Sherlock Review: The Final Problem
(WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR THE FINAL PROBLEM)
Listen to our reactions below or at the link.
Here, though the world explode, these two survive
—Vincent Starrett, 221B
I used pieces of Vincent Starrett’s beloved poem in my review of “The Abominable Bride,” and it’s fitting that my mind is again drawn to it as I try to formulate thoughts about “The Final Problem.” This episode, more than the others this season, is the spiritual and practical sequel to TAB, giving Sherlock a chance to put into practice in the real world what he learned about himself in the Victorian construct of his mind palace.
This entire season has been about the fracturing of Holmes’s world. First, his relationships disintegrated, as the death of Mary Watson drove a wedge between him and John, and then his home itself literally exploded around him. Finally, his reality itself exploded as he realized he had a once-beloved sibling he could no longer remember. The beautiful thing about “The Final Problem” is that it’s not so much about the problem; it’s about the solution. No matter what explodes, these two survive. Ultimately, the deep loyalty and affection Holmes and Watson have for each other transcends the bitterness of their conflict, together they are able to rebuild from the ashes of their home, and Watson’s support helps Holmes to navigate the desperate puzzle of his sister’s existence.
In one of my favorite sequences in all of Sherlock’s history as a series, we see Sherlock returning time and time again to see the woman the world doesn’t want, the sister Mycroft tried to hide away, whom he now says is unreachable. But Sherlock reaches her, communicating through music what neither sibling can communicate in words. The man who once thought he would forever be alienated from the world now does for Eurus what John Watson once did for him. He becomes a bridge to the world, to love, to connection, the way his blogger has been a bridge for him.
John Watson once rescued Sherlock Holmes in his mind palace at the Reichenbach Falls. Now it’s Sherlock who visits his sister’s mind palace, the airplane where a lonely little girl is looking for a pilot to help her know how to land. He rescues her, and in the end he keeps rescuing her, bit by bit, day by day, because he can, because he has the confidence to reach for someone as unreachable as he used to feel. The man who was once rescued can now attempt to rescue someone else without fear of losing himself.
And not only is he ready to spend himself on his sister. As the showrunners have said, the four series and one special we’ve had have served as the origin story for the Holmes and Watson of the stories, putting them in place to be the crimesolving duo of legend. The Holmes and Watson who rebuild Baker Street also rebuild their lives and partnership, culminating in a triumphant ending that sees them back where they started—except better, stronger, and wiser. The Sherlock we leave at the end of the series is ready to be of use, not just to one person, but to humanity.
That’s a look at the thematic concepts addressed in “The Final Problem.” Now let’s explore the specifics of the storytelling. Structurally and stylistically, the episode was more of a horror film than any other installment of the show. It shared certain similarities with much-beloved episode “The Great Game,” but the tone was astronomically more ominous, with the majority of the episode being taken up by the torturous mindgames Eurues inflicted on her brothers and Watson inside the Sherrinford facility.
The great value of this structure is that it brought an elegant simplicity to the stages of the story, something we’ve missed in the previous two episodes. We love to watch Holmes and Watson partnering to solve puzzles, and in this instance, Mark Gatiss’s Mycroft added a great deal, both in terms of emotional stakes and intellectual weight.
The various puzzles were complex and gripping. Ultimately, some come out better after scrutiny than others (the dangling Garrideb brothers were a bit comical for the gravity of the situation), but the overall effect was mesmerizing. Louise Brealey (sadly) wasn’t called upon for much this season, but she gave her all to one of the saddest scenes of the episode, Molly being manipulated by Sherlock one more time, because he thought he was saving her life. Mark Gatiss gave a Bafta-worthy performance as a Mycroft who’s coming to terms with his own culpability for his sister’s (and Moriarty’s) crimes and is willing to pay with his life. John Watson was also back on fine form, with a magnificent moment in which he realized that his own inherent decency wouldn’t let him shoot an innocent man, a reaffirmation that he has it in him to be the good man he aspires to find.
Eurus herself was played brilliantly by Sian Brooke, who came across as a creepily Hannibal Lecter-like inhuman creature at times, but at other times simply a lost little girl. Somehow, she managed to humanize a woman said to be cleverer than either Mycroft or Sherlock, capable of seemingy-impossible manipulation, but ultimately craving simple human connection and to somehow be understood as something more than a machine or a monster.
