It just feels too good to be true.
[Spoilers here, obviously.]I mean, the world hardly needed another female villain who refuses to kill her nemesis because she's in love with him. I, personally, am not a fan of that trope.
But the fact that Moriarty is a woman??? The fact that she, the one person who's the same as our protagonist except better, is also The Woman, the exemplar of that gender to him? That astounds me. Amazes me. It is such a fundamentally good remix, mash-up, whatever you want to call it, of the two criminals Sherlock holds in intellectual esteem, I can hardly believe it's real.
(I also hardly believe she's defeated for good, but that's healthy skepticism rather than a cynical reflex.)
Elsewhere in the episode, we have:
- confirmation/reassurance that the brownstone is Joan's home as much as Sherlock's!
- what I found to be a rather interesting culmination of Moriarty's US interests!
- an excellent new shiptag for Joanlock! (#otp: you named a bee after me)
- Joan's insight concerning Sherlock being turned on Irene, and being dead-on.
- a very well played relapse ruse, suggested by Joan and working perfectly. (Gregson and Bell were very convincing.)
Let me repeat that: Sherlock Holmes didn't defeat his nemesis here. Joan Watson did.
Wow.
