How did Sherlock Holmes Survive The Reichenbach Fall?

Spoiler alert!  This Wizzle reveals details from the end of BBC's Sherlock (series two), as well as Arthur Conan Doyle's The Adventure of the Final Problem and The Adventure of the Empty House. If you do not wish these stories to be spoiled, please click here with great haste now! Spoiler Alert!

When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle killed off Sherlock Holmes in 1896, it was meant to be permanent.

The extreme reaction of fans (and a large financial incentive) saw him bringing the great detective back to life a decade later.

It's now 2012 and history is repeating. Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, two avowed Conan Doyle enthusiasts, have created precisely the same cliff-hanger. The fandom has responded in precisely the same way.

Arguably the Victorian furore over Sherlock Holmes was the dawn of the fandom culture, as we know it. There had been popular books and plays in the past - the Arthurian legend was kept alive with fan-fiction and fan-art - but nothing on this scale.

Then, as with now, the stories were serialized. Conan Doyle wrote chapters for newspapers and magazines. Moffat and Gatiss have the genre of television for their installments. Nevertheless, when fans are left for long enough, aching for a resolution to a life or death situation, then they'll create their own!

Sherlock fans tend towards being armchair detectives anyway, drawn to the tales with their rich forensic details and ingenious dissection of clues. With their fictional idol apparently dead, they turned to their own imaginations to determine how he could have survived.

The Victorians produced their ideas as pamphlets or fully realized short stories, sold in the street. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle eventually bought one for £10 and it inspired him to just keep on writing.

Modern day viewers have much more media at their finger-tips. Their solutions are appearing in forums, comment boxes and on YouTube. But have any of them got it right?

Like every other Sherlock fan, I started theorizing within seconds of that final sequence. I rushed into a Skype call, where my friends and I batted ideas back and forth.

These were the facts, as we saw them:

• Sherlock Holmes is a genius and he had time to prepare;
• He chose the place for the final fight;
• He potentially (via his brother Mycroft) has unlimited funds and the compliance of London authorities in staging his own death;
• He definitely (via Molly) had the ability to walk out of a mortuary without questions being asked.

The rest is open to interpretation and observation. Assuming that was no ghost spotted after his funeral, then Sherlock must be alive and well.

Moffat and Gatiss are aficionados of the Conan Doyle stories, so they frequently sprinkle obscure canon references throughout their versions. The literary Sherlock survived the Reichenbach Falls by using Japanese Baritsu (an imaginary marital art). I wondered if this new Sherlock had employed some kind of Asian meditative technique to stop himself being hurt.

Alternatively had he worn a physical harness, which cushioned or broke his fall? His coat was certainly bulky enough to conceal one.

I then recalled that he had been very good at Parkour, as evidenced in the very first episode. A lower roof was glimpsed each time he peered over the parapet. Could he have used his traceur skills to land in a roll onto it, then quickly make his way to the ground?

If not, then how about a substitution? Mistaken identity had been a running theme throughout both series 1 and 2. In The Great Game, a young girl screamed at the sight of Sherlock. Moriarty had somehow linked the detective's face with her kidnapping. Meanwhile, in The Hound of the Baskervilles, there was talk of human cloning. Sherlock certainly had ample opportunity for puzzling over that.

Other fans have come up with a vast array of ways in which he could have survived. They range from the bizarre (it was aliens a la Life of Brian) to the in depth and feasible. It's been pointed out that a bus was parked there just before, maybe delivering a cast of actors to keep Watson back and spirit Holmes away.

What about the truck filled with plastic bags, which replaced it? Did it provide a soft landing from which Sherlock could then roll onto the pavement? Or did it deliver, then carry away a mattress, to be inserted into the rectangle chalked onto the slabs?

What was the favor that Sherlock asked of Molly?  Did she merely help him escape the morgue, or did it go deeper than that?  Did she provide a corpse in a Sherlock mask or cut off a human hand at the wrist, for him to hold, so that Watson wouldn't find a pulse?

All of these and more are being proffered and discussed by fans desperate for the next installment; myself very firmly amongst them!