REVIEW: ‘Moriarty the Patriot,’ Episode 22 – “The Two Criminals”

At long last, the standoff between Milverton, Moriarty, and Sherlock has arrived with Moriarty the Patriot Episode 22 in a tense 20 minutes viewers will love. The story reimagines The Lord of Crime as a more Robin Hood-style character: William and his brothers are out to overthrow the unjust caste system in Britain, and to do so they will become a “necessary evil.” Production I.G. adapts the manga by Ryosuke Takeuchi and Hikaru Miyoshi, which in turn is based on the original works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The manga is available in English through VIZ Media.

The truth behind Mary’s suspicious behavior was revealed at the end of last week’s episode: she needed the treasure in order to pay off Milverton. Milverton is blackmailing her. When she was in college, she joined an activist organization and passed out leaflets in Paris. Unbeknownst to her, the organization’s leaders had a hand in planning an insurrection, and now her name is on a list of members from the club. If it is revealed, she could be expedited to France and jailed, regardless of her level of involvement.

Moriarty the Patriot Episode 22 shows a very angry Sherlock. Not openly aggressive, but with a palpable tension bubbling under the skin. Viewers have seen this anger before when those he cares about are affected such as John Watson or Irene Adler. Here Milverton is getting in the way of John’s marriage, and he is furious. This time around, Sherlock and John are willing to be the criminals by breaking into Milverton’s mansion to steal the evidence.

It is all a very tense setup. Sure enough, it leads to a fabulous three-way deadlock between the three great minds. The music, lighting (or more accurately the use of shadow), and voice acting are phenomenal for this standoff and sell every minute of it. This is good because the writing has a few hiccups, and if everything else didn’t succeed in gripping me, I would have been a lot more distracted.

This is because Moriarty the Patriot Episode 22 doesn’t really explain how William, Fred, and Louis are also at Milverton’s mansion the same night. We know a rough version of “why” after Whiteley’s family was murdered. However, there is no show of any discussion as to why they are making a move, or what their goal is by confronting Whiteley in this manner. It feels a little too easy for the show to chalk it all up to William’s brilliant plans. Instead of feeling “brilliant” it seems to be a cop-out due to only having 20 minutes. Consequently, it also makes a portion of the ending just slightly anti-climatic. This isn’t because it isn’t exciting or surprising, but because up until this point Milverton was set up to be quite a brilliant adversary, so it almost seemed “too easy” the way he inevitably loses.

Ultimately, Moriarty the Patriot Episode 22 is a great return to form for the show. The few small eyebrow-raising moments in the plot are well compensated for by the overall artistic presentation of the episode. The three-way standoff will likely have viewers on the edge of their seats.

Moriarty the Patriot is streaming now on Funimation.