sees that and he knows that if he were in her shoes, he’d be just as determined. He’s deadly serious about protecting John as well (as we see). (Plus, I find the scene where Mary visits Sherlock in hospital really sexy. That soft, sing-songy way she says, “Sherlock” at the beginning. That scene is very similar to the way Irene talked to Sherlock when he was drugged: “Look at me.”/“I...said...drop it.” Women Sherlock loves are always trying to get Sherlock to do things by incapacitating him, and he always ends up doing what they want in the end and loving them eternally despite that. I’m calling it: sub!Sherlock is canon.)
Sherlock breaks out of the hospital a week after being shot to basically fix John and Mary. He wants to be there when it happens because he’s married into and invested in this relationship as well. I’m also pretty touched that they don’t mind Mrs. Hudson being there.
“John can’t ever know that I lied to him. It would break him, and I would lose him forever, and Sherlock, I will never let that happen.” Those words were spoken by Mary, but you can see that Sherlock completely understands that motivation. It’s exactly what he did to John with the Fall, and he sees that now, and at the time he was so grateful to Mary for helping him recover John’s trust so that he didn’t lose John forever. And that’s why Sherlock becomes friends with Mary again and takes her case and argues on her behalf to John, just as Mary had done for him. They also both befriend Janine to get to Magnussen. The parallels between Sherlock and Mary could not possibly be drawn stronger in this series.
Explaining John
And now regarding John. Not going to lie, at first I hated John in this episode. I wanted to strangle him. I was mad at him this entire series, to be honest. But that’s not a new thing: I often get angry on Sherlock’s behalf because Sherlock doesn’t defend himself when it comes to John.
I was mad that John was a terrible doctor in this series when it comes to Sherlock and Mary, not seeing her pregnancy and his pain and bleeding and drug addiction-even Mrs. Hudson could tell, and she’s not a doctor. (EDIT: All right, mildredandrobbin has written a good explanation for John in that scene when he and Sherlock confront Mary in 221B that satisfies me a bit more). I was mad we didn’t get much comfort with the (frankly fabulous) Sherlock whump. I was furious that John can’t see what’s right under his face: that Sherlock loves him so much he’s been willing to sacrifice everything for John’s continued happiness some three times over. I was disgusted that John promised nothing would change between them and yet apparently hasn’t bothered to check up on him for a month. It got so bad that Sherlock moved John’s chair away (couldn’t look at it anymore, couldn’t stand to see someone else in it) and started doing drugs again (“for a case,” sure, but couldn’t Sherlock have picked a fake vice that didn’t hit so close to home? “For a case” sounds so much like a tacked-on excuse. No, he wanted to do drugs again because he was depressed).
But I wasn’t that hurt by John’s apparent lack of emotion in the airplane scene. First of all, I think John does show his emotion there by not being able to talk about it. That’s just how he and Sherlock work. But also I think we got John’s reaction right after Sherlock shot Magnussen-cursing, hyperventilating, his look of shocked realization of what Sherlock’s done for him. And I don’t for one minute believe that Mycroft ever intended for Sherlock to be sent away, and certainly not to his death! That’s frankly laughable. Nor, I think, did Sherlock expect to truly be sent away; he just put on a show for Mycroft, who was putting on a show for the government. This is how the Holmes brothers work. And I think it’s a possibility that Mycroft engineered the Moriarty video to get Sherlock back immediately.
If Sherlock managed to cajole a little extra emotion out of John by pretending he’s never seeing him again, then all for the better for Sherlock’s ego, but he’s already got what he needed from John (and so did I, to be honest). Sherlock really wants John’s daughter to be named after him, and this is just the kind of manipulative stunt he would pull to get that concession. But I don’t think John ever considered it a real possibility that Sherlock might even go away for very long, much less die. Why should he, when the one time he did see Sherlock die, Sherlock came back from the dead after two years? I wonder how messed up psychologically this is going to make John when Sherlock does actually die (a long, long time from now in old age). But no, I don’t want to ever speculate on that. I can’t even handle old-age fics.
