loudest-subtext-in-television:
I read all the meta on how Johnlock is the endgame, how nothing makes sense if it isn’t and how there have been coded, subtextual references all along. And I’ve wavering back and forth in my belief, every rewatching/discussion of ASiP confirming it, and every interview snippet with TPTB weakening it.
Then I rewatched TSoT. And I actually listened to Mrs Hudson.
Mrs Hudson has two big scenes in this episode: both conversations about the effect marriage has on friendship, one with Sherlock on the day of the wedding, one with John after the stag night (in real time, their order would have been reversed).
During her talk with Sherlock, she forces him to directly face his fears about how the marriage will change the relationship between him and John (which will be a major theme of the episode). She tells him about Margaret, her best friend and bridesmaid, who called Mrs Hudson’s wedding day “the end of an era” and then went on to leave early. Sherlock absolutely refuses to engage with her; he first denies that marriage changes anything, then he cruelly recalls her husband’s eventual execution and finally orders her to get him biscuits (“make me a sammich”, a classic macho tactic to shut women up and belittle them).
As the next shot makes all too clear, her remarks have hit too close to home. He eyes John’s empty chair sadly before he walks over to his tuxedo, his battle dress for the day.
This scene is a classic case of foreshadowing. By the end of the episode, a baby will have come into the mix (a definite game changer), Sherlock will have left the wedding early and by the time of HLV Sherlock and John haven’t seen each other in a month. John’s chair will have been moved.
The second conversation takes place in Mrs Hudson’s kitchen, where she makes a very hung-over John one last fry-up. He reacts the same way Sherlock does, by denying that anything will change. Again she insists: “Well, marriage changes everything, John.” John doesn’t react as violently as Sherlock, he asks her to explain, he is prepared to listen. He doesn’t brush her (bad) experiences with marriage aside, he actively asks her about them.
And she says: “Well, if you’ve found the right one – the person that you click with – it’s the best thing in the world.” And John says that he has.
This, after we have been watching two whole seasons of John “clicking” with Sherlock. Seriously, keep that line in mind and rewatch “A Study in Pink”. Both John and Mrs Hudson quickly reaffirm that they are talking about Mary here, but as other people have already pointed out, we don’t get to see that happening with Mary. If we think “John Watson”, the first name that comes to mind is not Mary Morstan. Even if you take any romantic meaning out of that statement, from their first meeting John Watson and Sherlock are the click to end all clicks. Well.
But the scene is not over yet. John asks about her marriage, and she explains how, oh no, he cannot compare her marriage, because she never thought she’d found the right one, “It was just a whirlwind thing for us”. Flashback to TEH, “I know it hasn’t been long”, and yet John asks her to marry him, because she’s turned his life around.
Mrs. Hudson’s tale grows darker: there was so much she didn’t know about her husband that came out bit by bit. He ran a drug cartel, he cheated on her and he got arrested for “blowing someone’s head off”. Again, there’s foreshadowing for HLV: John gets to know his wife’s dark secret, and she shoots Sherlock in the chest. She’s presented as not quite as bad as Mrs Hudson’s husband (her assassin days are in the past, she doesn’t quite kill Sherlock), but there is a very clear parallel. Now, some people have proposed that one way to solve the “baby-problem” would be to make it not John’s (so Mary can take it with her, it can live with its real father etc.), so who knows, maybe the cheating-parallel will be drawn as well in series 4. Or the cheating is simply analogous to the way Mary was lying about her identity and her past… Also, remember how it was Sherlock who ensured that Mrs Hudson’s husband would be executed. (Mary Moran will totally be coming true in series 4, is what I’m trying to say.)
This conversation with John certainly gives us an exciting glimpse into Mrs Hudson’s back story, but ultimately it doesn’t tell us much about her we didn’t know already. That she had a criminal husband who was executed in Florida years ago was established in S1E1, and while it’s nice to see it fleshed out, that alone wouldn’t justify giving it that much screen time. What this scene (and the one before with Sherlock) lays out for us is the essential trajectory of the relationship between John and Sherlock:
They click. They’re right for each other and the two them together could be the best thing in the world. John’s marriage with an ex-assassin is something he got swept along in, but eventually her deceit and her criminal past will catch up with her and Sherlock will have proven his complete devotion to John. Now, Mrs Hudson hasn’t found The One You Click With after her husband (instead, she seems to have picked up a duplicitous bigamist in Mr Chatterjee – or maybe that has been sorted out?), but for John, the answer should be loudly, resoundingly clear.
And Mrs Hudson, Shipper On Deck since day one, will have been right all along.
(And if I’m wrong, and this isn’t what’s going on in these scenes, I can just say, damn, what a wasted opportunity. The breaches of Pratchett’s Theory of Narrative Causality are so severe, they should be made to pay a fine.)
This is a good read.
When I get to writing up TEH I have some things to say about the related idea that Mrs. Hudson is intentionally trying to push John and Sherlock together romantically with those conversations; she shipped them from the first time they stepped foot in 221B and kept making assumptions no matter how many girlfriends John brought over. Her “live and let live” comment to John when he tells her Sherlock wasn’t his boyfriend (when they still thought Sherlock was dead) gave me vibes of her feeling that she doesn’t really get what sorts of sexual arrangements young queer people might get up to nowadays, but she knows what she saw between the two of them and she refuses to believe John wasn’t in love with him.
Note Mrs. Hudson never actually says Sherlock is John’s “boyfriend” or even implies anything sexual. The things she implies don’t need labels or sexual actions attached: she asks stuff like if they had a “domestic.” She reads John’s blog where he keeps saying he’s not gay and not in a relationship with Sherlock. In The Blind Banker she brings up a tray of food for Sarah, so she saw that. In A Scandal in Belgravia she meets Jeanette, John’s girlfriend at Christmas, and John even comes to her when Sherlock is composing asking whether he’s ever had a boyfriend or a girlfriend. Mrs. Hudson knows how Sherlock is, and she knows they weren’t in an official relationship. Mrs. Hudson isn’t Irene Adler, she’s not the show’s sex expert, but she was an exotic dancer and we’re not supposed to believe she’s sexually oblivious or something. Mrs. Hudson might suspect they have sex now and again — I imagine the thought has to have crossed her mind — or she might not, but it doesn’t really matter: when she makes her comments, they just pertain to the feelings she perceives them to have for one another.
It always kills me when Mrs. Hudson sobs, “Oh Sherlock,” just before John hugs him during the best man speech. You have to wonder what all is included in that. Mrs. Hudson and Molly are both set up as parallels to John’s marriage, and it’s suggested throughout TSoT that Molly knows that Sherlock is in love with John. It would make sense that Mrs. Hudson is like Molly in that way too, especially given that she’s been saying it from day one.