Redbeard being a human, particularly Victor Trevor (canonical friend of Sherlock Holmes) was a twist I did not see coming, but it was a marvelous payoff for a through-line that has confused and entranced Sherlockians for years. The trauma around Sherlock’s memory of Redbeard seemed too cataclysmic to refer to a dog, and that turned out to be absolutely true. Thankfully, history did not repeat itself. Sherlock Holmes solved the case, and his best friend lived.
Canon nods abounded, particularly in the mechanism of the overarching case from Sherlock’s childhood, which used the creepy nursery rhyme/song Eurus had devised as a child. Both “The Musgrave Ritual” and “The Gloria Scott” center around puzzles, and the episode married the cases in a pretty seamless partnership. The Holmes family home referenced the former, and Victor Trevor is a major part of the latter. Eurus’s puzzles also had Canon references entwined all through them. We noticed nods to “The Retired Colourman,” “Lady Frances Carfax,” the aforementioned “Three Garridebs,” and there were undoubtedly others. The disguises Sherlock and Mycroft donned refer back to “Black Peter” and “The Sign of Four,” in which Sherlock Holmes posed as a captain and seafaring man. Also, the Stradivarius reference points to Holmes’s Strad in the stories, purchased by him at a pawnshop for a fraction of its worth. Not canonical but historical, the reference to Oscar Wilde is a nod to the fact that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was inspired to write the Holmes stories past A Study in Scarlet while he was having a meal with Wilde.
We had a great deal of love for this episode, but it wasn’t perfect. Let’s look at some of the less-successful aspects.
First off, it would be pointless and annoying to belabor every single plot leap. We weren’t particularly bothered by them when watching, but details like Eurus’s nearly-supernatural ability to manipulate everyone around her, John somehow escaping a well on a rope while his feet are chained to the bottom, and the extraordinary efficiency of Moriarty and Eurus to be able to formulate their plan during five unsupervised minutes, don’t bear looking at too closely. Most of the apparent plotholes worked as horror tropes. Eurus evokes Hannibal Lecter, particularly in Silence of the Lambs, at several moments, and it was such great fun to see Andrew Scott show up that we could almost ignore the fact that it didn’t make a huge amount of sense. So, too, it was a lot to swallow to accept that Mycroft made a string of bad decisions so vast he was using his mentally unbalanced sister to do government research and rewarding her with things like tete-a-tetes with criminal masterminds. Nevertheless, as a sudden fall for a character who, at times, has seemed nearly omniscient, it worked quite well.
Of course, this wouldn’t be Mofftiss without a bit of the Extra thrown in. We still have a Plot Baby who doesn’t really have a place in this story. We now have, in Eurus, a whole new unbalanced genius with incredible power (as well as another evil brilliant female, something the writers seem to love doing). She’s fun to watch, but she’s definitely from a very heightened world that bears only a glancing resemblance to the real one. Additionally, the strong character development of Molly and the joy of watching Lestrade at work were largely sacrificed for runtime and plot needs, which, as we’ve said before, can make a story feel smaller when it gets bigger because it can’t find enough space for the people who matter.
Finally, we were a bit disappointed not to get a more direct adaptation of the most emotional part of Doyle’s “The Three Garridebs,” which is when Watson is shot, and a distraught Holmes shows for a brief moment how deeply he cares about his friend. This episode substituted Holmes’s shouted declaration to Mycroft that Watson is like family to him, which was magnificent, but we’d still have enjoyed seeing a horrified Holmes fussing over his injured comrade.
The less said about the 221b explosion the better, we think. The symbolism of having Holmes and Watson rebuild it while they rebuild their friendship (and Sherlock rebuilds his sister) is powerful, in the end. The way they got there? We’ll just let the lacking CGI and over-dramatization that resulted in (apparently) no one even being injured be water under the bridge of an episode that, over all, we hugely enjoyed.
As a final criticism, this episode did little to redeem the issues with its two preceding episodes. That’s less a criticism of this story than it is a shake of the head that “The Six Thatchers,” in particular, just is what it is, warts and all. There was no hail Mary in the end that made the whole thing worthwhile.
Here dwell together still two men of note
—Vincent Starrett, 221B
I’m back to Starrett, because the brilliant coda at the end of “The Final Problem,” voiced by the actually-dead Mary Watson (we were right about that), echoed him, speaking about two men with the potential to become, together, a haven for the desperate and downtrodden. We’re left with the image of Holmes and Watson back in Baker Street, taking cases and solving crimes.
