Sherlock’s Death Episode Easter Egg Made Holmes’ Creator Show Canon

An Easter egg in Sherlock’s “The Reichenbach Fall” made Sir Arthur Conan Doyle canon in the show’s universe. Here’s how that works.

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An Easter egg in a particularly heartbreaking episode of Sherlock made the Great Detective’s creator canon within the show – and here’s how. Created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes made his debut in the story A Study in Scarlet in 1887, and became so popular he appeared in a total of four novels and 56 short stories. The Great Detective has maintained his popularity over the years and has been adapted to all types of media for over a hundred years.

Among the most recent adaptations of the character is the BBC’s TV series Sherlock, created by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss. The series brought Sherlock Holmes (Benedict Cumberbatch), John Watson (Martin Freeman), and other characters from Conan Doyle’s stories to the modern world, with the detective using technology to his advantage but without relying on it too much. Sherlock also adapted many of the cases found in the books and brought to life one of the most controversial moments in Holmes’ life: his supposed death at the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland, which in the series happened in a completely different setting and circumstances.

Sherlock season 2 episode “The Reichenbach Fall” followed Jim Moriarty’s (Andrew Scott) attempts to destroy Sherlock Holmes’ public image and drive him to suicide. It all began with an elaborate plan in which Moriarty broke into the case where the Crown Jewels were kept, while simultaneously opening the vault at the Bank of England and unlocking all the cells at Pentonville Prison, all with the help of his cellphone. After that, he allowed himself to be caught and Sherlock was later called to testify at his trial. Between Sherlock and John arriving at the scene and then leaving Baker Street to go to the trial, a series of newspaper headlines are shown on screen, among those one that mentions Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, thus making him canon within the universe of Sherlock.

The headline reads “Amateur detective to be called as expert witness”, with the first line of the article being “In a twist worthy of a Conan Doyle novella, Mr. Sherlock Holmes was yesterday revealed to be an expert witness at the trial of ‘Jim’ Moriarty”. While Sherlock Holmes is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous character, the detective’s stories are not the only ones he wrote, so there are other works that can exist within the universe of Sherlock without creating confusion. Conan Doyle wrote various short stories, most notably “The Captain of the Pole-Star” and “J. Habakuk Jephson’s Statement”, with the latter popularizing the mystery of the Mary Celeste, adding details that have been taken as facts when talking about the incident. He also wrote seven historical novels and created other characters like Professor Challenger, a hot-tempered scientist, and Brigadier Gerard, a Hussar officer in the French Army during Napoleonic Wars and the comedic hero of 17 historical short stories, a play, and a novel.

With a simple line in a newspaper, which appeared on screen quite fast, Sherlock made its main character’s creator canon, but without his most famous creation. Still, it’s fun to learn that the characters in the series (especially Sherlock himself) have surely read the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and even more that Moriarty’s plans and Sherlock’s involvement in them were so big and shocking that they were compared to the works of Conan Doyle.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/sherlock-holmes-reichenbach-fall-arthur-conan-doyle-reference/