Sherlock Special News!!

The boys are back! And they’ve dressed up for the occasion too. Yes, while we’ll all have to be frighteningly patient for the return of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson in the next special and series of Sherlock, the Beeb have taken pity on the Cumber Collective and the Free…masons? By releasing a new pic of the leads in costume. And how about those costumes? Either Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman will be going back in time for the new special, or there are some period garb adventures afoot. What larks! So far, that’s about all we know of the new one-off special, written by series co-creators Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, aside from the BBC also tweeting a picture of the special’s read-through script, which clearly belongs to Gatiss, so if anything else leaks, we know who will be getting a visit from the security squad. Still, he does play Mycroft, so if anyone knows about keeping things quiet…

#221back #Sherlock #notkidding pic.twitter.com/iTfDqfJI0R
— BBC One (@BBCOne) November 25, 2014

So now of course, we start to wonder what will happen to our favourite detectives. Gatiss (him again) gave an interview in which he said to “expect tragedy”, but beyond that it’s anyone’s guess. Will they really follow Conan Doyle’s lead and see Watson become a widower?

Sherlock is set to return around Christmas. But Christmas 2015, which means it’s still more than a year away and hasn’t even officially begun shooting yet. Plus they have only started to read the script now:

A Huge Tragedy In Sherlock Season 4

Fans still have a while to wait before the return of “Sherlock” — with a special episode slated to begin filming in January and season four expected to shoot later in the year — but that hasn’t hindered the rampant speculation about what we might see when Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman finally reunite on the small screen.

In a recent interview with Britain’s Radio Times, “Sherlock” co-creator (and the actor behind the detective’s enigmatic brother Mycroft) Mark Gatiss teased, “you can always expect tragedy as well as adventure” when the critically acclaimed show returns.

Could that relate to John Watson’s new bride, Mary (Amanda Abbington), the former assassin who lured John away from 221b Baker Street in season three? As Freeman pointed out in a June interview with the UK’s Telegraph, “While we play fast and loose with the original stories, we generally follow the trajectory of what Conan Doyle did. So [Watson] gets married, and then Mary dies — so at some point presumably she’ll die.”

Still, Gatiss cautioned viewers to remember, “Just because it’s in the stories doesn’t mean it’ll happen in the series because there’s an awful lot of changes and an awful lot of places to go and things to do.” He added, “It should be clear by now that while, of course, Doyle is our absolute god, we have gone quite a long way away as well… so there are lots of surprises to come.”

But before season four hits our screens, the standalone special has to deal with the chilling cliffhanger that ended the last run of episodes: the apparent return of Jim Moriarty (Andrew Scott), who took over Britain’s TV sets with an ominous looping message of “Did you miss me?” — despite having committed suicide right in front of Sherlock in season two.

Gatiss told the Radio Times that the upcoming special will “completely” solve the mystery of Moriarty’s supposed reappearance, leaving the way clear for a new arc in season four. However, Gatiss declined to confirm or deny whether we’ll ever see the iconic villain again after the special, coyly offering, “Well, it’s very hard to put a lid on Andrew Scott…”