finalproblem:

Just to add a little fuel to the fire of that last post…

In The Empty Hearse, Sherlock was pulled out of Eastern Europe* to deal with an emergency back home.

In His Last Vow, one of the papers Janine brought to Sherlock in the hospital included a feature block reading “Eastern Europe Erupts.”

By that evening, Mycroft was so focused on tracking something in Eastern Europe that he could barely be bothered to look up from his computer when Lestrade came to ask about his missing brother.

After Sherlock’s recovery, Mycroft mentioned MI6 wanted to place Sherlock back into Eastern Europe.

But for the second time, an emergency in England put an abrupt end to one of Sherlock’s Eastern European undercover excursions.

So it seems to me that it’s worth at least considering the possibility that “Miss me?” wasn’t about keeping Sherlock home so much as keeping him away from whatever’s going down in Eastern Europe. A good mental exercise and chance to shake up our assumptions, if nothing else.

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* [Eastern Europe is defined in a number of ways, and the countries said to be part of it vary. Here’s an example of a definition that labels both Serbia and Poland as part of Eastern Europe. I personally feel Mycroft’s Ugly Duckling mission map plus his saying MI6 wanted Sherlock “back” in Eastern Europe when the last foreign country Sherlock had been in was Serbia is enough to consider both countries part of Eastern Europe as the show sees it, but YMMV.]