And that’s exactly where we want them. During the Q&A after the episode screening the other night, Moffat told the crowd that we all know how the story continues. Dr. Watson and Sherlock Holmes keep solving mysteries together. We know, he said, because it’s written in the stories, and we can read them whenever we like.
At this point in time, no one knows if Sherlock will continue or if The Final Problem was its swan song. Either way, we’re grateful for where the episode left us. If we never see these iterations of Holmes and Watson on screen again, we can always imagine them in 221b, happy and secure in their partnership. If we do see them in future seasons or specials, they’re perfectly positioned to return to the kind of self-contained, clever mystery solving that made Holmes a household name in the Victorian Era and underpins all great adaptations since.
The man who plays the violin with his broken sister, and the doctor raising his little girl alone, are not perfect men, and I think Doyle would be glad about that. After all, he didn’t write about perfect men. Instead, he gave us the greater gift of uncommon friends.
Listen to our podcast reaction and review below…
Amy Thomas is a book reviewer, freelance essayist, and author of The Detective and The Woman mystery novel series featuring Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler, published by MX Publishing. She holds a degree in professional communication and is an avid knitter, geek, and grammar nerd. Amy blogs about Sherlock Holmes at Girlmeetssherlock.wordpress.com and can be reached for professional enquiries at nottinghillnapoleon@gmail.com. Connect with her on Twitter @Pickwick12.
I agree with most of this but thought a shout out too for Cumberbatch who was simply magnificent in this & TLD
We enjoyed Moffat and Gattis’s early Sherlock work because we love Sherlock Holmes. The first 6 episodes were a brilliant reinterpretation of the Canon, updating the characters in a way that left enough of the originals intact to make them recognisable. But when Sherlock Holmes stops becoming Sherlock Holmes, as he did last night, what’s the point? There were so many things wrong with The Final Problem, but the biggest was surely the number of yawning plot holes, something that even Conan-Doyle (not exactly Mr Continuity himself) would have been embarrassed about. If Sherlock Holmes is not about logic and an ‘iron chain of reasoning’ then what is it about?
We are constantly being reminded that Gatiss and Moffat are SUCH great fans of the Canon and lovers of all things Holmes. So why have they strayed so far from the spirit of the original stories that there’s really nothing left? People will say that there’s no point rehashing the originals when we have the (relatively) faithful Brett adaptations and I agree. But in the first 6 Sherlock episodes they showed that they could do a modern take on Holmes which would retain a sufficient number of the original tropes but add something new and fresh. They will remain as brilliant additions to the Holmes interpretations when these last 3 have been erased from the memory, shoved into the televisual nursing home like the embarrassing uncle that nobody wants to talk about (or indeed like a long lost sister shoehorned into a plot).
I have even found the Canonical references, such a pleasure for us geeks in the first few episodes, to be increasingly grating (and don’t get me started on the dangling Garridebs…) As if Moffat and Gatiss want to divert attention from the fact that what’s actually going on on-screen is far, far removed from the Canon.
Does this matter? How about a test. If all the character names were changed, would somebody coming to the series fresh have any idea of the supposed original source material after watching these latest 3 episodes? I seriously doubt it.
Clearly nobody at the BBC has the courage to tell Gatiss and Moffat to just stop and walk away. If they are the Canonical devotees that they claim to be, they should take the initiative themselves and draw a line under it now before anyone else gets hurt.
I thought the Final Problem was closer to Doyle than a couple in the first two series. The arc of the later episodes show Sherlock’s character changing due to his friendship with Watson. He was still recognisably the same person as in the Reichenbach fall. The Lying Detective was classic Sherlock on acid. It is so fashionable to knock down success.
I haven’t been able to sleep in the hours following watching episodes from series 4. Quite literally sensory overload in many cases. I am astounded by the level of acting – the best thing about Sherlock currently being world class performances from everyone. And then the music.
