Moffat: I find every time watching this, in the edits and the temp versions and everything, the surging of the music and the unbeatable logic of it, it just makes me cry every time. I think it’s fantastic.
Lara: It’s where you really see the mirror of the two them.
Moffat: [Sherlock leans into Irene] That’s not in the script. Was that you Benedict?
Benedict: That was my idea. Because I like the idea of him being in shadow, because it’s such a dark thing he’s playing with: deconstructing love into pure chemistry.
Lara: And this just broke my heart.
Moffat: No, it’s horrible. The idea is that you should start the scene hating her and end it hating him.
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I find the arguments about whether he actually has a thing for Irene to be problematic, because they are based on body language like in this scene. The issue with that is that of course their body language with each other is seductive—they’re attempting to seduce each other! That’s the game throughout the episode. Irene chose the weapon—sex—and then they duel.
It’s entirely possible that one or both of them does in fact fall in love, lust, or at least intellectual fascination with each other. But they both spend the entire episode being lying, unreliable narrators.
In fact, of all the Sherlock episodes, I find the subtext in this one the hardest to parse. Because John is our only reliable narrator here, and Sherlock spends the entire time doing his best to shut John out.
You know, though, what I think is the giveaway that Sherlock’s actually got some kind of thing for Irene? (Love? I dunno. Could be he just thinks she’s the coolest kid on the playground.) But I think the tell is in the climactic scene, when he doesn’t crack the phone code until Irene lets on that Moriarty set her on them. I think that’s Sherlock not really wanting to defeat her. He’s closed it out, left Mycroft to his own devices, wanting to let Irene walk away, until he discovers that she’s betrayed him after all: she’s not here to play with Sherlock. She’s here so Moriarty can play with Sherlock. And then it’s PEWPEWPEW YOU ARE GOING DOWN.