His Last Vow

"His Last Vow"
Series 03, Episode 03
General Information
Air Date:	12 January, 2014
Writer:	Steven Moffat
Director:	Nick Hurran
Viewers:	8.8 million
Previous:	"The Sign of Three"
Next:	TBA

"His Last Vow" is the third and final episode of series three of Sherlock. It was written by Steven Moffat and directed by Nick Hurran.

It was first broadcast on 12 January, 2014 on BBC One in the UK and on 2 February, 2014 on PBS Masterpiece in the USA.

Summary

In the final episode of this series, a case of stolen letters leads Sherlock Holmes into a long conflict with Charles Augustus Magnussen, the Napoleon of blackmail, and the one man he truly hates.

Plot

Charles Augustus Magnussen is being questioned by several high-ranking Government officials about his frequent meetings with the Prime Minister. He later meets Lady Elizabeth Smallwood, one of the officials, and blackmails her using information about her husband's past. She reluctantly obliges, and on her way home, decides to seek the services of Sherlock Holmes. 

John Watson wakes up in the morning beside his wife Mary. A distressed neighbour comes to them to ask for help regarding her drug-addicted son, who did not return home the previous night. John and Mary drive to the drug-den, with John finding the son, and surprisingly, also an undercover Sherlock. John is mad at Sherlock for abusing drugs (which Sherlock denies doing and insists that he is working undercover on a case) and not contacting him for a month after the wedding. They go to Bart's, along with the door guard who John injured but thought his arm was broken. There Molly tests Sherlock's urine for drugs and repeatedly slaps him for his reckless behavior. They all realise that the drug-den door guard, Bill Wiggins has impressive skills in deduction.

Back at the apartment, Anderson helps John search for drugs, much to Sherlock's annoyance. Mycroft realises that Sherlock is working against Charles Augustus Magnussen, a newspaper owner who blackmails people, and warns him not to. Sherlock is adamant and plans to meet Magnussen; however, his plan does not work out the way he wants it to. Magnussen visits Baker Street to intimidate Sherlock and refuses to enter negotiations over Lady Smallwood's stolen letters, and is careful to make Sherlock aware that he knows of "Redbeard", but avoids elaborating. The business magnate deliberately urinates in the fireplace, largely to show that he can.

John is also baffled to find Sherlock in a relationship with Mary's bridesmaid, Janine, until he learns that Janine is Magnussen's personal assistant and the liaison a ruse. Using her help, Sherlock and John break into Magnussen's apartment, only to find that Janine and a guard are unconscious. Sherlock goes upstairs to investigate, but is shocked to find Mary holding Magnussen at gunpoint. Mary shoots Sherlock, who harnesses all his mental powers to stay conscious, including remembering his childhood dog, the mysterious "Redbeard", who was put down. He is taken to the hospital. In his mind palace he is fighting to stay conscious through the pain while Moriarty mocks him. In the real world, Sherlock's vitals are dropping. His heart stops beating in surgery, and the doctors fail to revive him. When his "mind palace-self" fights back back and escapes Moriarty,  his real world self makes a come back.  He wakes up in surgery and mutters "Mary". The next morning (only hours later) John announces to Mary that Sherlock is stabilised. Mary visits the stabilised, yet in critical condition Sherlock, and tells him to keep the shooting incident between them.  

Janine realises that Sherlock used her and retaliates by turning down his pain medication and talking to tabloids. She visits Sherlock, the afternoon after the shooting, to taunt him, now that he has stabilized and conscious. John begins to suspect something about Mary. John brings Lestrade to the hospital, to question Sherlock about the shooting.

Sherlock runs away from the hospital and arranges a confrontation with Mary, who confesses to having a past as a secret agent and assassin, for which Magnussen is blackmailing her. It is also confirmed she intentionally shot Sherlock in a non-lethal spot and called an ambulance, and she says she is desperate to keep John in the dark as she loves him. John, however, witnessed the conversation and is in turmoil.

Back at Baker Street, Sherlock points out to John that he is addicted to a dangerous lifestyle and was most probably attracted to Mary because of her hidden past. The three talk, and Mary gives John a memory stick containing information on her, marked with her true initials. The stick is labelled "A. G. R. A". She also tells him the contents will destroy his love for her. Sherlock then proves that Mary had called London "999" before John, when Paramedics appear after being told that there was a shooting. Sherlock refers to a shooting that happened prior. With the paramedics present, Sherlock faints from pain from hypovolemia, and is treated on the scene. In the apartment, while the paramedics restart Sherlock's heart, at his request, John thinks over what Mary and Sherlock had explained to him. On Christmas, after sitting on the memory stick for a few months, John decides to destroy it without reading it and to love Mary regardless, much to her relief.

The couple spends Christmas with the Holmes brothers (and Wiggins as well) at their parents'. Sherlock drugs everyone, with the help of Wiggins except John and takes him to Magnussen's country property, Appledore, which is supposed to contain his blackmailing archive. During their confrontation, Magnussen explains his purpose in putting pressure on Mary was to arrive at Mycroft via John and Sherlock. Magnussen also reveals he was the one who had John abducted and hidden in a bonfire (in "The Empty Hearse") in order to confirm that John is Sherlock's "pressure point". Sherlock offers to buy Magnussen's information on Mary with the state secrets contained in Mycroft's laptop, but he realises immediately Sherlock is setting up a trap: security services looking for the laptop will raid his vaults, find their contents and arrest him as a blackmailer. However, Magnussen triumphantly reveals that this plan can't work because Appledore's vaults don't physically exist, but are instead his mind palace. By giving Magnussen Mycroft's laptop, Sherlock and John are now guilty of attempting to sell government secrets and can be imprisoned for high treason, whereas Magnussen remains legally untouchable.

