Wild speculation after Agents of SHIELD's latest episode!

Okay, I'd decided that I wasn't going to do episode-by-episode posts because that's too much stress when I'm supposed to be writing one novel and revising another and selling a first one...but guys? I want to talk about this episode. We waited a full freaking month from the last episode, which was already a month after the previous one, and when we finally get back to it, it's the show we've been wanting all along. It was tense, it was intense, everyone was showing emotion and reacting to things, there was a goal that they had to accomplish that required them to work together, and it was done right.

AND THEN! And then at the end it tied directly into the larger Marvel universe in a way that looked awesome, set up the next part of the arc for the rest of the season, hinted about what all this stuff means up until now, AND broadened the MCU before the movies! It was GREAT! And it gives me stuff to mull over, so without further ado:

TAHITI and the Mystery Blue Torso

• My favorite theories that I've seen on Tumblr and FB are: 1) He's a Kree, ancient mortal enemy of the Skrulls, which are basically what the Chitauri are, but from an alternate / ultimates universe. 2) He's Mahr Vehl, an alien super-hero, who could fit right into the future space-ness of the MCU about to start with Guardians of the Galaxy. 3) He's a frost giant, which would maybe account for Coulson's weird emotional state at the end of the ep (though not for his flip-flopping without actually explaining to anyone why...unless that's part of the Tahiti memory block...). 
• Either way, he looks bigger than a regular human dude (and has spike-fingers and no nipples and blue skin), exists as literally half a person, and I have this super-creepy feeling that he's not dead--that he's being kept alive. We're meant to believe that the drug they gave Skye (and, previously Coulson) was FROM this dude, but what if it's actually being fed INTO him, keeping him just alive enough to get information or to dissect him over and over, or to regenerate a whole alien from, like, a scrap that was recovered from a crash or something somewhere?
• This base is not SHIELD. So either Fury strongarmed some secret other group he knows about into helping him save Coulson*, or SHIELD has a lot more layers of secretiveness than any of them previously thought, a whole shadow arm that looks an awful lot like the Hatches on Lost and so I'm basically interpreting on those terms. If it's really not at all SHIELD, who is it? Hydra? Centipede? Some other government's answer to SHIELD? Whatever the bad-guy equivalent would be? OOOH, or the good-guy equivalent, and SHIELD is the badguy??
• Whatever he is, I'm pretty sure Mystery Blue Torso isn't human, which means: What else, that we haven't discovered yet, did the blue stuff do to Coulson? And if Skye really is the possibly non-human Object of Unknown Origin they think she is, what will it do to her? Will it trigger secret powers? Will it turn her into She Hulk or something? Will it make her a Lady Captain America? Will she be some other awesome thing that's waiting in the comics but that hasn't happened yet in the MCU? Will she be something new?
• And does the green light that keeps shining only on Coulson and Skye mean that they're the same and that they're both different?

Lorelei

• Lorelei is one of the great Thor villains! How exciting is that? She's sister of an even greater villain, Amora the Enchantress, which means they now can bring her in, too, and she's super-tangled up with Sif (coming next ep!!!) and with Loki, who we know is now secretly Lord of Asgard, which brings up all sorts of questions for me:
• Did she help Loki and has she been helping him all along?
• Did she manipulate him the way she manipulated that dude in the desert, and if so, what does that mean for our Loki, who has always been the manipulator, not the manipulated, as far as we could tell?
• Did she find out what happened with Loki after the end of Thor 2 and then flee Asgard? Because she looks really recent to the world of man, still wearing her Asgardian clothes and speaking all semi-Shakespearean and all...
• Do we get to have a Loki guest-appearance next season???????
• Is she totally a free agent and has entirely her own plans, complicated up the storyline more?
• Does she have allies on Earth that she's going to meet? If so, are they Asgardian or Frost Giant or some other awesome comic-or-mythology thing?
• Sif is coming after her! Which means people from the movies can now start showing up in the show, FINALLY pulling in those characters and their resources the way they should have been able to all along!
• Sif gets to be the first person who knows that Coulson is still alive, and she probably won't even really realize what it means since I'm pretty sure she didn't know him before he died, unless Thor told her about him.

Simmons and Skye and Fitz and Trip!

