'Elementary' Season 1, Episode 24: 'Heroine' Recap

She says it wasn’t the way she wanted to reveal herself. She says he was disrupting her plans. She wanted to kill him, but he was too complicated and beautiful to destroy. She wanted to study him. She says she’s better than him, though similar. In London, she realized she was superior and concluded their relationship to carry on. She heard of his recovery and wanted to see how far he’d come. He says it’s a lie—he must be close to undermining one of her plots. He tells her to kill him, but she says he is a work of art and she can’t. However, she can hurt him. For his own good, he needs to let her win. She leaves.

Watson comes home and removes the bullets from him and he tells her about Irene/Moriarty, but he says he finally found clarity.

Holmes takes the dead assassin to Gregson and they go over things in the morgue. Holmes sees cell phones from victims of a “gang-related” shooting. The cell phone have been altered in the same way Moran’s has. He checks the code on one—“Macedonian sun.”

He solves it later: it is a ship owned by a (suspected) smuggler called the Narwhale.

They go stake out the shipping yard. Bell asks if he is okay, and Holmes thinks it was a good thing in the end. He has a nemesis now.

The ship is unloaded with nothing suspicious, until evening, when a car drives up. It is the Narwhal himself. The police roll in and open the smuggled crate. Bell finds lemurs.

At the station, he tells them he doesn’t know Moriarty. The lemurs would have been sold for parts. He is running an “underground railroad for endangered species.”

Watson looks at his wound, which Holmes insist doesn’t hurt and he doesn’t need pain meds. Her brother Oren calls her; her mother fell and hurt herself and is in the hospital. Watson wants to go see her mother, and then will meet Holmes in Westchester as they check on the animal farm alibi.

Moriarty intercepts Watson—she is the one who called Oren. She brings her to a restaurant. She wants to know more about Watson, Holmes’ “mascot.” Holmes is not complying to her request to back out of her business. She tells Watson to talk to him and tell him she will only be there a few more days and afterwards he can have his city back. Watson thinks she is afraid of him—Moriarty says she is afraid of what he may force her to do.

At the “horse ranch” of the Narwhale’s daughter, they find endangered species. Holmes says his worry is the man’s wife, Alethea. He goes through the kitchen and finds the wife, who is supposed to be on a Kenyan safari, has failed to take important pills. The man admits men in masks broke in and took her. His father-in-law was supposed to handle everything. Watson calls.

At the station Holmes yells at Watson for getting in the car. Gregson is confused by the situation. Is the Narwhale Moriarty’s victim or accomplice?

Bell shows them what they have pulled from the Narwhale’s e-mails. There is a picture.

Moriarty meets him on a bench. He asks if she is the one with her daughter. She shows him a gun in a bag, and tells him to point and shoot. He looks at the picture of the man on his phone. She agrees she will let his daughter go once the task is done.

Watson hears Holmes yelling—he is hitting his wound to keep himself awake. He thinks he has deduced Moriarty’s plan. The man, Andrej Bacera, has a mother who has just worked out a way for Greece to allow Macedonia into the European Union. The currency of Macedonia would change… but if Macedonia’s beloved son is murdered, bad blood will reignite, the value of Macedonia’s currency would soar and Moriarty would make a fortune on her investments.

Gregson calls head of security, Jordan, and fills him in. He puts the man and his wife into a safe room… and then he lets the Narwhale in and tells him they need to do it quickly. He calls 911 and tells them his name and that he does this for the love of his country. He shoots Bacera and his wife. Jordan texts, and the Narwhale gets a call from his daughter. She is safe. He hangs up and asks the Jordan to do it quickly. He shoots him.

He tells a fake story to the police, but Holmes storms in and tells them he’s lying. He belonged to one of Moriarty’s companies. They argue and Holmes gets punched.

Watson brings him off to another room. He has pulled his stitches and is freaking out. Watson thinks it is time for him to stop. He admits he almost stole opiates from the kitchen but he didn’t because he knew Watson would be disappointed in him. But now he is disappointed in her. Watson tells Holmes he needs to let Moriarty win. It is the only way this doesn’t eat him alive.

Bell meets Holmes at his house. He has ditched the officer watching him. Holmes goes up to shower. Gregson calls and talks to Bell—a drug dealer was just beaten up by a British man in a sling.

Bell kicks open the bathroom door. He finds Holmes on the floor and tells his companion to call an ambulance—Holmes has overdosed.

Moriarty sneaks into his hospital room. She asks why he didn’t listen. He says he has let her win. She says she didn’t want this. She wants to help him. He would have preferred it if she had just killed him.

Moriarty admits she failed to predict his decent into addiction. He surprised her—no one else can do that. She’s leaving the country and she wants him to go with her. She can put him back together, and show him a different way to live. They’re the same.

He tells her they both made the same mistake: they fell in love. He tells her Watson solved her “condition.” That’s why she encouraged him to let her win.

He sits up, and she realizes he faked the overdose. Watson, and the police, come into the room. Turns out there are two people who can surprise her.

Holmes is on the roof looking at his bees. Watson comes up with an update: the recording from the hospital should take care of things. His nemesis has been defeated. Watson asks if he needs to find a new one.

He points out that his rare bee, which should not be able to breed with his bees, has. He has created a new species of bee. He gets to name it. Euglassia Watsonia. She sits and watches them emerge.