Moriarty the Patriot

Episode 20

A white knight is someone who champions a cause or simply the saving of those in need, and it is among the most romanticized of notions in English literature. The idea may date back to the Medieval period with the popular ballad Sir Isumbras (which is kind of like a masculine version of the fairy tale Patient Griselda story), but generally speaking, it has come to represent the one person who will stand by those who need them, no matter what. Sometimes, however, it does take a sadder turn, such as in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, where the White Knight represents Alice's childhood and how she is moving away from it, necessitating that he let her go. That's more the case for MP Whiteley in Moriarty the Patriot, because his knightly tale ends with him dying on the pavement, having given up his life to become the eternal white knight of the downtrodden…or, seen another way, having been unable to let go of his brother and thus departing with him.

Either way, this is a pretty brutal episode. I know some of us held out hope, or just plain believed, that Moriarty would be able to stop Milverton's machinations before Sam, Whiteley's disabled younger brother, was killed, which makes the fact that he didn't that much worse. We don't know if Milverton was just two steps ahead of Moriarty or if Will and his group made the deliberate decision to allow Sam to die in order to better use Whiteley. I'm more inclined to think the former, mostly because the point of the Whiteley storyline seems to be to drive home just how much worse Milverton is than the Lord of Crime organization. As Milverton himself puts it, Moriarty is subverting social order with some well-chosen acts of violence; Milverton is actively and gleefully evil with no other thought in mind than to sow chaos and death for his own satisfaction.

Part of the joy that he takes in his acts is getting otherwise “good” people to carry them out for him. (William, at least, gets his own hands dirty.) This week, that was both a Scotland Yard detective and Whiteley himself, each committing murders at Milverton's behest after they had been set up to do so. That Milverton very likely had someone else kill the detective's wife and child just makes the whole thing worse, because we know that there was probably no real justification for his slaughter of three people. Milverton is just seeing how far he can make people go because he can. “Sick” doesn't begin to cover it.

What he wants with the Lord of Crime hasn't been made clear yet, but if I had to guess, I'd say it was to make the group, or possibly just Will, commit a crime that has nothing to do with their lofty goals. If he can be made to just kill someone without it being in the pursuit of social equality, then suddenly the Lord of Crime will be no better than Milverton himself – and quite possibly worse, because he'll have become the manipulated rather than the manipulator. It's all very much in line with Milverton's canon identity in the Sherlock Holmes stories, where he's a blackmailer, because essentially that's still what he's doing; he's just blackmailing them into action rather than for money. That's as dangerous as the ingredients of another real Victorian brand we see this week, Monarch Cough Syrup, which, like most cough remedies of the time, would likely have been made with a combination of opium and alcohol.

I am starting to wonder whether or not the whole Reichenbach Falls incident will somehow involve Milverton. Could Moriarty and Holmes work together to make Milverton think that he's won by faking their deaths? It seems possible. But for now we'll just have to hope that he keeps his claws away from Mary, the woman Watson eventually marries, when she appears next week.

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Moriarty the Patriot is currently streaming on Funimation.