• Chloe Bennet has said she wants to see Skye with Simmons, and this Skye-in-a-coma thing gave us a scene where someone who doesn't know anything about them basically observes that Simmons is in love with her, and Simmons basically agreed, and the world imploded on Tumblr for a minute. 
• This episode also gave us more of Fitz's adoration of both Simmons AND Skye, as well as a new emotional level of guilt toward what happened to Skye that could blossom into protectiveness nicely, if it wants to. And more of Action!Fitz, which I always love seeing.
• And it gave us two new characters who already know Ward and are basically his old SHIELD family, and already have a long-standing sort-of rivalry but sort-of understanding with Coulson, and they basically said they'll be back and basically one of them likes Simmons. And she didn't go all frigid or turn him away.
• So now I'm wanting a big multi-directional proper poly relationship between Skye, Simmons, and Fitz, with the occasional visit from Trip to spice things up, because hey, why not?

May had a feel!

• She freaked the fuck out when they said Skye was going to die, and beat the dude responsible to a bloody pulp and had to be physically pulled off of him. It's the first time we've seen her lose control even a little, and it was because of Skye, who she's been cold and distant from this entire time. It might be a weird moment of out of character-ness, but it felt more like she's been being distant because she actually has all sorts of secret feelings**, and she doesn't want them to compromise her--and if that's so, we finally have a reason for her meanness, and some depth to her character!
• She was included when Coulson said "we're her family" and I died and came back to life and died again. If they're Skye's family, then they're all eachother's family, and I'm so flipping happy, because that's what I've been wanting since the beginning, and all the jittering and not fitting together was causing me all sorts of anxiety.

It looks like the rest of the season is going to be a powerhouse! And if it ends really well, any shakiness in the first half suddenly gets recontextualized, and becomes set-up and foreshadowing and necessary pre-conditions for the punch at the end, and then it's all great. And then I fear less for them surviving past season 2, because they will have intentionally hit their stride at just the right moment and can power through the next season.

So what do you think? What are your theories?

NOTES:
* And again, why so much trouble for one guy? Is he already a crazy-big investment that they didn't want to lose, even before he died??
** Motherly feelings?

Twenty(ish) X-Men I'd like to see on screen (even though I probably never will because they're mostly girls)

(it seriously puts me in a specific time-frame that this is what I think of when I think of X-Men)

(also that I have all the comics that, side-by-side, make up this exact picture.)

X-men: Days of Future Past*, as you probably know by now, has approximately 98 characters who are featured enough to have posters out, and that's saying nothing of the Spot The Mutant characters that might be seen off to the side or in crowd shots. We do get Blink, who is one of my favorite characters ever, but she's not the only one I'd like to see in these movies! According to The Internet, the grand total of ALL the X-Men is somewhere around 300, and we've gotten...ten or twenty? A few more in the sidelines, and a lot that seem to have been made up new even though there were so damned many already existing to choose from?

Here's ten I'd like to see:

