I never noticed this before, but thanks to CookiesWillCrumble for drawing attention to it!
Now what exactly is Magnussen doing on his phone? I doubt he’s checking his mail at such a crucial moment… Is it possible that he anticipated Mary would shoot Sherlock and sent out a secret message for help (since he didn’t actually pick it up to talk)?
Lastly – notice his expression when he sees Mary actually really shooting him. Now I’m not trying to defend him in any way, because he is our villain and has done enough other bad stuff…. but that expression though! Am I the only one who reads sympathy in it?
This was a truly brilliant observation. Magnussen is reaching for his phone. And Mary isn’t even paying him any attention at that moment. I like this speculation that Magnussen sent for help. He could have easily had it coded so that just a key press or something equally simple gesture would send out an alarm causing a chain of events, which could include calling the ambulance. I like this very much! (It could be that he was turning on voice recorder or something to “get the evidence”, but Mary would have realized that after incapacitating both and destroyed the phone. Ok I will stop.)
Although, I don’t read Magnussen’s expression as sympathy. It seems to be just fear. I mean if she could shoot her own friend who was also her husband’s best friend, he feared that she wouldn’t hesitate to kill him as well. That’s how it looks to me.
Yes! I didn’t have time to add a note when I first reblogged it, but I wanted to point out that this totally makes me lean toward Sherlock outright lying when he says Mary was trying to save him. CAM called the ambulance, not Mary, and Sherlock would have seen him reaching for his phone as he was shot. Sherlock wouldn’t miss a detail like that, and the writers/director wouldn’t have put it in for no reason. Right? I hope?
Why was Sherlock lying? Just to make John happy? As part of a long con against Mary? Hmmmmm…. (Also I agree that CAM is just freaked out at the bottom. He didn’t expect Mary to shoot Sherlock any more than Sherlock did.)
Oh right, Mary didn’t see but Sherlock did that Magnussen was reaching for the phone! I never could believe that he knew Mary called the ambulance. Because in the 221B confrontation, he says to John, “You didn’t find me for another five minutes.” Dear lord, how the hell would he even know that! His mind-palace!Molly tells him that he has 3 seconds of consciousness left. Are we to understand that he was conscious for five minutes after receiving a gunshot wound that would later kill him? Of course, I don’t know how gunshot wounds work (even after researching a bit about it), so maybe it’s possible to retain consciousness. In that case, why say “3 seconds of consciousness left”? Also, when John finds him, his eyes are closed. So I think he was unconscious quickly. In which case, I just don’t trust him saying that Mary called the ambulance or that John found him 5 minutes after the shooting.
Of course. We keep hoping all these are clues. We did that with Reichenbach. And eventually really few of them were resolved. So it could be that we are supposed to just suspend our disbelief and accept that yes, Sherlock saw what happened after he was shot, or that he was conscious. Which mean, speculating about why Sherlock lied makes sense only if we stick to our readings. If not… well.
Further speculation about HLV which illustrates how Mary Morstan is the Reichenbach puzzle of series 3.
i was reading a meta recently and the person pointed out that while CAM harasses people he never kills anyone. what good are people to him dead? so it fits that he would try to save Sherlock. he needs Sherlock to get to Mycroft.
Cam is also figuring out more info on Mary and is realizing just how far Sherlock would go for John. Then when John comes in the way he looks at him makes me think that CAM is reevaluating John’s pressure point and adding Sherlock to the top of the list.
For CAM every moment is a chance to get information and if the person he’s blackmailing dies or kills them self his fun is over. so he’s still evil just a different slimy kind.