‘Sherlock’ season 4 finale review: Sherlock, Watson and Mycroft play a final game with Eurus

We have arrived at the “Sherlock” season 4 finale already – anyone else out there feel that a 3 episode season is just way too short for such a fantastic show? This season has not held back when it comes to surprises and bringing out all of the proverbial skeletons in the closet. John admitted to his emotional affair, Sherlock revealed that he’s still chatting up Irene Adler and the third Holmes sibling that Mycroft has been trying to hide (Euros Holmes) has surfaced and she has shot at John.

John has escaped Eurus’ attempt to kill him and with that, Sherlock and John have gone to Mycroft to find out everything he knows about Eurus. Sherlock can’t remember that he had a sister, but some of these memories are starting to come back including the fact that she may have killed his dog. After that incident he started to forget that she even existed. Right after the dog went missing, she burned down the Holmes family home and was taken away to a place called Sherrinford which is a prison on an island – it’s a place where they keep the world’s most dangerous people and she was there since childhood. Mycroft tells them that she also has the same genius qualities that they have and while Mycroft is the smarter of the two brothers, Eurus is smarter then them both and knew things that people could never know.

Sherlock, John and Mycroft head to the prison to find out if Eurus is still at the prison or not and she’s there so Sherlock takes a moment to speak with her asking her how she was able to escape. Instead she tells him that she finds it fascinating that he can’t remember what happened to his dog at all. As it turns out they never had a dog and who she killed was his best friend – throwing him down a well. What was her reasoning for killing his best friend? Because she wanted him to play with her and he never would, ignoring her for his best friend. Something that seems fairly surface (a sibling ignoring another sibling to play with friends), but her loneliness goes to a much deeper level. Mycroft reveals that Eurus can reprogram people and that is what’s so dangerous about her. When they learn that the head of the prison is enslaved by her, John and Mycroft know how she is escaping.

So for the burning question of the hour – How does Eurus know Moriarty? Before he died, she requested 5 minutes unsupervised with Moriarty and for some reason Mycroft allowed it and the discussion centered around Sherlock’s dog. Mycroft allowing this conversation with Moriarty was fairly out of character for him since he knows exactly how dangerous she is as well as how crazy Moriarty is. He may have felt some sort of brotherly love as well as guilt for having her locked up all these years, but knowing what he knows about Moriarty this makes absolutely no sense and we are having a hard time buying into it. What we would’ve rather seen was Moriarty not being part of this episode at all. As much as we love him, the reality is he was not what made this episode great, it was having the focus on our three main characters having to work together and face some hard truths about themselves. Eurus was more then enough of a villain to make this episode work.

After putting Sherlock, Mycroft and John it a series of locked rooms, she plays games of life and death with them. She pushes the three of them to go through a series of deductions that end in the lives of many people as well as playing with the emotions of Molly forcing her to admit that she loves Sherlock or die. Of all the horrible things that Eurus made these three do, making Molly admit that she’s in love with Sherlock was brutal for us to watch since we know how deeply her feelings run for him and after learning that there were never any explosives in her house (and that she was never in danger) Sherlock falls apart.

The last room leaves Sherlock with the choice to either kill John or Mycroft, which is something we saw coming a million miles away. The ultimate choice – best friend or brother. Mycroft pushes all of his buttons to get Sherlock to kill him over John, taking responsibility for this entire situation. He feels that allowing that conversation between Moriarty and Eurus is why all of this is happening (and it is). Sherlock decides to turn the gun on himself instead and the threat of this is enough for Eurus to end the game.

After figuring out where Eurus is and actually getting her to work with him to save John and Mycroft, he learns that all of this was because she was lacking his love and drowning in darkness. She is brought back to Sherrinford and she won’t speak to anyone, much to their parents disappointment since finding out that she is alive, but Sherlock has learned something from all of this. His sister needed him when they were younger and he let her down – he won’t do that again. Regardless of the fact that she is a complete psychopath, killed a lot of innocent people and almost killed John, he still feels a sense of compassion for her, so he spends time with her at Sherrinford, playing the violin together.

It was nice to finally have some answers to these questions with Eurus and the third Holmes sibling. More then that seeing an episode entirely focused on Sherlock, John and Mycroft was a nice way to end the season. As we said earlier, we could’ve done without the Moriarty bits since really that part of the show is over for us and is starting to feel dragged out. He’s been dead a long time now, bring in the new villains! Also, enough with the videos – we have videos of Eurus, videos of Moriarty, videos of Mary. If this show comes back for another season we hope that they will leave this story telling device in the past, epspecially for those characters that have been killed off. If you want to kill off a character, that’s more then fine, but then just let them go… we can handle it. Last but not least can we just take a moment to talk about how cool Mycroft’s umbrella/sword/gun was? Mark Gatiss as the next James Bond? We could see it. Episode grade: B

What did you think of the finale of “Sherlock” season 4? Leave us a comment with your opinion of the season below. If you want more scoop on “Sherlock” including a look at if/when a “Sherlock” season 5 renewal could happen then head on over to the link here. (Photo: BBC One)