How the difference between season ½ and season 3 made me realize once again that Johnlock is going to be real
—————I’ve read a few reviews about the third season from respectable (online) news papers who write about such things very objectively and what they all say is: the third season is different.
Their conclusion is always that it’s enjoyable, but it’s different than season 1 and 2.
However, they can’t elaborate why.
I’ll tell you why:
The reason why the third season is different is because John learnt to repress his emotions and Sherlock always just avoided them.
Season 1 was purely the work + friendship.
Then in Season 2 they put a dash of “feelings” into the show. John fell in love with Sherlock, but he knows how to repress emotions, it’s what he has done all his life and it’s what he will continue to do in the third season. John’s feelings do not get in Sherlock’s way, so nobody has to acknowledge them. Sherlock learns to value his friendship with John, it’s nice having someone by his side, but the work is still the love of his life, and so we have Sherlock solving cases and John helping him.
Season 3 happens, Sherlock returns from the dead and learns that John will not come back to him. The emptiness of the place beside him hits Sherlock like a truck. John’s presence became so normal to him, that him not being his partner anymore makes him panic. Sherlock asks Molly if she want’s to assist him, maybe it’s not John he misses, but having a partner. Very soon he learns that that’s not true. His work is nothing without John, he needs John, he misses John, John climbs up in Sherlock’s mental ranking and becomes the most important aspect of his life. The work comes second.
He dedicates every minute of the day to John, gets almost obsessed with the wedding preparations, accepts Mary without any fight, he does everything for John. It’s not him slowing down the wedding preparations because he needs John on a case, no, it’s John begging Sherlock to take on a case. Sherlock doesn’t even think about cases, is not interested in them at all, he’s all JohnJohnJohnJohnJohn…
Sherlock never learnt how to deal with emotions. He always saw them as tiresome, they clouded his judgement, so he quickly learnt how to avoid them. As a result, the emotions he can’t escape swallow him alive. Every single part of his entire being is completely overruled by the intensity of his feelings.
Sherlock himself didn’t really change. He focuses wholeheartedly on whatever is the No.1 thing in his life. Before S3 it was the work, and that’s why we got case after case after case.
But now it’s John, and so all that focus is redirected at John.
The day Sherlock realizes he is in love with John is the day when he deduces that Mary is pregnant. First he acknowledges that he is in love, then he finds out how off limits the recipient of that love is.
Sherlock’s inexperience with emotions is what makes that love so dangerous. What he does first is to try to avoid his emotions and the source of them. He and John don’t see each other for a whole month and Sherlock turns back to drugs. Sherlock buries himself in a case, without success. The moment John is in danger, he completely forgets Lady Smallwood. Lady Smallwood’s husband kills himself, Sherlock didn’t solve the case in time and it doesn’t even bother him. Even though Sherlock continues with his hunt after Magnussen, it is not because of Lady Smallwood, but because of John. He tried to make the work important again, but failed spectacularly because JohnJohnJohnJohnJohn…
Sherlock’s love for John consumes his entire being.
At the end of HLV Sherlock accepts that no matter how hard he tries, John will always come first.
He gives up his work, his future, all for John’s happiness.
Sherlock fell for John and he fell hard.
So of course season 3 is different than the two seasons before that. When Sherlock’s love for John will stop hurting him so much, he will be able to concentrate on crimes again.
But there are not many ways that will happen though.
1) John disappears from Sherlock’s life, so he can try to forget him and move on. Not very likely.
2) Sherlock learns to deal with his emotions and we get pining Sherlock for the rest of the story, while John stays completely oblivious. Also not very likely, because this scenario has no development. It’s pure stagnation and that’s not how a story works.
3) Sherlock learns to deal with his emotions and we get pining Sherlock. John realizes that Sherlock loves him, which will probably topple his world, because he convinced himself that Sherlock is a sociopath and doesn’t care much about people. John is always shocked when he gets to know that Sherlock has a human side, so when he finds out that Sherlock is in love with him, that will pull the rug from under his feet. Sherlock’s sociopathy was John’s reason not to get too close to him, but when he finds out about Sherlock’s feelings for him, oh boy, he will be hella conflicted.
I always love it when something that doesn’t make sense is suddenly glaringly obvious when you look at it in the light of TJLC.