

And having failed to solve the puzzle Eurus promised would lead him to Redbeard, he’s solved every other puzzle he can lay his hands on since.Īnd so The Final Problem reveals what we’ve really been watching these past six years: Sherlock’s gradual journey back to humanity. So changed.” Suffering, he repressed his feelings, chose rationality over sentiment and didn’t make another friend until Mike Stamford introduced him to a certain ex-army doctor looking for digs. As a kid, she drowned ‘Redbeard’-not a dog but Sherlock’s childhood friend-and in so doing cauterised her brother’s emotions. Born with a fearsome intellect outstripping that of her brothers, Eurus’ curiosity was unrestrained by conscience or empathy. Little Mischa Lecter may have been a sweet thing (you’d have to ask those Nazis), but little Eurus Holmes was a monster. Or rather, the man he was before A Study In Pink and John Watson’s friendship thawed his icy heart. Like Hannibal the cannibal, childhood family trauma made Sherlock the man he is today. The latest wheeze of writers Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss is that Sherlock Holmes didn’t just happen, something happened to him. Once you know the answer, what’s left to wonder about? Fans of detective fiction know that the pleasure comes from trying to solve the mystery, not having it all explained for us. A-to-B diagrams explaining the precise genesis of heroes and villains are likely to disappoint. But about as elegant and invincible as a National Enquirer headline. Twenty-five years later, Harris scrapped all that to explain in Hannibal Rising that Lecter is what he is because Nazis ate his sister. You can’t reduce me to a set of influences.” It’s an elegant, invincible line, one that waves away the tricks of their trades as psychiatrist and FBI agent, and paints Lecter as pure evil. In Thomas Harris’ The Silence Of The Lambs, Hannibal Lecter tells Clarice Starling “Nothing happened to me I happened.
