Series co-creator Mark Gatiss talks about the rumored return of Moriarty, who never seems to go away since his death in the second season of the crime drama.
- Dec 27, 2016
AceShowbiz - "Sherlock" will introduce baby Watson when it returns in early 2017, but co-creator Mark Gatiss assures us that the show hasn't changed into a "Scandi noir, Stringberg-ian tragedy." Even better, he claims that "it's full of laughs, still. But it is a darker season, in many respects."
The darkness is caused by the villains, including Culverton Smith (Toby Jones) and Jim Moriarty (Andrew Scott), who has been widely rumored to return in the new season. We all know that Moriarty has died in season 2, but he never seems to go away. Remaining coy about Moriarty's return, Gatiss tells TVLine, "He is dead. We've said this many times. No one never believe us." He insists, "But he is dead."
Of how the arrival of John (Martin Freeman) and Mary Watson's (Amanda Abbington) first child will affect the show, Gatiss says, "It creates a different dynamic." He adds though, "Now I must stress, although we have a lot of fun with it, it doesn't mean that 'Sherlock' has become two men, a woman and a baby. But we do have fun with it, because there's fun to be had."
The fun part comes from Sherlock Holmes (Benedict Cumberbatch), who shows his puzzled expression towards the baby as seen in the picture above. "He treats it like a case," Gatiss teases. "It's a set of problems to be solved. But babies don't respond to logic in the same way," he adds.
"Sherlock" season 4 finale is titled "The Final Problem", taken from the Arthur Conan Doyle story where he originally killed off Sherlock Holmes. Talking about the title which seemingly hints at the end of the show, Gatiss says, " 'The Final Problem' was then followed by another 40 stories." But he adds, "We honestly don't know" if this season will be the last.
"These three [episodes], we've very, very pleased with them. And everybody's very keen to carry on. It's just genuinely difficult to schedule everyone's diaries. It was a nightmare to schedule this season... and that's not going to go away. I mean, the success of 'Doctor Strange' is not going to make Benedict short of work," Gatiss explains.
Talking about the possibility of Holmes and Watson to reunite a few years later, Gatiss says, "Right at the beginning, we said, wouldn't it be fun? Because we start with the first meeting, which is very rarely dramatized. If we actually ended up with them at the same age as Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, that would be a really interesting place to be with Benedict and Martin, having started so early in their careers as young men."
Rathbone and Bruce starred as Holmes and Watson together in 14 films back in the 1930s and 1940s. Rathbone was 54 years old when the final film was launched. Meanwhile, Cumberbatch is currently 40. So hopefully there's at least another decade and a half for the incarnation of Sherlock.
"Sherlock" season 4 premieres on Sunday, January 1, 2017 at 9 P.M. ET on PBS Masterpiece.