Then John says, “The game is over” not because Sherlock’s leaving but because they’re discussing John and Mary’s daughter. The game is over because of the baby; John feels they can’t do their crime-solving if there’s a baby involved. Sherlock disagrees. Sherlock will make it work. I think both Sherlock and Mary will make it work because they’re both capable of giving John the excitement he needs as a danger junkie, and we can’t have John packing on the pounds. We’ll just have to see about this one and whether the baby will actually happen or not. And what her name will be. :)
Anyway, even if I didn’t need it because the situation was clearly engineered, I’ll admit to feeling that frustration when Sherlock essentially begs John to hug him at the airport-he says twice to John that this is probably the last time they’ll see each other. Twice. And then Sherlock remembers, “Oh, right, John is like this, how could I forget,” and gives him the option of coldly shaking his hand instead. And John gratefully takes it. Because John is not comfortable with expressing physical emotion in public. The only time he has hugged Sherlock in this entire show has been when it was basically societally mandated to do so: after a fantastic Best Man’s speech.
And on that note, I was frustrated at John’s continued denial and hypocricy when it comes to the relationships in his life. One line stands out in particular: “She wasn’t supposed to be like that. Why is she like that?” UGH, John, because just because society tells you what to do (“go out, find a nice, normal woman, and settle down”) doesn’t mean that it will actually happen just like that. Your conscious and your subconscious are not in agreement with what you need from life.
But upon reflection and re-watching this episode, I beg of you to have a care for John and not rush to judgment. Sherlock’s high on heroin or morphine this whole episode; well, John is also a bit preoccupied. He’s had two nasty shocks this series where the two loves of his life have lied to him, but it’s almost worse with Mary than with Sherlock because of the whole baby angle; his head is spinning with the realization that he’s about to have a baby with a woman he does not know at all.
Mary’s pregnancy is preying on John’s mind constantly in this episode. (Well, how could it not?) He doesn’t want her to even drive him to the crack den because she’s pregnant. (She points out that it’s just as ridiculous for him to go and that she’s scared for him, too.) When John confronts her, she’s not just his lying wife, she’s also the woman who is carrying his child, to use his words. If I were a more cynical person, I might suggest that Mary deliberately got pregnant just to elicit this kind of reaction, cementing her connection to John even if he were to find out about her past. If I were a more cynical person. *ahem*
I think what people have to realize with this show is that the seasons are not contained within themselves. It is most definitely a slow, long-form exploration of all the members of a little extended family, and specifically the glue that holds it together (Sherlock). But where this Sherlock differs from basically all the rest of the adaptations is that its John Watson is just as complicated as Sherlock, and John is being developed as well.
So two things to keep in mind: (1) this show is ongoing and needs drama and things to be wrong in order to progress, and (2) YES, there is something wrong with John. We are told that. You are supposed to notice.
“There is nothing the matter with me! Imagine I said that without shouting.” (Right after this scene, John passes a billboard that says, “The Power to Change.” Just sayin’.)
The characterization of John in this series was, I believe (and hope) a deliberate choice to show a man who is busy denying who he truly is. To just recap my previous post on this, here’s what he thinks he is:
That is quite the disconnect.
But the way John reacts to Irene being in Sherlock’s life and then Janine being in Sherlock’s life, together with the way John acts when drunk: these are not the ways a platonic bro reacts to finding out his friend is getting some. John’s even a little jealous that “Mary” is the first word Sherlock says when he wakes up. You can see how much John wants to live back at Baker Street with Sherlock. He’s horrified at finding Janine there, he’s horrified that the coffee is in a different place now, he’s preturbed that his chair has disappeared. He can’t focus on Sherlock’s lovely case because he’s obsessed with his jealousy and the horror of a double date with a man he considers his alone.
And John does develop in this series. He is slowly coming to accept more parts of himself as he sees them reflected in those he loves the most. He’s starting to accept the fact that he attracts people who are a bit not good...and that deep down he likes it.
John basically gives Mary a version of the “It’s all fine” speech: “The problems of your past are your business. The problems of your future are my priviledge.” I teared up at that one. That makes up for his interrupted proposal, I think. And I think both Mary and Sherlock don’t want John knowing the deepest, most messed up parts of them, the past with drugs and the CIA or whatever. This is why Sherlock probably won’t ever tell John what happened with him in Serbia and while world-traveling post-Reichenbach: he genuinely doesn’t want John to know. Because it doesn’t affect their relationship. It’s the same with John and Mary. She wants a clean slate with her husband and baby and new profession and new name. (Though I love to read stories in which John does find out what Sherlock was up to.)
