Sherlock Episode Guide: Season Two
Here are summaries (warning—there are major spoilers) of episodes in season two.
Season Two (2012)
Episode 1: A Scandal In Belgravia
After the harrowing end to last season, Moriarty lets Sherlock and Watson go, and things return somewhat to normal.
One day, Mycroft summons the pair to Buckingham Palace and explain that a member of the royal family has had compromising photographs taken with a dominatrix named Irene Adler and wants them back.
Sherlock and Watson visit Adler’s home. After some initial banter, Sherlock finds Adler’s safe. Before he can open it, gunmen burst in and demand that Sherlock open the safe. He figures out the password (Adler’s measurements) and opens the safe, which is booby-trapped (one of the gunmen is killed). Adler drugs Sherlock and flees.
Months later, Sherlock identifies Adler’s body at the morgue. (It turns out to be a false alarm, as she has faked her own death.)
Sherlock is attacked at his apartment. Later, he finds Adler sleeping in his bedroom who asks him to decipher a code she stole from a government official. He does and she secretly texts the answer to Moriarty, who subsequently tells Mycroft that he knows about the government’s efforts to thwart a terrorism group. Sherlock saves the day.
Months later, Mycroft tells Watson that Adler has been executed in Karachi, but asks him to tell Sherlock that she has entered a witness protection program. Later, there’s a flashback of Adler’s “execution” where we learn that Sherlock rescued her—she’s still alive.
Episode 2: The Hounds of Baskerville
Sherlock is visited by Henry Knight, a man whose father was killed by a large hound on Dartmoor when Henry was a small child. Largely dismissed, Henry wants Sherlock to confirm what happened. Initially skeptical, Sherlock agrees to take the case.
Sherlock and Watson visit the area, including a nearby military base. Later, Henry tells them more about what he remembers from the attack. During a visit, Sherlock sees the hound. Later, Sherlock decides that “hound” might not be a name, but an acronym.
Watson gains access to the military base where he notices that there is evidence of animal testing and leaking gas pipes. He becomes trapped inside where he sees the hound.
Sherlock is right, and finds that “H.O.U.N.D” is a secret military project related to chemical weapons. The project was officially shut down in 1986 but some at the base had been continuing the project in secret.
Sherlock receives a call that Henry left the house while upset, and they believe he is going to kill himself. When he finds Henry, Sherlock explains that the hound was a hallucination and Henry’s father was attacked a real person (the doctor). The doctor is subsequently killed.
Separately, Mycroft releases Moriarty from a government facility.
Episode 3: The Reichenbach Fall
Watson tells his therapist, “My best friend, Sherlock Holmes, is dead”. The episode then flashes back to months earlier.
Moriarty, now free, breaks into the Tower of London, while also opening a bank vault unlocking the prison cells with his cell phone. He is caught (on purpose).
Sherlock testifies during Moriarty’s trial that he is a criminal mastermind. Moriarty offers no defense but is found not guilty (he threatened the jury members’ families). Moriarty then visits Sherlock at his home.
Sherlock and Watson investigate a kidnapping, but Moriarty convinces the police that Sherlock has been staging all the cases himself. Lestrade arrests Sherlock, but Sherlock escapes.
Sherlock and Moriarty engage in a battle of wits, and Moriarty tells Sherlock that it ends with Sherlock committing suicide. Sherlock convinces Moriarty that he would be willing to do anything to make him activate the fail-safe. Convinced that the plan has worked, Moriarty kills himself.
Sherlock then tells Watson that he was always a fake and then throws himself from the roof. Later, as Watson visits Sherlock’s grave with Mrs Hudson, Sherlock is standing in the shadows.