The Empty Hearse

Welcome back! You guys have been missed!

The episode opened with an explanation of how it happened. My reaction was, "wow, that's quick." I can't be the only one who was expecting the mystery to be dragged on throughout the episode, maybe even the whole season. Almost too quick. This is a trick... But, I wouldn't put it past Moffat to do this, open the episode with the how and just get it out of the way. And then, I thought, well this is too much. I mean, with the dummy and the bungee jumping, and kissing Molly; it's outrageous! BUT, still wouldn't put it past Moffat to write something like that (mind you, this is before the opening credits so I didn't know that it was actually Mark Gatiss who wrote "The Empty Hearse"). Of course it was fake! (Or was it?! Hmm...)

And, of course, it had to be Mycroft who found him. Yes, it was explained later that Mycroft has always known that Sherlock's death is faked; Mycroft actually helped the plan. But I wouldn't put it past the two of them to actually fake one's own death and have the other figure it out.

As John said, it doesn't really matter *how* Sherlock did it; the most important question is *why*? Apparently, it's to destroy Moriarty's network. And here I thought that it was just two men going against each other intellectually. But, of course, Sherlock does have his own network (the homeless people), so it should have been obvious that Moriarty had one too. I'm gonna need to go back and rewatch season 2 (or maybe season 1 too) to figure it out.

Back to the "how" question, there were, if I remember correctly, three theories presented in the episode; the last of which seemed the most plausible, but they didn't actually say that it was the correct one. Yes, it was Sherlock telling the story, but he might have been explaining it to trick that guy. Sherlock's story included the rubber ball in the armpit bit to stop the pulse at the wrist, like so many fans' theorized. I'm still not convinced that they have told us the real story; we might have to wait until the end of the season. Which is just 8 days from now, so it's not a particularly long wait. Especially after how long they've made us wait since the actually event happened...