Anyway, I implore fandom to (1) fix John in fanfics, and (2) have some faith in the writers, and give him time in canon. Give him lots of time. An identity crisis is not an easy thing to fix, and John’s life is extremely complicated. (And if there’s a baby, about to become even moreso.) But please don’t write him off or just assume it’s bad writing. Something is happening here. Let’s let it play out.
EDIT: Some other metas on John in “His Last Vow” I recommend reading that each give different perspectives:
-prettyarbitrary’s view of HLV (and also this one)
-loudest-subtext-in-television’s First Blush: HLV and Johnlock, a fantastic meta about what’s going through John’s head throughout the entire show, and then this post about how John is conscious he’s in love with Sherlock (not the initial conclusion I came to, but makes a ton of sense)-ah, hell, just read their meta masterlist; all of them are gold
-xistentialangst’s Penance: Sherlock in S3
-acafanmom’s John post
-anarmydoctor’s “The East Wind” about John and the war
-earlgreytea68’s response as a writer
-ivyblossom’s reasoned answer to a question and What Would It Take? post about getting Sherlock and John together
-mid0nz’s No More Danger Nights
-drinkingcocoa’s Starring Sherlock Holmes as Irene Adler
-sunshine304’s His Last Vow
A month?!
This is a point on which I would like clarification from someone who has studied it more: Has John been ignoring Sherlock for a month, or has Sherlock just not contacted John because Sherlock’s been on a case? On the one hand, Sherlock and Mary have been in contact regarding John’s weight and how long it’s been. On the other hand, when John confronts Sherlock in the drug den, he yells, “A month. That’s all it took. One.” Is he talking about the amount of time it took from John going out of contact to Sherlock doing drugs again? Either way I don’t like it.
Explaining Mary
Mary shooting Sherlock is a scene I find hard to watch, despite the Sherlock whump capacity. Her logic makes me really sad. She shoots Sherlock to buy herself time to negotiate Sherlock’s silence in keeping her past a secret from John. She could have shot Magnussen and then explained or said, “You just have to trust me, I’ll explain later,” to Sherlock, but she couldn’t because then John (or Sherlock) would be a suspect in shooting Magnussen. (John’s not going to be a suspect in shooting Sherlock.) That’s why Mary asks Sherlock if John’s in the building.
Better yet, though, she should have trusted her husband and his partner from the very start. The fact that she didn’t is...extremely saddening, to say the least. But maybe she felt she couldn’t take that risk that her child’s daddy would walk out on her. Because make no mistake: if John finds out and Sherlock isn’t on Mary’s side, John is gone from her life. John makes that very clear by downgrading her to “client” status. “This is where you sit and talk, and this is where we sit and listen, then we decide if we want you or not.” Ouch.
So I think she shoots Sherlock to show him she is dead serious about protecting her life as it is now, and I think they’re friends again at the end of the episode because he sees that and he knows that if he were in her shoes, he’d be just as determined. He’s deadly serious about protecting John as well (as we see). (Plus, I find the scene where Mary visits Sherlock in hospital really sexy. That soft, sing-songy way she says, “Sherlock” at the beginning. That scene is very similar to the way Irene talked to Sherlock when he was drugged: “Look at me.”/“I...said...drop it.” Women Sherlock loves are always trying to get Sherlock to do things by incapacitating him, and he always ends up doing what they want in the end and loving them eternally despite that. I’m calling it: sub!Sherlock is canon.)
Sherlock breaks out of the hospital a week after being shot to basically fix John and Mary. He wants to be there when it happens because he’s married into and invested in this relationship as well. I’m also pretty touched that they don’t mind Mrs. Hudson being there.
“John can’t ever know that I lied to him. It would break him, and I would lose him forever, and Sherlock, I will never let that happen.” Those words were spoken by Mary, but you can see that Sherlock completely understands that motivation. It’s exactly what he did to John with the Fall, and he sees that now, and at the time he was so grateful to Mary for helping him recover John’s trust so that he didn’t lose John forever. And that’s why Sherlock becomes friends with Mary again and takes her case and argues on her behalf to John, just as Mary had done for him. They also both befriend Janine to get to Magnussen. The parallels between Sherlock and Mary could not possibly be drawn stronger in this series.
Explaining John
And now regarding John. Not going to lie, at first I hated John in this episode. I wanted to strangle him. I was mad at him this entire series, to be honest. But that’s not a new thing: I often get angry on Sherlock’s behalf because Sherlock doesn’t defend himself when it comes to John.
