‘Sherlock’ season 3 finale review: Moriarty, Mary, Mycroft and is there a third Holmes sibling?

After the long two year wait for “Sherlock” season 3 we had some pretty high expectations based on what we have already seen from season 1 and 2. We wanted to see more nefarious villains, bigger cases and Sherlock and Watson finding their groove again after the big fake death from the season 2 finale, but have we gotten more of the “Sherlock” we know? Hardly. Showrunner Steven Moffat has said that he didn’t want to just rest on his laurels and create a third season of the show that were copies of the first two seasons, but did the risks really pay out? So far we’ve had two episodes that are focused on relationships: Mary and John, Mary and Sherlock, and Sherlock and John, but as far as big bad villains and exciting cases we’ve been fairly robbed of that. For the season finale we are going to meet Charles Augustus Magnussen, the big bad for the episode and we hope that now that the wedding hoopla is over we can get back to what this show is known for.

We’ve already reviewed this episode when it aired in Britain (which you can read here and see what grade we gave it), so for the American airing we are going to list the top five moments of the finale that made an impact on us.

1. Charles Augustus Magnussen is a bad, bad man: He is not only the baron of blackmail, but he is also a total creep. He has so much information stored away that he is able to control some pretty serious players and make them do things they wouldn’t necessarily do. Watching Charles flick John in the eye over and over again was humiliating and incredibly difficult to watch, but that’s what makes Charles such a great villain… we bought into him %100. The problem with Charles was that he wasn’t in this episode nearly enough and after waiting all season for a real foe to challenge Sherlock and Watson we expected him to be around more.

2. Mary has a sketchy past: So did anyone see this twist about Mary coming? We were concerned that her being pregnant was going to hurt the story since most expectant parents like to exercise caution while getting ready to welcome their baby, but not Mary. She has a pretty sketchy past and Charles knows all about it, so it wasn’t too surprising to see her desperate enough to do almost anything to keep it buried and move forward with John. This includes shooting Sherlock.

3. John’s conundrum: Watson has had a pretty drama filled season considering that he’s learned that his best friend faked his own death, he’s going to be a father (and is also now a husband) and that Mary is not at all what she seemed. After learning that Mary has some skeleton’s in her closet she gave him a flash drive if he wanted to know everything about her, but he threw it in the fireplace and left the past in the past and was ready to move into his future with her. Was it surprising that he took this route? Not really considering that he has a tendency to gravitate towards messed up people and he knows it.

4. A third Holmes brother?: We’ve never made it a secret that we love, love, love Mycroft (don’t be surprised if our first born is named Mycroft), and our love for him was taken up another level at the end of the episode when he made mention of a third Holmes brother. There has been speculation that this brother is Moriarty since during Sherlock’s “death” scene he saw Moriarty and he told Sherlock “Mommy and Daddy will be so upset”… not “your” mommy and daddy, just “mommy and daddy”. We are hoping that this is not the way the show is going, but we’ll have to wait and see.

5. Speaking of Moriarty…: He’s back and he’s posed the question “Did you miss me?” Yes we did! At the same time though do we really want to see a double death fake out from season 2 where both Sherlock and Moriarty faked their deaths? Seems a little far fetched even for this show, but at the same time if Charles is gone and Moffat has said that he doesn’t know if he’s ever going to bring Irene Adler back (which is an epic fail we feel) we really need a good villain for Sherlock since this season was really lacking in that department and what better villain is there then Moriarty?

Did the season finale of “Sherlock” bring you more of what you were expecting? Did you like the twist about Mary or are you not too keen on her being on the show?Leave us a comment and tell us what you hope to see go down next season. Speaking of next season… want to know more about “Sherlock” season 4 and when it may be coming back? Just click here and we’ll hook you up with everything that we know about the next season. Also if you want to get some weekly updates on your favorite shows, be sure to sign up to our TV newsletter.

Photo: BBC One