I do feel that after 3 years of waiting between series 3 and 4, that there should have been less reliance on melodrama. I read the entire canon plus every pastiche, and watched every screen incarnation of all things Holmes when writing my own vision of Sherlock, 5 years ago, as a portfolio piece. I personally delight in the canon references. I think the show is mostly excellent, but I also think some easy choices have been made in the face of such a challenge – I mean, three feature length clever stories are no mean feat. However, the motivation each series seems to be ‘bigger, better’, something that frustrates me enormously. Sometimes the biggest thing you can do is be very quiet. There is far too gratuitous drama: the gunshot at the end of episode two created a dramatic cliffhanger (but went nowhere and was never explained) and the explosion in Baker Street created great dramatic footage for trailers (though sadly shocking CGI that I don’t want to rewatch) but conveniently again was never explained. In fact I think it was plain unnecessary but for the gorgeous rebuilding montage at the end.
I feel BBC Sherlock would benefit from a wider pool of writers (where was Stephen Thomson? Where was a quite critical 3rd voice?) to prevent it from being ‘just fanfiction’. I don’t mean to disrespect fanfiction with that statement – I just mean that professional work must be held to a higher standard than just pleasing your own story gremlins, and this series was really quite indulgent.
80% of it has been earth shatteringly excellent. 20% of it got a bit lazy, I feel. But it’s still so good, with beautiful touches, and I feel a genuine sense of loss at what appears to be a swan song, but given the right conditions they could revisit the show any time they want. Maybe they will also have some better ideas for crime stories outside of their own familial drama – still so much untapped material in the canon and still so many characters to explore. I sense a boom of fanfiction in the next few months!
And lastly I think passion should always be celebrated, however reactions might divide us, it’s a show of love for something, and that’s always great.
I loved the episode and your review is spot on. I just have 2 comments. As someone who has had a great personal tragedy this past year, I can say the theme of “it is what it is” is perfect. Seems like Sherlock, John, and I have learned acceptance together this season. And I was struck by the scene where Mycroft is telling their parents about their daughter. When their mother questions how he could do such a thing and Sherlock responds that he did the best he could do. It’s that moment that many of us have felt when we grow up, look back on our childhood, and forgive our parents their faults because only as adults do we finally realize they did the best they could. Sherlock is forgiving Mycroft.
I will miss the anticipation of new episodes more than anything. But what a fun time it has been!
[…] This review was originally written for the Baker Street Babes, and it can be found on their website here […]
In one episode Mycroft tells John (strictly paraphrasing here): “Sherlock has the heart of a poet and the brains of a scientist yet he chooses to be a detective. What might one deduce about his heart?”. When clearly John does not have the answer, Mycroft fondly reminisces that at one point Sherlock just wanted to be a pirate. This episode is not about a case yet it resolves the biggest case of all, the final problem: Sherlock’s humanity, his heart, the fact that he has both.
Emotional context here.
Despite the ‘Saw’ meets ‘Mission Impossible’ feel of the episode (no problem whatsoever with that) we see a Sherlock that, much like Pinocchio, is on his final quest to become “a real boy”. He all but sang “I got not strings on me”!
We all need a connection, something to ground us or we become lost and frayed runaway kites.Mycroft’s is and has always been Sherlock, his baby brother that needs protecting from himself. After being adrift for so long, Sherlock finds his string in Watson and vice versa. But what Sherlock does not realize (or seem to comprehend until this episode) is that he, the ultimate brain, is actually the kite string to so many others… like Molly. And that is a most painful realization. After years of rejecting these connections as being ‘the Crack in the lense, the fly in the ointment’, the moment he drops the game and rescues his sister, this is when he rescues himself.
Because I have been a kite myself this episode is truly sweet sorrow. We can argue canon all day but Mofftiss gave us a gift which I accept despite my utterly broken feels: Sherlock becomes whole.
I’m absolutely not knocking success for the sake of it – I really, really wanted to like this series as much as I enjoyed the others (including the Abominable Bride which a lot of people didn’t like). But they have strayed so far from the defining features of the key characters that it’s not recognisably Sherlock Holmes any more so what’s the point? As I said before, if you changed the names of the characters and showed it to somebody who had never seen Sherlock before, would they recognise that it was based on ACD’s creation? I doubt it, and on that basis it’s become just another action show where they blow stuff up just because they can.
I agree with Colin and I think that was a great breakdown of the issues. So far, I have actually like the show better than the books, and that’s ridiculously rare for me. ACD came up with an amazing idea (detective murder/mystery solved by deduction), but as you pointed out he’s not exactly Mr. Continuity either.
