I felt about three seconds of outrage when I saw this. And then I realized that interpreting the original story like that—Holmes killed Milverton for the “righteous” reasons stated, Watson just made up shit to cover his friend’s ass—is awesome on many levels.
I personally don’t think Holmes is above murder at all. Murder is an incredibly human thing to do. He would obviously try not to murder people, but if push comes to shove I don’t see him absolutely refusing to do it. This is especially true of the BBC Sherlock (at least Moffat’s version), who started off the entire show by torturing a dying man to get Moriarty’s name. Righteousness contrasts him with Moriarty and with Mary, who both committed wicked murders as freelance work.
I mean, what do people think Sherlock was doing when he was “dismantling Moriarty’s network”? Calmly talking down Moriarty’s operatives over tea and pastries? If he didn’t kill at least one person while he was away, I’d be shocked.
Anyway, in summary: I like this interpretation and what they did with it in their version. It makes a lot more sense to me now.
I love the theory that Lady Eve in canon is actually just a smoke screen for Holmes being blackmailed for his own checkered past. But of course, Watson would never publish anything so damning about his friend.
Oh..okay, this makes sense.