1. Husk and Chamber - Husk, with the power to pull off her skin and by doing so transform into whatever is needed at the time, and Chamber, made almost 1/3 of psionic energy, are just begging to be in a movie where they could be so cool. Also, if Husk is there, it opens the door for her brother Cannonball--and wasn't there, like, six of those Guthrie children?
2. Jubilee as an actual character with an actual role - Two or three girls have played Jubes, and through almost every incarnation, she's rarely taken seriously, and I think a character who can create pyrotechnics and explosions deserves a little serious, don't you? Plus, in the comics, she and Wolverine had a great friendship, and that would be cool, too.
3. The Cuckoos - Somewhere between three, five and a possible thousand (depending on where in their story you are) clones of Emma Frost who share a group mind and a whole lot of telepathy? Sign me up!
4. Cerise - Shi'ar alien warrior-chick who falls in love with Nightcrawler. And if she comes into the story, you can bet that there's the opportunity for Nightcrawler to come back, too (even if played by someone else), which also brings back the opportunity for that whole Mystique-is-his-mother storyline that I SO MUCH WANT.
5. Synch - One of the Generation X kids like Husk and Chamber, who can match up with and copy other people's powers--I mean, think about the inherent awesomeness of a power like that on-screen, in a big fancy end-of-the-movie fight scene! He could synch with villains, too, and use their powers against them, without the killing-them-or-going-crazy side effect that Rogue has! He doesn't even have to touch them!
6. Shard - We've got Bishop coming up in the movie, so maybe, just maybe we'll get Shard, too (probably to die dramatically and spur him to rebellion or something, tho**)--but I really want to see her as a real character. She's got offensive powers, she's a trained enforcer, she's from the future, and she's the sister of a character that's now movie-cannon. It's getting to be a pet peeve of mine how all the personal interactions and connections keep getting trimmed away*** from the characters we have, and it would be SO NICE if one of them was allowed to stay.
7. Rachel Summers - This one is a possibility, since they've already made the Bad Future cannon, and we're getting Bishop out of it, which leaves the door open for other characters from there, but with how they handled Jean-Phoenix and Cyclops, well...it's hard to exist if your parents died before you were conceived, and we really don't need more complication with that timeline than this next movie is bound to give us! Still she was so much more useful as the Phoenix than Jean was, and so much fun with her violent backstory and heroic future.
8. Widget and Lockheed - The movies are so not the place, so far, for sidekicks, but wouldn't it be awesome to have a trans-dimensional robot-AI and a miniature dragon? I mean, at least Lockheed, since we've got Shadowcat!
9. Joseph - Either as a second role for Fassbender OR as a separately-acted character, depending on how they handle the story, I just think it would be awesome to have another Magneto around, especially one who has complete amnesia and doesn't know / remember that horrible and traumatic past that made Magneto who he is. Especially especially if the regular Magneto, old or young, was still around!
10. Jean Grey Clones - Okay, we got Jean dying because she was getting ready to destroy everything (even though we didn't get the part where she devours a sun and kills a whole planet of aliens, alerting the intergalactic characters I'd like to see in the second bonus-list below). That means that it's possible we could get Jean Clones! They're basically intrinsic to her character, as far as I'm concerned, and if they insist on Scott being dead they can make Rachel one of them. I mean, Madelyn becomes a Queen in the Hellfire Club, which was brought together by Sebastian Shaw, who we already had (even though he died), and then becomes Cable's mom, so...
11. Magma - She makes lava. What's not to want?
12. Siryn - We have Banshee as a kid in the 60s; it's totally possible that we could get Siryn as a baby in the 70s, or, if they do one of the movies in the 80s, as a functioning person then. Although that storyline was messed up by Shaw not being Cassidy's cousin a little, and then, you know, dead.
13. Magick - Colossus is cannon! Why not his metal-armed, kidnapped-to-hell and raised-by-demons sister? Plus, she can teleport, and that would be both awesome on screen and really convenient for stories where the jet couldn't possibly get them where they need to be on time.
14. Domino - Badass anti-hero bounty-hunter with super-good luck, who then joins up with the X-Men? So. Cool. 
15. Longshot and Dazzler - Okay, they're dumb, but they're also really charming, with powers that would look so cool on screen, AND they come with the storylines that involve Mojo and Spiral, which leads directly to how an English telepath happens to be Japanese when she comes back...though we still don't know why both have purple hair.
16. Forge - Sometimes Storm's boyfriend, always the dude who can build or take apart anything. Plus, he has replacement limbs he made himself and he's sometimes shifty, which makes for all sorts of drama. He could be like Q for the field teams--and he could anchor the at-home support characters that currently don't really exist.

And as a quick BONUS, here's two more (sort-of) lists:

Ones I might get to see, if the X-Force movie goes through:

1. Psylock - I seem to have a thing for telepaths who are better at being telepaths than Jean was / is. Psylock as a complicated storyline, but it ties up with some really interesting characters (mentioned above) AND broadens the world because of her being a) not American and b) sister to the greatest hero in Britain, the English version of Captain America--think how cool that could be played out. AND her psionic blades would just kill as special effects.
2. Cable - But only if they keep his ridiculously giant guns and shoulderpads, and tiny spatula hands.

Related characters I really, really want:

1. Lilandra - I love Moira, and she's nice and dynamic in the movie, but if Charles needs a new girlfriend, I vote for Lillandra. She's an Empress of a star-spanning, futuristic, bird-descended race of awesomeness. Who wouldn't want to be Consort to that? And with Guardians of the Galaxy out soon(ish), this right here is a perfect way for the X-Men franchise to expand into space in an X-Men way and keep up!
2. Corsair - Cyclops's and Havok's dad is a space pirate who is engaged to a woman who looks like a reverse-color anthropomorphic skunk, who doesn't mess around. If the X-Franchise goes into space and he doesn't show up, I'm going to be SO ANNOYED.