To pass the time until Mycroft's government forces arrive, he demonstrates his control over Sherlock and John by taunting them while repeatedly flicking John's face. When Mycroft and the police arrive, a distraught Sherlock shoots Magnussen in the head knowing its the only way to free them and everyone else from his power. 

Sometime later, Mycroft convinces the government to spare Sherlock a trial and, as an alternative punishment, press him into a highly dangerous MI6 mission to Eastern Europe. John and Mary fondly bid goodbye to Sherlock thinking that it is their last encounter, and Sherlock boards the plane. However, within minutes TV screens all over England are hacked to broadcast a loop of Jim Moriarty asking "Did you miss me?" Thus Sherlock is asked to return.

Allusions

• The title of this episode refers to the Sherlock Holmes story, His Last Bow.
• The character of Charles Augustus Magnussen is based upon Charles Augustus Milverton from the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle story, The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton.
• When Janine mentions she purchased a cottage on the Sussex Downs (and there are bees), this is an allusion towards His Last Bow and The Adventure of the Lion's Mane, in which Sherlock has since retired to a small cottage, and has taken up bee-keeping.
• The beginning of the episode is taken almost verbatim from The Man with the Twisted Lip.
• Mary's true initials (A.G.R.A) is a reference to the treasure of Agra in The Sign Of Four, in which Mary is first introduced.
• The name of Sherlock's "protegé", Billy Wiggins, is a combination of the names of two helper characters from the books: Billy from "The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone" and Wiggins, one of the Baker Street Irregulars who helped Holmes during multiple cases including "A Study in Scarlet".
• Sherlock calls Magnussen "the Napoleon of blackmail", an allusion to Doyle's Sherlock calling Moriarty "the Napoleon of Crime" in The Final Problem.
• The allusion of Mary Morston, wife of John Watson having had a previous life with a previous identity deliberately kept secret from her husband echoes the life of Mrs Elsie Cubitt in The Adventure of the Dancing Men.
• In the closing dialogue of the episode, a story Mycroft told Sherlock about "the East wind" during their childhood, is similar to a ending speech from "His Last Bow".

Trivia

• This episode starts in June, and ends during Christmas of 2014.

• When John retrieves the tire iron from his car before entering the smack-house, there is a billboard behind him. The middle portion of the billboard has been torn down, revealing the old advertisement underneath. The combination of the new and old signs now read, "Information is power." This is the main plot of this story, as one man uses information to maintain power over the world via blackmail.
• Sherlock says he won the properties in Leinster Gardens from the Clarence House cannibal: "Quite a gambler, that woman." Until her death, Clarence House was the official residence of the Queen Mother, who was a very keen gambler.
• When Sherlock was falling backwards, in the background of the shot, a plant moves across the room as if the room is tilting. Production designer Arwel Jones has said at least twice on his Twitter account that the plant was moved to give the effect that the room was spinning.
• Young Sherlock is played by Louis Moffat, son of writer Steven Moffat and producer Sue Vertue.
• In the credits of the episode on Masterpiece Mystery on PBS, some of the letters were highlighted red. Letters from this episode spells out M-I-L-V-E-R-T-O-N, a reference to the "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton" which is a significant source of inspiration for this episode.
• "His Last Vow" was the most tweeted about single episode of a drama series ever.

Errors

• After Magnussen's visit, Watson puts knocker tilted to the left, but in the last frame in that scene just when Sherlock's taxi leaves, the knocker is straight again.
• In the scene in the lab where they're testing Sherlock for drugs, Sherlock's arm are folded in some scenes and down in some.
• The helicopter that Sherlock and John use to go to Magnussen's house and Mycroft uses when the Police raids the house has the same registry number (G-VGMG).
• When Sherlock goes to access the elevator, he simply touches his access card to the reader like an embedded RFID tag instead of swiping or inserting the card through a slot, which is how a magnetic stripe reader would operate.If the elevator uses an RFID proximity reader, a phone wouldn't corrupt an embedded RFID tag.
• When Sherlock falls to his back, some kind of support beams appear visible behind his shoe heels.
• When the surgeons revive Sherlock, the string holding his breathing tube changes positions multiple times.
• When Sherlock is being rushed to the hospital, when the paramedic rips open his shirt the body has body hair, but all the following scenes show a hairless chest.

Cast

• Benedict Cumberbatch – Sherlock Holmes
• Martin Freeman – John Watson
• Mark Gatiss – Mycroft Holmes
• Rupert Graves – Greg Lestrade
• Una Stubbs – Mrs Hudson
• Amanda Abbington – Mary Morstan
• Louise Brealey – Molly Hooper

• Andrew Scott – Jim Moriarty
• Jonathan Aris – Anderson
• Lindsay Duncan – Lady Smallwood
• Yasmine Akram – Janine
• Tom Brooke – Bill Wiggins
• Wanda Ventham – Mrs Holmes
• Timothy Carlton – Mr Holmes
• Calvin Demba – Isaac Whitney
• Tim Wallers – John Garvie
• Glen Davies – Chauffeur
• Brigid Zengeni – Kate Whitney
• Matthew Wilson – Security Man
• Louis Moffat – Little Sherlock
• David Newman – Medic
• Simon Kunz – Sir Edwin
• Katherine Jakeways – Benji
• Will Ashcroft – Club Waiter
• Ged Forrest – Security Guard
• Jamie Jarvis – Surgeon
• Lars Mikkelsen – Charles Magnussen

Videos

SHERLOCK S3E3- HIS LAST VOW TRAILER

The cast discuss Charles Augustus Magnussen - Sherlock- Series 3 Episode 3 - BBC One