Saturday, April 1, 2017

"What does it mean? Why did you say that name?"

And now, a Sherlockian moment from the film Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice:
Superman: You're letting them kill Martha . . .
Batman: What does that mean? Why did you say that name?
Superman: Find him . . . Save Martha . . .
Batman: Why did you say that name? Martha? Why did you say that name? WHY DID YOU SAY THAT NAME?
Lois Lane: It's his mother's name! It's his mother's name!
Yes, in a scene that will go down in movie infamy, Lois Lane points out something that many a comic book fan has missed over the years: Batman's murdered mother and Superman's adoptive mother have the same name.

But what if little known Sherlockian scholar Lois Lane was actually just having a "Eureka!" moment of her own, and had gotten distracted by a discovery about her own recent Canonical reading of "His Last Bow" at that moment. And it was just coincidence that caused her words to end the fight?

Hey, it makes as much sense as anything else in that movie!

"There is no one in the house except old Martha, who has played her part to admiration. I got her the situation here when first I took the matter up," Sherlock Holmes explains to Watson after his capture of German spy Von Bork.

Many a Sherlockian has whimsically thought of this Martha as "Martha Hudson," over the years, Sherlock and John's old landlady, stepping in to help the British cause. But this "pleasant old lady" that Sherlock Holmes has put into a very dangerous situation "playing her part," would probably need more experience at duplicity and spywork than the average English landlady, who, though she could be called upon to rotate wax sniper targets by crawling into the room, was probably not up to leaving Baker Street for years on end, even for her favorite lodger.

What, however, if Lois Lane's Sherlockian theory was correct, and not only Batman and Superman had mothers named "Martha," but Sherlock Holmes as well? Who else would have the skills to spend two years in counter-espionage but an unmentioned mother of both Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes?

Makes more sense than Mrs. Hudson, I'd say.

And what if that Martha Holmes was an immortal mother of heroes, who did things like fake her death in Gotham when it was time to raise a boy in Kansas, well over a century after she produced two heroes named Holmes in the Victorian era? And what if Lois Lane put that all together in that moment of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice?

Well, like I said, it makes as much sense as anything else in that movie.

Happy April Fool's Day from a blogger that's not fooling you at all with this one. It is Watson's birthday after all . . . but that's another story.


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