So who would you most like to see on screen?

NOTES:

* X-Men: First Class 2: Days of Future Past, or The One Where The Old Movies And The New Ones Meet Up And So Actually X-Men 5?

** grumblegrumble Man Pain = dead women grumblegrumble

*** Like how, reportedly, they've made it so Quicksilver isn't Magneto's kid in the new movie AND in the other-company-owned new Avengers movie?  

Why I loved Fangasm and was sort of insulted by King of the Nerds

 

VS

 

In case you didn't see them, Fangasm is the documentary-style nonfic story of a group of super geeks getting to work for Stan Lee's very own convention, and King of the Nerds is a competition-reality show trying to see who's the biggest nerd of all. One was charming and humanizing, and the other quickly devolved into glorifying in people yelling at each other.

That, right there, is the crux of it.

Fangasm was on SyFy and King of the Nerds was on TBS, and, for the first time in, like, ages, I'm pretty sure SyFy was more gentle and loving with its audience--and I think TBS sort of missed the whole thing and settled on stereotypes.

See, both shows feature really geeky and nerdy people. Both shows show social awkwardness and childlike love of popculture. Both shows have contrived activities for the people on them to do, and focus a little too much on the kneejerk reactions that tend to pervade geekery. But only one show really let the people on it be intelligent, well-rounded, multi-dimensional and real. 

And I think the difference was the competition.

See, Fangasm had things they had to accomplish, but they were things they had to accomplish together. Because of that, we watched these strangers (or, at least, virtual strangers) get to know each other, learn to settle into each other's weakspots and support each other to get the job done. King of the Nerds, which should have been fun, focused instead on making what was mostly a group of introverts choose sides, form terrible backstabbing alliances, and resulted in lots and lots of people screaming at each other in ways that made them seem unstable and possibly dangerous--and that's not at all a good way to get people to stop thinking of geeks and nerds as weirdos that need to be avoided.

I've had a theory for a while that competition shows bring out the worst in people. My favorites on the few I watch are always the ones that are fair and honest and kind through the whole thing--Christine and Luca on Master Chef, for a very good example. And the shows that feature mostly fighting and backstabbing--The Bachelor, Other Worlds, Survivor--are so low on my list of shows I want to figure out how to plan the schedule around that I gave them up ages ago. I've never even seen Survivor because the commercials make me want to slap people.

There were all these little moments where Fangasm could have gone that way--and instead, they chose to go the way of realism, honesty, and humanity, and for that, they stand at the top of my list of Shows Aimed At Nerds, and the only one off the top of my head on the list of Shows That Don't Insult Me On A Personal Level. It wasn't perfect, but it was a damn sight better!

Veronica Mars opening scene!

::hyperventilation ensues::



Good reader, five dollars of this movie is due to me, and I couldn't be happier!

RIP Harold Ramis

More wild and unbased speculation about the next season of Doctor Who!

This is apparently the newest recurring character / companion on the show! And best of all, he's apparently a teacher at the same school Clara works at. 

The school Ian and Barbara came from in the very first episode of Doctor Who, 50 years ago last November, when One stole away his first companions.

I'm just all O_o about the whole thing because it looks an awful lot like The Moff is shaping the show into a big loop. We've diverged a lot from those first episodes so long ago, and what with the general trend of bringing in threads from Three and before over this past season, it seems we're getting something along the lines of a return to the show's roots--or a sort of in-show reboot, back to the beginning, without having to actually go back to the beginning.