I was mad that John was a terrible doctor in this series when it comes to Sherlock and Mary, not seeing her pregnancy and his pain and bleeding and drug addiction-even Mrs. Hudson could tell, and she’s not a doctor. (EDIT: All right, mildredandrobbin has written a good explanation for John in that scene when he and Sherlock confront Mary in 221B that satisfies me a bit more). I was mad we didn’t get much comfort with the (frankly fabulous) Sherlock whump. I was furious that John can’t see what’s right under his face: that Sherlock loves him so much he’s been willing to sacrifice everything for John’s continued happiness some three times over. I was disgusted that John promised nothing would change between them and yet apparently hasn’t bothered to check up on him for a month. It got so bad that Sherlock moved John’s chair away (couldn’t look at it anymore, couldn’t stand to see someone else in it) and started doing drugs again (“for a case,” sure, but couldn’t Sherlock have picked a fake vice that didn’t hit so close to home? “For a case” sounds so much like a tacked-on excuse. No, he wanted to do drugs again because he was depressed).
But I wasn’t that hurt by John’s apparent lack of emotion in the airplane scene. First of all, I think John does show his emotion there by not being able to talk about it. That’s just how he and Sherlock work. But also I think we got John’s reaction right after Sherlock shot Magnussen-cursing, hyperventilating, his look of shocked realization of what Sherlock’s done for him. And I don’t for one minute believe that Mycroft ever intended for Sherlock to be sent away, and certainly not to his death! That’s frankly laughable. Nor, I think, did Sherlock expect to truly be sent away; he just put on a show for Mycroft, who was putting on a show for the government. This is how the Holmes brothers work. And I think it’s a possibility that Mycroft engineered the Moriarty video to get Sherlock back immediately.
If Sherlock managed to cajole a little extra emotion out of John by pretending he’s never seeing him again, then all for the better for Sherlock’s ego, but he’s already got what he needed from John (and so did I, to be honest). Sherlock really wants John’s daughter to be named after him, and this is just the kind of manipulative stunt he would pull to get that concession. But I don’t think John ever considered it a real possibility that Sherlock might even go away for very long, much less die. Why should he, when the one time he did see Sherlock die, Sherlock came back from the dead after two years? I wonder how messed up psychologically this is going to make John when Sherlock does actually die (a long, long time from now in old age). But no, I don’t want to ever speculate on that. I can’t even handle old-age fics.
Then John says, “The game is over” not because Sherlock’s leaving but because they’re discussing John and Mary’s daughter. The game is over because of the baby; John feels they can’t do their crime-solving if there’s a baby involved. Sherlock disagrees. Sherlock will make it work. I think both Sherlock and Mary will make it work because they’re both capable of giving John the excitement he needs as a danger junkie, and we can’t have John packing on the pounds. We’ll just have to see about this one and whether the baby will actually happen or not. And what her name will be. :)
Anyway, even if I didn’t need it because the situation was clearly engineered, I’ll admit to feeling that frustration when Sherlock essentially begs John to hug him at the airport-he says twice to John that this is probably the last time they’ll see each other. Twice. And then Sherlock remembers, “Oh, right, John is like this, how could I forget,” and gives him the option of coldly shaking his hand instead. And John gratefully takes it. Because John is not comfortable with expressing physical emotion in public. The only time he has hugged Sherlock in this entire show has been when it was basically societally mandated to do so: after a fantastic Best Man’s speech.
And on that note, I was frustrated at John’s continued denial and hypocricy when it comes to the relationships in his life. One line stands out in particular: “She wasn’t supposed to be like that. Why is she like that?” UGH, John, because just because society tells you what to do (“go out, find a nice, normal woman, and settle down”) doesn’t mean that it will actually happen just like that. Your conscious and your subconscious are not in agreement with what you need from life.
But upon reflection and re-watching this episode, I beg of you to have a care for John and not rush to judgment. Sherlock’s high on heroin or morphine this whole episode; well, John is also a bit preoccupied. He’s had two nasty shocks this series where the two loves of his life have lied to him, but it’s almost worse with Mary than with Sherlock because of the whole baby angle; his head is spinning with the realization that he’s about to have a baby with a woman he does not know at all.
