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The Sherlock episode The Final Problem is both the 13th episode of the series and the swan song of Season 4. It premiered on January 15, 2017, with theatrical flair: it aired simultaneously on BBC One, PBS, Channel One, and 1+1, with cinema releases in the UK and Ireland the same day. It was sold not as another episode, but rather as an event, a climax.
It opens with a startling scene: a young girl suddenly wakes up in a deserted plane, with the rest of the passengers asleep. Her only companion is the sinister voice of Jim Moriarty saying, “Welcome to the Final Problem.” Out of this dream world, the story takes a turn towards the more recognizable confines of Sherlock Holmes’ London house, where a break-in opens the door to revelation.
Sherlock, the lifelong puzzle-solver, learns that he has a sister, Eurus, a genius whose intelligence is as good as Newton’s, but who has virtually no emotional compass.
The life of Eurus is drawn in strokes of cruelty and fire. As a child, she stole and murdered what Sherlock thought was his favorite dog, Redbeard, and then burned down the family house. Eurus was declared too dangerous to be treated like an ordinary individual. She was sent first to a psychiatric facility and then to an underground prison camp called Sherrinford, located on an island in the North Sea under state jurisdiction.
The hurt she caused was so severe that Sherlock suppressed the memory of her existence deep in his psyche.
The plotline pushes Sherlock, John Watson, and Mycroft Holmes into the maze of manipulations Eurus has built, and all of them face a psychological trap. Using her chilling understanding of human nature, Eurus bribes prison wardens and sets up lavish trials, hanging the posthumous taunts of Moriarty like poisoned meat. Every contact becomes a game, every puzzle a trap.
What comes next is the most cruel twist: Redbeard, the beloved friend whom Sherlock grieved over, was not a dog. It was Victor Trevor, one of his boyhood friends, imprisoned in a well by Eurus, to die without a murmur, a victim of her jealousy. Faced with puzzles that challenge not just his wits but also his compassion, Sherlock has to go beyond just saving John and also confront the abyss of his sister’s loneliness. The solution to this problem is not found in deduction, but in music: a duet where conversation is replaced by connection.
The episode scatters its plot with references to the canon of Arthur Conan Doyle, sprinkling it with riddles, motifs, and family mystery, stretching the Holmes mythology into melodramatic space. Its prison scenes were shot at the real St. Catherine’s Fort in Wales to lend some reality to the gothic background. Even a musician, Paul Weller, makes a cameo appearance, accentuating the feeling of event television.
Yet The Final Problem is remembered just as much by the uproar it caused as by its narrative boldness. Its bid to solve years of mysteries collided head-on with fan expectations, causing fans to divide. What was supposed to be a big finale instead fractured into controversy and was ridiculed by some due to its messy plot and questionable character decisions.
Disclaimer: The article contains the writer's personal opinions; reader discretion is advised.
Sherlock backlash explained: Why The Final Problem split the fandom
The Final Problem, written by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, established itself as the defining moment of the contemporary Holmes legend when it was screened in early 2017. Rather, it created rifts in its fandom. It was met with lukewarm praise and outright scorn, and critics and viewers alike have cited various reasons as to why the ending failed.
The chief among these was its perceived incoherence. The episode moved back and forth between tones, part spy caper, part gothic horror, part psychological experiment, without ever quite falling into the tight detective work that had made Sherlock so familiar. Critics at Vox labelled it an “acid trip of hallucinogenic confusion,” clashing with the soberly elegant form of its predecessors. To many fans, the tonal messaging felt like betrayal.
Much of the discontent was in Eurus herself. The unveiling of a secret sister to Sherlock as a villainous genius would have added to the mythology, but her representation as a near-supernatural genius was pushing plausibility to its limits. To critics, she was less of a carefully constructed character and more of a “bad fan fiction” that distorts the emotional core of the show instead of strengthening it.
Now came the arc of Molly Hooper, perhaps the most controversial beat of them all. After being represented as a silent yet competent ally, she was thrown into an unnatural situation where Sherlock tries to force her into admitting to loving him. Viewers were horrified by the simplification of a complex character into a “one-dimensional lovesick” mechanism. Even the show's creative team hesitated, with actors and writers admitting uncertain opinions as to whether the scene was a tribute or a downgrade to her.
Divisions were further increased by the puzzle-box construction of the episode. Some viewers enjoyed the intellectual puzzles and mind games, but others felt like they were watching a story crumbling under its own weight. The story was not to everybody’s satisfaction, as the use of extensive mind games as a plot was more akin to a spectacle than a storyline.
This discouragement was increased by the online fanbase. On forums such as Reddit, discussion boards were full of anger, with fans complaining that the finale was more parody than canon.
Others said they were leaving the fandom altogether, as the love they had invested in Sherlock was sabotaged by what they regarded as melodrama and incoherence. Even critics were not silent in expressing these grievances. They spoke of the finale as clichéd and weirdly vacant, as though the show had been taken over by its own excesses.
Still, there were defenders. Publications such as The Independent and The Telegraph highlighted the emotional weight of the performances of Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman and admired the ambition of the finale despite its unfortunate shortcomings. To them, the episode was not a mystery but a reflection of a broken relationship and unrecovered trauma. The Telegraph wrote:
“The dazzling script delivered laughs, excitement, and emotion. Movie pastiches flew past, from horror tropes to Avengers’ gentleman spy weaponry, and some smart Silence Of The Lambs business with a glass cell. After the adrenaline stopped pumping, there was even a happy ending.”
The Final Problem: Narrative complexity vs. fan expectations
By fusing psychological thriller, family drama, and detective fiction, the finale took a big gamble in extending the Holmes mythology. The addition of Eurus as a gloomy twin sibling genius made the family story starkly gothic, albeit at the expense of plausibility. The episode substituted sleuthing with psychodrama, and deduction with the unknotting of childhood wounds.
This pivot unsettled many. The Final Problem was more of a dreamlike sequence and manipulative twists, where previous seasons would have been driven by tight, logical mysteries. This move, according to critics, distorted the identity of the show, as viewers were now forced to view it through a surreal environment that no longer had any ties to the procedural rigor of the show. The dissonance proved to be the wedge that divided the fandom.
Character arcs and fan discontent: The case of Molly Hooper and Sherlock
The missteps of the end were best exemplified by the way Molly Hooper turned from a competent ally to an emotional pawn. The scene where Louise Brealey confesses her love was later disclosed by the actress to have been added towards the end of the production, which only served to highlight the artificiality. Viewers interpreted it not as a climax of characterization but as a wipeout, a random scramble that deprived it of subtlety.
Sherlock was not exempt from criticism. The long cord that bound him to the dance of intellect and emotion was here digested by domestic melodrama. Rather than a detective genius, the people were called to observe him as a wounded sibling, a transition some considered deep but many more perceived as diminishing.
Critical reception and industry perspective
The professional critics were split as much as the fans. Some liked the ambition and cheered performances and the audacity of extending Holmes’ personal mythology. Others mocked the ending as congested, disjointed, and self-indulgent. The division was a microcosm of the wider struggle to bridge a cultural phenomenon in the age of online fandom: every ending is not only an end but a vote.
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The Final Problem became, in the eyes of industry observers, a representative of a bigger trend in the prestige television landscape: producers pushing towards operatic levels of complexity, frequently at the expense of coherence, and bumping up against viewers who are not ready to let go of what the show used to be. The ending is therefore not so much an ending as it is a case study in the turbulent relationship between artistic risk and fan loyalty.
Also: Sherlock Holmes: Every movie & show in order (and how to watch)
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