So here's where my speculative brain is going on this: First, this dapper man's first official picture:

• He looks stern; can this mean the Doctor is going to be loopy and needs a firm hand to keep him in line? Or that they'll be butting heads because they're both stern and disapproving?
• He's a good-looking MALE companion! Not another pretty girl! And one that's not already attached to a pretty girl, specifically, the way Rory was. Unless he's Clara's stay-at-home boyfriend who follows her. But that would be a redo of Amy and Rory and each companion is supposed to be different, so...
• He looks no-nonsense, which might be wonderful, what with all the actual nonsense the Doctor tends to get into.
• He also looks like he's capable, probably smart, and not easily intimidated. It's been ages since the Doctor had a companion he could count on to do stuff for him like Ian or Harry or Jamie, and I would SO LOVE if that's how he was!
• A strong male presence on the Tardis is something we haven't seen in a long time, and it will make for a different dynamic--especially if he actually is unattached and not so easily bowled over as poor lovely Rory was.

And as to what he could imply about the show:

• More companions! I really want the show to max out on companions again, which it hasn't done in the new series. 
• If we're echoing the early episodes with two teachers from the same school, all we're missing is the granddaughter--and that's the perfect opportunity for Jenny to come back! Jenny who didn't die at the end of that episode she was in because Moff asked RTD not to kill her, and who we've been waiting for a return of since then!
• Also, if we're wandering around the Doctor's old stomping grounds, think about how old companions could have settled there, and how maybe we could meet one, or their child or grandchild! It was fantastic when Sarah Jane came back, and when Jo came back on the Sarah Jane Adventures, that was fantastic, too, and it would be SO NICE to have just a little bit more of that.
• Also, I have a head cannon that ex-companions eventually find each other and support each other through the rough transition back to everyday human life, and it would be beyond awesome if that turned out to be true--that they hang out and raise their kids together and keep track of the Doctor's appearances and actually know who he is and what he does.
• Also, if we're getting back to roots, maybe we'll also get back to historicals! Almost every other episode of the original seasons was literal time travel, if not most of them, and we haven't had almost any episodes that hinge on past human history at all in Eleven except maybe that one ghost episode which was deliciously 70s. And in Nine and Ten, we got, like, one a season--Dickens, Shakespeare, not a whole lot else. And there's SO MUCH HISTORY to explore! Plus, it'd be way cheaper than always jaunting off to some alien planet or spaceship.

I just get more and more of an impression that we're really going to bring back the Classic Series this season, and I really, really like the idea. Which also makes me scared that it's actually going to be something else entirely, and then I'll feel like they missed a big opportunity. And then I'll be sad.

But it's always like this before a season, isn't it? Lots of speculation, lots of awesome theories, and then lots of other stuff happening during the actual season.

What do you think this new dude brings to the show? Share in the comments!

Guardians of the Galaxy is already yanking on my fandom-center

I literally know nothing about this comic except that there are a lot of mismatched aliens and one of them is a raccoon. And I only know that because of various casting calls on the webs. But now here comes the first real trailer, and suddenly I really want to see it and I really want it to be awesome.

If this even approaches how much space Avengers takes up in my mind (and it might, since one of the baddies is Lee Pace who I already adore), we're in for a lot of posts about it after I see it.

Also, because of this two and a half minutes of footage, I have a burning need for a Starjammers movie, and the whole Corsair-is-Cyclops's-dad-and-Marvel-isn't-making-the-XMen-movies be damned!

Things we learned from XFiles

Recently, I discovered that the extraordinarily strange El Rey* channel way up in the numbers plays The X-Files in the afternoon several days a week, and so I've been soaking in the vintage fandom goodness. And I'm noticing some life lessons the show passes on...

1. Scars are always a sign of creepiness and creepiness always scars you in a way people can see with a casual glance at the back of your neck or behind your ear or on your upper arm

2. When faced with a reasonable explanation, it's probably actually the weird impossible one that's right. If its the simple one, its the simple one that sounds super-crazy.

3. Codependency involving all sorts of really weird obligations = true love. Like autopsies at all hours, or "I know this sounds crazy, but trust me", or late-night drama that you can't tell anyone about. Totally true love.

4. Barely-seen monsters are the scariest.

5. Humans are usually the cause of the worst unexplained phenomena, one way or another.

6. Stoners, children, crazy people, and circus freaks know much more about reality than anyone else ever. Also, they're much more likely to disappear, mutate, or die horribly than anyone else.

8. Everyone's parents have really weird secrets they aren't telling you. EVERYONE's.

9. The government is WAY more organized and in control than anyone ever once gave them credit for, because there's no other way to explain something so complex, and yet so little-known as this Conspiracy.

