Benedict Cumberbatch’s titular detective may have taken an entire episode to figure out his first Sherlock mystery, but the crucial twist was given away in the episode’s opening moments. With a dastardly killer on the loose, sweeping shots of modern London, and numerous instances of Sherlock Holmes insulting people via social ineptitude, “A Study In Pink” offered an early taste of the phenomenon Sherlock would become. Holmes is pitted against a super-intelligent taxi driver who moonlights as a serial killer. Rather than pulling the trigger himself, the culprit forces his victims into playing a deadly game of chance.
Sherlock Holmes only deduces that the killer must be a cabbie as the final act approaches, with Mrs. Hudson insisting a cab awaits him outside 221B Baker Street. In all likelihood, audiences might have drawn that conclusion after seeing Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman’s Watson jogging around London chasing a cab but coming up empty-handed. In truth, however, the mystery behind “A Study In Pink” was laid bare at the very beginning, with an early clue now looking insultingly obvious thanks to the benefit of hindsight.
Sherlock Episode 1’s Opening Gave Away It’s Final Twist
After introducing a miserable Watson, Sherlock episode 1 leaps into a montage of the serial killer’s latest victims dying. Brilliantly, however, each scene in this Sherlock pilot episode intro sequence features some connection to a taxi. The cheating man is told by his lover to “get a cab” over the phone, the rain-soaked teen tries to hail a taxi shortly before making the rookie mistake of splitting from their friend, and the drunk woman has her keys taken away by concerned colleagues. Looking back, the only possible explanation is that all three are killed by a taxi driver, despite Sherlock hiding this twist for another 60 minutes.
Sherlock somehow manages to keep this revelation mostly obscured, thanks in part to the next scene introducing Rupert Graves’ Lestrade and Benedict Cumberbatch as Holmes. The detective inspector boldly states, “There’s no link we’ve found yet,” and this subtly lures audiences into assuming Sherlock has not yet revealed the all-important connection between all three victims when, in fact, the opposite is true. Sherlock also drops a red herring by immediately introducing the idea that all three victims took their own lives. This red herring immediately draws attention away from the taxi, and forces the question of whether there is a killer at all.
Sherlock’s Early Twist Reveal Proves The Killer’s Point
By dropping such overt clues before Sherlock Holmes himself has even appeared, Sherlock episode 1 proves the entire point behind “A Study In Pink.” The crux of this Sherlock villain twist is that nobody pays attention to the humble London cab driver. The assailant is able to silently move around London unquestioned and unhindered, given complete trust by total strangers. Even Sherlock’s almighty intellect fails to make the deduction until the man responsible is, quite literally, on his doorstep. As the villain himself gleefully admits, “It’s like we’re invisible.”
Sherlock perfectly highlights the killer’s argument with its overt hints that a taxi driver is responsible. All three killer scenes in the opening minutes make references or allusions toward getting a cab, yet the connection still somehow slips by largely unnoticed. The audience becomes complicit in overlooking the man driving a taxi as a figure of importance, and the vital common denominator for solving the case fades silently into Sherlock‘s London backdrop. Both in Sherlock‘s fictional case and in the real-world script, the killer hides in plain sight.