If one were to change the names and I watched this, I would probably enjoy the “nod” to Sherlock Holmes during one or two scenes, but the rest would leave me wondering why I was watching an X-Files episode knock off staring an Evil River Tam.
I don’t enjoy this ep much and have to pause once in awhile bc i find it so boring. There were so many unnecessary things in this ep, and the whole season in general. Some small parts that i enjoy like when John found out about the truth behind Sherrinford, John and Mycroft’s moral code or the reappearence of the Holmes parents and Lestrade showing up. I’m not really content with Moriarty revisit the series. His reappearance in this episode marked one thing: Moriarty should be gone once and for all. Moriarty has been debated to be whether dead or alive for so long, there’s even hinted at the end of season 3 (and even though the special stated that he is dead, but there’s still hint) and this ep doesnt conclude that at all, IMO. How did Eurus know about Moriarty? Did Mycroft tell her? Did she somehow know about his existence when she was investigated some cases given by Mycroft? If so then how did they come up with such plan to play Sherlock in just 5 minutes? And how the hell did they manage to record all those videos in JUST 5 minutes? As much as I like Andrew Scott performance and used to enjoy Moriarty in the first two seasons, Moriarty should be gone for good.
I agree that we should not talk about the explosion. Even though Sherlock claimed himself to not be a superhero, this season had proved that he is a superhero, with the whole jumping out of the window with an explosion behind, FASTER than a bomb that is about to explode.The slow motion is getting more ridiculous. This maybe just me but i also found his deduction sequence to be ridiculous as well, like the halfway through the ep the showrunners suddenly remember that they have to show Sherlock’s deducing.
Just like the episode had stated, everything is about Sherlock, and truely, the showrunners are so fond of Sherlock that everyone who is not him is lacking. John knowing about the government was nice and all, but putting him beside Mycroft is not a good comparison. Some people might try to convince me that he is impatient bc this is family matter but i can’t erase the fact that he can’t spot the voice in the video and need John to point that out. The only time he proved to be intelligent is when the three Garridebs, besides that, not so much. Molly is being entangled with her feeling for Sherlock, again. I don’t know what Sherlock did after that but at the end when her cameo is her smiling, it’s unfitted, somehow. John in this ep is like the best John compared to the other two ep of the season, though I’m not a fan of him being the one who convinced Sherlock to manipulate Mycroft’s emotion just so he would tell them about Eurus. I want to say that I love the ending of the ep. In another context, it would be true, but i can’t take it seriously after how they portrait Holmes and Watson in previous eps. Lestrade continues to be the best thing about this season.
Certainly, this is not the final Sherlock. Next season will be coming out, though i doubt it will get better, or I continue to have faith in Moffat or Gatiss. I have more problems with the ep but this is all I can think of, for now. I wish I can reprogram my mind about this season like how Sherlock reprogrammed his.
Amy, this beautifully written article clarified a great deal for me and allowed me to like even more of this episode than I did on first viewing. I had trouble with the pacing and with the extreme jump in genre, while like you, I was greatly moved by quite a bit of the character development. There has been so much nastiness flung at this show in this last season, it pains me greatly to read, as I think there was brilliant, expert, and creative Sherlockian genius at work on this series. And frankly, I am deeply sad at the possibliity that there may be no more Cumberbatch and Freeman as Sherlock and John. I so want more. It hurts as people gleefully fling mud at this show which has brought so many to canon, and brought so much joy to people. This was a very moving, and well thought out tribute, Amy, and I loved what you had to say. And agree totally. Season Four was a stretch away from tradition, but artfully and lovingly done. Those characters live on for me, and these actors and writers have my deepest admiration and affection. Thank you, Amy.
Thank you for an intelligent, balanced review! I appreciate the range of reactions to this episode and had to examine my own dislike of it in the face of so many positive responses (and I wanted to feel love, too!). I think partly my dislike comes from having been very invested in Freeman’s characterization of Watson in the first 3 seasons. When Watson seemingly overlooked the fact that his wife shot his best friend, it was hard for me to go along with that marriage, so that Mary’s death scene rang false to me, no matter how beautifully acted. In season 4, John become more marginal to the story and seemed to lose the admirable qualities from the earlier episodes (although I was not surprised he was broken after losing Sherlock and then losing the wife who I guess he – loved? Who loved him? I remain confused about how we are supposed to believe that.) Although they gave us an all-too-brief scene of John and Sherlock reconnecting, it went by very quickly and didn’t carry enough weight to balance out all the other business going on. I guess it’s a personal preference – I liked the stories that have the friendship/relationship of Sherlock and John at the center, however you wish to characterize their bond. And I felt that ‘center’ got lost in the clutter.