10. ALL forms of physical contact and / or all combinations of glances between partners are Meaningful. Everything has so much subtext that it totally drowns all actual text. 

What life lessons have you gotten from The X-Files? Share in the comments!

NOTES:

* Old cop shows during the day, X-Files alternating with Dark Angel in the afternoons, and Chopsaki and various 'sploitation films and grind house at night? What?

The Pros and Cons of Pop Up Tee

Periodically, I buy geeky tees. I mean, I sort of have to, what with the insane levels of geekery infused into my very blood, and there are SO MANY AWESOME ONES ALL THE TIME. It's seriously one of my goals in life to be able to afford these shirts whenever I want them.

So when I saw that Pop Up Tee had a bunch of art nouveau ones, I had to. And since I haven't bought any from this company before, I'm doing a Pro and Con post here!

(i mean, how could i turn down a ten-and-marty teamup OR a princess bride anything? these are callbacks to some of my earliest fandoms!)

Pros:

• Sales last 3 days instead of the usual 24 hrs
• Shipping is included in the price, so if it says 12.99 (which is does), that's what you pay total
• Offers 20 themed designs instead of one or two
• Has men's and women's cuts and goes up to 5XL
• Ships from inside the US
• Is probably the fastest I've gotten one of these limited edition tees yet
• Printing is great-looking with good detail and no blurring or anything like that
• Designs are great

Cons:

• Does not have the slimmer-cut, relaxed / thinner cotton, lower-neckline shirts that I prefer, only regular high-neck teeshirt style
• Does not ship overseas
• The sizes are bigger than the standard established by most of the limited edition tee companies, so they came bigger than I expected
• How the heck am I supposed to choose one or two out of twenty awesome ones???
• Does not come with candy like Qwertee

Have you gotten anything from Pop Up Tee? What's your experience with them? Or, what's your fav daily shirt site? Share in the comments!

Sherlock Season 3 is changing the game and here's why

I know a lot of people (especially on Tumblr, where I spend far too much time these days, what with the liveblogging and such), were kind of ticked off about this season, but a lot of those people seemed to have been angry that it didn't start or end with Sherlock and John confessing their undying man-love for each other, and that's just...

Okay, I'm going to digress for a second to say this one thing about ships: You can want whatever you want, you can root for whatever you like best, but none of it counts until it's cannon. If Sherlock and John end up together, that will be so awesome, but they've also specifically said in the show and out of it that that's not the intention, so it's like slamming your head into a brick wall to get angry when it doesn't happen. Better to be happier for what we do have, and then be delighted if we find out that they actually are going to end up together further down the line because Moffatt Lies and TV Is Changeable.*

Anyway.

I really liked this season. I was pleased with how giddy everyone was to get back together and be a team again, with how they handled the changes that happen naturally when someone is away for an extended period and comes back, and I was very pleased with how under all the giddiness, there's also this deep core of sadness and misunderstanding and Sherlock at a total loss of how to handle any of it.

And there's SO MUCH to talk about. A lot changed and a lot, it seems to me, is going to continue to change, and so here's everything I want to talk about in no real order:

- What if Moriarty is now a meme, a martyr for the cause of some other villain? We saw him die with a point-blank gunshot wound to the face, and that's going to be hard to fake, but the easiest and least annoying way I can think of is to have it be just his image, taken over by whoever took his place as the Nepoleon of Crime--because whenever a villain is suddenly gone without an heir, someone else would step in quickly enough, and Moriarty has been proven real even as Sherlock was absolved, and why bother making yourself visible when you have an image to hide behind that people already know and fear? Sherlock spent two long years getting rid of all Moriarty's men for them, so they could just slot their own dudes in, easy. Heroes Make Their Own Villains.

- Sherlock does not make vows, so the fact that he made one is incredibly important to his character. Even when John was stomping around being angry at the world, Sherlock defined his whole existence on keeping the only vow he has ever felt strongly enough to make: to protect John’s family. But he forgot that he’s part of John’s family, too. And he defined John's Family as something that he isn't part of or able to do anything but protect because of it. We're left with the problem of Mary, more on that later, and the fact that Sherlock literally just handed over his life to the people he least wanted to be controlled by because he knew that otherwise it would be John who did it and he would have failed to save the Family.

