‘Sherlock’ season 4, episode 2 review: Meet Euros Holmes, also Irene Adler surfaces

We are already half way through “Sherlock” season 4, which is easy to do when there’s only 3 episodes a season, but already this show has managed to find a way to kick us right in the heart. The premiere left us drying our tears as Mary Watson died in John’s arms and we saw the fracture between the two friends form. Sherlock had promised John that he would never let anything happen to Mary and now she’s gone, so all of John’s anger has been directed onto Sherlock. Will these two find a way to get past this?

John isn’t coping well with the death of Mary – he’s not sleeping, he’s sent his daughter off to be with family, he’s drinking a lot and he’s seeing visions of Mary everywhere he goes. He’s in therapy hoping that it will help, but it doesn’t seem to be doing much. John and Sherlock still haven’t spoken since the incident, as Sherlock has locked himself away and is doing drugs again.

We met the latest “Sherlock” villain tonight named Culverton Smith and he is beautifully terrifying. He may not be on the level of Moriarty, but he was a lot of fun to watch – we can’t say enough how much we love Toby Jones’ face! Our first introduction to him was watching him drug everyone close to him (including his daughter Faith) in a board room and then reveal that he’s going to kill someone. Who did he kill or did he ever actually kill anyone at all? After taking a meeting with Faith, Sherlock is completely obsessed with the idea that Culverton is a serial killer – oh, and he’s on a serious drug bender.

With Sherlock going off the rails, Mrs Hudson asks Watson for help and after checking him out they get to work on taking down Culverton. What was interesting about Culverton and Sherlock is that there wasn’t a lot of build up for these two discovering each others secrets – Sherlock pretty much told Culverton that he knows he’s a serial killer and that’s he’s going to expose him, and while Culverton won’t come out and admit it, he did have a grand time toying with John and Sherlock. When Sherlock brings Faith to the hospital to confront Culverton about his murders, the woman that shows up isn’t the same woman that came to him with this case. In his drug idled state, Sherlock tries to attack Culverton and Watson stops him, but now Sherlock is in care at Culverton’s hospital of doom modeled after H. H. Holmes hotel.

When Sherlock and Culverton are alone at the hospital, Sherlock asks him to kill him and Culverton happily agrees. Why is he doing this? It’s because of the video that Mary left Sherlock telling him that the only way to save John is to make John save Sherlock – so he decides to put himself in this precarious position in order to help John. It works and as Culverton confesses to his murders just before John bursts into the hospital and saves Sherlock. The one good thing that came out of this is that Watson has come to the realization that Holmes is not responsible for Mary’s death and he admitted that he had an emotional affair on Mary. He finally unburdened his soul about it all, saying that the man Mary thought he was is the man that he wants to be. The vision of Mary tells Watson to move forward and after unburdening his soul we fear that this will be the end of his visions of Mary.

We have been waiting to find out about the third Holmes sibling and Mycroft brought it up tonight to Watson… is this going to be enough for Watson to run with and find out what’s going on? He did! Watson called Mycroft out asking if there’s a third brother he’s got locked up somewhere and he lies to Watson saying that there is no other sibling. Also, speaking of Mycroft, it looks like he might be getting a love interest!!! Mycroft was not someone that we thought would end up in a romance (especially if this does end up being the last season as many people out there fear right now), but it would be something we would want to see cultivated. We’ve never made it much of a secret that we are a huge Mycroft fan, so anything that brings us more of Mark Gatiss makes us happy – also we are curious to see what a Mycroft romance would look like.

So is this the end of Culverton or is there more to this situation???? John’s therapist turns out to be the red headed woman on the bus that John has been texting with, she is also John’s therapist, and she is also tied to Moriarty! As if that wasn’t enough, the last big reveal is that she is the third Holmes sibling named Euros (also spelled Eurus) Holmes right before pulling a gun on Watson and shooting at him. For us the biggest question mark is what is Euros Holmes’ relationship with Moriarty? It would be easy to peg her as a Moriarty groupie or lover, but “Sherlock” is a lot smarter then that. Our theory is that the key to her involvement with Moriarty lies in whatever it is that Mycroft did to her. As much as we love Mycroft, he (like Sherlock) has a dark side to him and we would think that whatever it was he did to her might’ve pushed her towards working with Moriarty before he died to take down her brothers and hit them where it hurts – starting with trying to kill John.

If this is the last season of “Sherlock”, they really aren’t holding back. We don’t expect that everything is going to be wrapped up in a big red bow next week, but at the very least we want to see Sherlock and John’s relationship mended.

What we loved about this episode is that even though the character of Mary is dead, we still had her as major part of the episode and still working with John to solve the case. Bringing in Mary as visions for John was a nice way for us to still have her be part of the show and helping to resolve the cases, but we fear that she is gone now. Also, Irene Adler reached out to Sherlock at the end of the episode and he admits that he is in contact with her still. We don’t expect that everything is going to be wrapped up in a big red bow next week, but at the very least we want to see Sherlock and John’s relationship mended and if we could get a little Sherlock/Irene moment in there we would be thrilled. Episode grade: A

What did you think of this episode of “Sherlock” and what do you want to see in the finale next week? Leave us a comment below with your thoughts. If you want more scoop on “Sherlock” season 4 then head on over to the link here. (Photo: BBC One)