Mary’s pregnancy is preying on John’s mind constantly in this episode. (Well, how could it not?) He doesn’t want her to even drive him to the crack den because she’s pregnant. (She points out that it’s just as ridiculous for him to go and that she’s scared for him, too.) When John confronts her, she’s not just his lying wife, she’s also the woman who is carrying his child, to use his words. If I were a more cynical person, I might suggest that Mary deliberately got pregnant just to elicit this kind of reaction, cementing her connection to John even if he were to find out about her past. If I were a more cynical person. *ahem*
I think what people have to realize with this show is that the seasons are not contained within themselves. It is most definitely a slow, long-form exploration of all the members of a little extended family, and specifically the glue that holds it together (Sherlock). But where this Sherlock differs from basically all the rest of the adaptations is that its John Watson is just as complicated as Sherlock, and John is being developed as well.
So two things to keep in mind: (1) this show is ongoing and needs drama and things to be wrong in order to progress, and (2) YES, there is something wrong with John. We are told that. You are supposed to notice.
“There is nothing the matter with me! Imagine I said that without shouting.” (Right after this scene, John passes a billboard that says, “The Power to Change.” Just sayin’.)
The characterization of John in this series was, I believe (and hope) a deliberate choice to show a man who is busy denying who he truly is. To just recap my previous post on this, here’s what he thinks he is:
- a straight ex-army doctor
- who wants a wife, a family, a peaceful home, and the occasional dangerous spat where he gets to kick a bit of ass
- a stereotypical male who hates to outwardly show his feelings.
- a straight-ish scary motherfucker doctor-soldier adrenaline/danger junkie
- who attracts and is attracted to people who fancy themselves sociopaths (but aren’t)
- so in love with his male ex-flatmate that he can’t even consciously face it
- a deep romantic at heart.
That is quite the disconnect.
But the way John reacts to Irene being in Sherlock’s life and then Janine being in Sherlock’s life, together with the way John acts when drunk: these are not the ways a platonic bro reacts to finding out his friend is getting some. John’s even a little jealous that “Mary” is the first word Sherlock says when he wakes up. You can see how much John wants to live back at Baker Street with Sherlock. He’s horrified at finding Janine there, he’s horrified that the coffee is in a different place now, he’s preturbed that his chair has disappeared. He can’t focus on Sherlock’s lovely case because he’s obsessed with his jealousy and the horror of a double date with a man he considers his alone.
And John does develop in this series. He is slowly coming to accept more parts of himself as he sees them reflected in those he loves the most. He’s starting to accept the fact that he attracts people who are a bit not good...and that deep down he likes it.
John basically gives Mary a version of the “It’s all fine” speech: “The problems of your past are your business. The problems of your future are my priviledge.” I teared up at that one. That makes up for his interrupted proposal, I think. And I think both Mary and Sherlock don’t want John knowing the deepest, most messed up parts of them, the past with drugs and the CIA or whatever. This is why Sherlock probably won’t ever tell John what happened with him in Serbia and while world-traveling post-Reichenbach: he genuinely doesn’t want John to know. Because it doesn’t affect their relationship. It’s the same with John and Mary. She wants a clean slate with her husband and baby and new profession and new name. (Though I love to read stories in which John does find out what Sherlock was up to.)
Anyway, I implore fandom to (1) fix John in fanfics, and (2) have some faith in the writers, and give him time in canon. Give him lots of time. An identity crisis is not an easy thing to fix, and John’s life is extremely complicated. (And if there’s a baby, about to become even moreso.) But please don’t write him off or just assume it’s bad writing. Something is happening here. Let’s let it play out.
EDIT: Some other metas on John in “His Last Vow” I recommend reading that each give different perspectives:
-prettyarbitrary’s view of HLV (and also this one)
-loudest-subtext-in-television’s First Blush: HLV and Johnlock, a fantastic meta about what’s going through John’s head throughout the entire show, and then this post about how John is conscious he’s in love with Sherlock (not the initial conclusion I came to, but makes a ton of sense)-ah, hell, just read their meta masterlist; all of them are gold
-xistentialangst’s Penance: Sherlock in S3
-acafanmom’s John post
-anarmydoctor’s “The East Wind” about John and the war
-earlgreytea68’s response as a writer
-ivyblossom’s reasoned answer to a question and What Would It Take? post about getting Sherlock and John together
-mid0nz’s No More Danger Nights
-drinkingcocoa’s Starring Sherlock Holmes as Irene Adler
-sunshine304’s His Last Vow