This is especially interesting because we find out that Sherlock isn't the orphan he always basically portrayed himself as. His parents are both alive and both trying to be involved, and the lonely childhood raised by Mycroft seems to be some sort of protective armor story that he tells--something to keep him from being connected to people, or some shared phobia between the brothers, or a long-standing power-struggle. And the family that he chooses, with that as his basis for what a family is, is John and Mary and the Baby.

- There seems to be a concerted effort on Sherlock’s behalf to build relationships this time around—whether because he has grown that much, or because he doesn't want a repeat of how easily it would have been to take his whole world down, he went out of his way to be nicer, more dependable, more empathetic. This is probably the most obvious change in the series, moving Sherlock away from his identification as an uncaring sociopath and closer to the book-cannon Sherlock that is arrogant, but actually does care about things. It remains to be seen whether it's true change or just an effort to be more normal as some symptom of how happy he was to be back in his own life. In my opinion, both are sort of awesome potentials.

- This whole season was from Sherlock’s PoV rather than John’s. What if Sherlock was always this human and we just didn't see it because we weren't inside his head? What if John has been so amazed at him that he misinterpreted almost everything that has happened since the beginning?

- The first ep was hyperactive joy of being back in his own life; the second was a big ball of feels he didn't know what to do with and did the best he could, and the third was closer to what we generally think of when we think of this show—more serious, more dire. But even so, we keep the more open, connected, raw and loose Sherlock, and if this is the tone being set for the next season, I'm frankly a little worried that all this stress and strangeness is unhinging him. When we meet him in season one, he's safe and balanced and doing what he does. It's not that great an existence, but he could have carried on indefinitely; at the end of season three, he seems close to burning up or cracking up or losing control in ways that will be really interesting to see--but also heartbreaking and possibly dangerous for the future of the show and its fandom. Not to mention the safety of my own heart.

Because it really does seem like he's not only gone a little fast and loose, doing more stuff on the fly and less planning ahead, but that he's literally a little off the rails. He keeps getting sideswiped and thought around—whether that’s because his mind is becoming overloaded with connections and emotions or because the baddies know his limits now and he hasn't figured out that he needs to move back / expand his limits, is still to be seen. I keep coming back to how he was talking to himself because he was literally hearing John's voice, and I wonder if it's creeping insanity, or if it's like a form of shell-shock--did he start talking to John while he was away to remember who he is the way people in PoW movies talk to memories and hallucinations?

- Molly is amazing and we’re not talking about her enough. Through the whole season, she's the only one who seems to see through Sherlock. No matter what's going on, she's the one who notes the moments of sadness and confusion and raw panic that everyone else, even John and Mrs Hudson, wave off. She was the one who saw the fear and sadness before the Rooftop, and it's good that she's still seeing it while also being braver and more secure in who she is and who he is and how they fit together.

- What if Mary is part of Meme-iarty’s plan? What if she’s still active and still on a mission and is just so undercover that she’s starting to go native—but there’s still things she needs to do and everything that’s happened with her so far is only the start? And that’s why it’s hard to tell if he really tried to kill Sherlock or not--because the endgame hasn't happened yet, so we don't know whether she actually ever wanted to kill him**, or whether she was trying to just get him out of the way, or if she ever really intended to kill Magnusson, or whether there was ever anything on that flash drive that she probably knew by then that John wouldn't actually read...You know, the more I think about her, the more I feel like she's still mid-story; the season-resolution was between John and Sherlock, and she isn't resolved at all, no matter how much John forgives her. And that makes me both fear and anticipate what's coming next for her. A woman who Sherlock knew was lying about something, but who still flew under his radar...

- Mycroft literally sees Sherlock as a little kid when he looks at him. It breaks my heart--and it totally explains a lot of their relationship. Assuming Sherlock is the same age as his actor, he's closer to half a century than he is to childhood (I"M SO SORRY BENEDICT FOR SAYING THAT), but Mycroft still looks at him and sees a slightly chubby schoolboy who needs to be protected. And probably comforted, though Mycroft doesn't seem capable of even knowing how to start doing that.

- Sherlock has two other totally normal names*** that he could be called by, so the only inference is that he’s chosen the weird one; we can assume Mycroft is similar, probably, since most families name their kids on similar patterns. They've both chosen to be what they are. And now Sherlock is choosing something different.