That being said, The Final Problem reminded me so much of The Avengers – not the movies but the old British series starring Diana Rigg. Campy, a bit of sci-fi, no worries about plausibility. I loved that series, and would have enjoyed The Final Problem as a novel piece of stylized storytelling. Sadly, though, I felt robbed of the Sherlock and John stories that I loved.
One of the sailors on the boat said “Do hear a helicopter?” and the other says “In this storm?” So that is how they got on the boat.
Little Girl on the Plane — was the little girl in The Great Game that was worried about her grandfather’s ashes — the grandfather who ended up on the plane of the dead…and the girl is in Sherlock’s mind palace, not Euros’.
The above review is more than generous…
I think TFP is simple-minded, unsubtle, tedious, sadistic, and dour. It’s just depressing, with character ‘development’ so drastic it approaches character drainage, and with the most vacant series-of-puzzles plot possibly ever. (Amazing that an episode both this saccharine and this mean still comes out as a yawn.)
The episode has small genuinely touching bits but much more of tacked-on sentimentality and vanilla heroics. (‘Soldiers? – Soldiers!” — That’s not even dialogue, let alone a a premise…)
Cumberbatch’s talents are mildly wasted in the role of a nondescript hero called ‘Sherlock’ for no good reason. Well done, Gatiss and Moffat — for needlessly erasing the title character’s personality just to prove once again that he’s a valiant un-sociopath. (Who was ever under much delusion about this issue?) What was transmitted with some subtlety already in The Reichenbach Fall is belatedly bludgeoned in in TFP.
Note for any next venture: departures from the original setup = fine (I for one loved season 3); a final episode making the main character unrecognizable = self-defeating.
(Another note: there are now far too many sociopathic Holmes siblings. The Eurus character is over the top in every way, except in any way that resembles fun. Give Sian Brooke some other role.)
By giving a Sherlockian–and general pop culture–Rorschach Test, Moffat and Gatiss allow the fans to pull the gems from their everything-but-the-kitchen-sink compost heap and to ignore the flies: in other words, less said about the huge plot gaps and leaps of illogic and more concentration on the feels, the better. The series taken as a whole becomes not about Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, or not about the pop culture Sherlock Holmes that has evolved outside of the Canon, than cult-creating kitsch. “The man who plays the violin with his broken sister, and the doctor raising his little girl alone, are not perfect men, and I think Doyle would be glad about that.” I think Doyle would be scratching his head over that asking, “What has this to do with the Holmes and Watson I created?” What Moffat and Gatiss has done is to create a fan base, give them a whiteboard, plastic cut-out characters and accessories held on by static and the command, “Go and create your own adventure”. By the way, my own c.y.o.a. would be at the end of “The Lying Detective” (which it thoroughly enjoyed, thought was the best of Series Four, and total bollocks) would be when Eurus takes out her one contact lens. While live watching the show, I half expected her to pull off her mask Mission Impossible-style and actually be Moriarty. Now that would have been genius.
I do see many story arcs occurring that seem 2 be at the climax. It would take S5 to get more into resolutions. As a lifelong AVID AVID Sherlockian I find it very intriguing to sort through a well-crafted TV movie showing me more about Sherlock while using 90 percent canon Sherlock plot points and references to do it. Imagine if someone took Miss Marple for ex .. and did the same you’d have ppl debating about it as well. That’s great but it isn’t great if ppl use vitriolic language to attack ppl involved personally. Love or hate The Final Problem and the other episodes they are what they are. Labour of love from a cast and crew of ppl that love the stories too. My husband isn’t a Sherlockian and he gave the episode 4/5 stars. I personally can’t wait for Series 5
It’s true that Mary Watson; Lestrade ;John Watson himself;Irene Adler; Mrs Hudson; Mycroft Holmes; Molly Hooper(fashioned fr Maude Bellamy-Lion’s Mane) are not the same as canon. In fact they are MUCH MUCH MORE real.we see them as real people instead of 5 sentences of text and there’s nothing to say whether ACD would approve or disapprove.
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