- The parallelism in this season is crazy, bringing a lot of old ideas back around; does this mean from here on out is like a new start?

- Molly listing her bedroom as one of Sherlock’s bolt holes + her very pointedly mentioning how happy she was with Tom and how much sex they were having = me wondering if maybe there isn't a secret and failed attempt at something going on there before he disappeared across the world. Like, maybe there’s all sorts of things that we don’t know about yet, and one of them is that while he was trying to get out of country, there’s story there between him and Molly, and Molly’s still sore about it even while she still obviously feels strongly for him. If that's a story, what other stories were just not mentioned because we have three episodes and none of them were about what happened while he was away, yet?

- It is deeply annoying that Sherlock’s mom was as smart as Sherlock or Mycroft and then, because babies, turned fluttery and busybody. On the other hand, I can totally see young Mycroft realizing that his mom is losing her brains and seeing it get worse when the baby comes along, and between the two of them, building up a deep fear of attachment because attachment makes you stupid, and they feel like not being stupid is all they have, for whatever reason. And there are, in reality, plenty of women who give up everything distinctive about themselves the second they have kids. Maybe the younger women on this show will eventually NOT DO THAT and offer an alternative story.

- It occurs to me that the fandom is blaming John for breaking his promise to Sherlock that things wouldn’t change, but it seems to me as if Sherlock bowed out—this whole season has been about him realizing that things have already changed, that a lot of the change was brought on by his not being there, and that he can’t just actually expect that it wouldn't have. And so he gets out of the way, which is not something he would have done before, and probably a huge sacrifice from him and his self-centric view of the world. He thinks Mary is worthy of John, and that he can’t give him whatever normality and love it is that he wants. So he removes himself after the wedding makes it obvious that it's the two of them, not the three of us as they kept saying. But without him, John is at least a little bored and frustrated, and that’s what (accidentally) brings them back together—John heading out into the world to get a little adventure on his own, since he knows that his best friend isn't dead and so he doesn't need to avoid all the painful things that remind him of Sherlock--and that he loves, too.

- Mary was so upset in the second half of the last ep that she lost most of her sparkle; if this is a proper reset of a season, and they continue with stability as three of them in the next season, I really hope the charm and cuteness and cleverness is back. Like, she relaxes back into her Mary Persona, and it's great--and then we again find out that she's playing everyone, and things are even more complicated because now the baby's born and she's been working with them, and it's been functional for however long has passed between this season and the next.

And so my conclusion:
- This feels like a transition season: like things are changing and shifting and gaps are forming, and we’re only seeing what it most important this this particular moment--not all the background shifting that is only being hinted at and not quite caught on to by most of the characters yet. Like how the last season overlapped and filled in gaps with the rest of the series****, this last one opens up gaps and asks questions and sets up something new.

I have a very strong suspicion that season four will be back to the feeling of everyone in control, back to the stability of adventure that we had in the earlier seasons, but that in reality, the villains have gotten cleverer because Sherlock has been both very visible and study-able and because he's tried to hard to create a power vacuum, and so there are going to be lots of spaces that they don't yet know are there, where contexts shift and everything is already more different than they (or we) realize.

What about you? What do you think?


NOTES:
* Moffatt also really needs to check his mouth in interviews. I don't think he's intending to queer-bait, exactly, but I do think he's incapable of leaving things alone and that it's being interpreted as queer-baiting. I also think he's on the bottom of an uphill learning curve and not handling it all that gracefully, and really needs to learn when to stop talking.
** I think she did, but did it in such a way that if he didn't die, she could use that for the next stage of her plan. We're in a spy novel now, and that means that she's James Bond in a way; she can think in branching what-if's and make contingency plans for them. So instead of killing him with a sure-thing headshot, or a heart-shot, she gave him a mostly-mortal but slower gutshot that would probably kill him and would otherwise convince him that she wasn't trying to kill him, even though she probably was.
***Also, since I plan to name my kids strangely, this is encouraging; I can blame it on Sherlock even though I had the idea ages ago.
****Especially Reichnbach; watch the cues of setting and clothes; those scenes happened in between all the other scenes we'd seen up until then, so that that story actually took much longer than one episode to tell.