I don’t think we have heard anything else about Lestrade’s marriage beyond Sherlock’s assertion that his wife was still sleeping with the P.E. teacher. Which is interesting in that it suggests that Lestrade may have kids. (Or that his wife is a teacher, too, I guess.)
I’m a little nervous at this notion of “shocking” things to come. I’d kind of like to see a few more ordinary cases, like “Hounds,” but I guess that’s not likely with this crew.
My best guess is that the shocking stuff will still involve Mary. Martin Freeman is kind of a blabbermouth–he was talking about a Christmas special long before the official announcement–and he has mentioned elsewhere that he thinks Mary will be killed off at some point.
If they killed off a pregnant Mary, it would be more heart-wrenching and would somehow be less icky than just killing the baby herself. And Sherlock is a perfectly valid girl’s name.
Oh, I never considered this. That would be something completely in character for Mycroft - that way he can be seen by his bosses (even if he is the smartest man in English government he still has to have nominal supervisors and elected officials) as against Sherlock’s actions, but still able to have him close at hand (and not sent out on the suicide mission) for the next Big threat to England.
Another speculation I’ve seen is that they have set Mary up in a similar fashion to the way Moriarty was set up before “Reichenbach.” Specifically, everyone (Sherlock, Mycroft and maybe even John) knows perfectly well what was on that drive that went into the fire and John’s whole “problems of your future are my privilege” speech was not about forgiveness at all.
To swim in the safe end of the pool, I think we can certainly expect to see Sherlock taking an interest in the baby and either picking on it for, clearly, lacking the genes to become anyone interesting, or seeing if he can start a training regimen to advance its intelligence.
I don’t see a problem with Mary and baby fading into the background of the stories. The stories have always been and will continue to be the Holmes and Watson team. We could have a cameo of Mary kissing John as he goes off in the morning or whatever, the baby stays with her, and we get most of the time on the story proper.
Killing off Mary but not the baby leaves Watson as a single parent who will either be neglectful of the baby (unlikely, Watson is far too ethical and caring), hiring a nanny, or spending little time with Sherlock.
Killing off the baby… well that WOULD be shocking.
That would work if Mary really was the sweet little nurse we thought she was for the first two episodes of the last season. Now that she’s a cold-blooded (or possibly hot-blooded) assassin, maybe not.
Clearly, season 3 was in Watson’s broken mind. He’s in St. Elsewhere hospital, in the snow globe. He lost it when Sherlock died, so his tenuous connection to reality is broken now. I fully expect Moriarty to come back as an alien android made by Loki.
My phone won’t display the page properly, but I think I caught the gist. I do see a problem with it, though: [spoiler]The speculator points out the lack of bone fragments and brain bits. But those are clearly visible in the pool of blood spreading out from Jim’s head as his lifeless corpse lies on the rooftop.
And how would Mary have helped him? John didn’t even meet Mary for more than a year after that. Okay, so Jim liked to play the long game (witness the dead swimmer’s trainers); he had no reason to pair her up with John later[/spoiler].
Also, that would be a cheap trick.
Sherlock is right there to see it for himself, and he is supposed to have made that sort of thing his life’s study and would know if it’s fake.
And you can’t have an explanation based on it not looking real enough. It’s a tv show. No tv show goes around shooting its actors in the head for real. Things are never real. Most real things usually don’t look real enough for television and have to be jazzed up a bit.
It would be a stupid twist. Stupid enough to be an insult to the audience.
Mycroft finds out, but can’t do anything about it because by that point, he’s off chasing a criminal that threatens the very fabric of British society.
Although if the idea that there was a blood bag that was burst for the effect, there’s no reason Moriarty couldn’t have also put bits of bone and brain in said bag as well, so that’s not really a problem either way.
I might have said it follows the original, but this show gave us a body lying there that Watson could have easily examined.
But I’ve never been the biggest fan of Sherlock. I’ve always felt it was too manipulative.
I think S1 & 2 were utter genius (though upon rewatching, they lose something). I was so disappointed in how we never get Sherlock’s death/rebirth resolved that it soured me. S3 had fun character moments, but just felt like weaksauce.
I forgot that in Reichenbach, Moriarty’s ‘device’ of magic code that would compromise any system made me roll my eyes nearly through the back of my head. After programming computers for over 20 years, it’s the kind of thing where I just say “okay, it’s stupid, but I’ll buy it as TV shorthand” – when Moriarty revealed that as fake, I felt like I’d been betrayed for suspending disbelief.
My speculation - Mary is behind Moriarty’s “return”. She was one of the assassins covering Sherlock’s three friends, maybe the one with a bead on John. Knowing how screwed up John would be at Sherlock’s second disappearance/death, she put together the one thing that would be guaranteed to require they pull him back, possibly working with Mycroft.
Mary Morstan has a lot of the characteristics of Colonel Moran, more than Lord Moran in “The Empty Hearse”. She might have been involved for a time with Moriarty’s network after retiring from government work. As for what to do next with her, well, the baby is going to be pretty well protected with her for a mother, and that can keep her to a side character, more like Molly or Mrs. Hudson, where she is there and involved on a certain level, but mostly stays out of the center of things because of the baby’s needs. No real reason to kill either of them, especially when doing so would probably leave the series with a really screwed up John who can’t serve as an anchor for Sherlock.
In his twitter feed today, Mark Gatiss corrects fans’ speculations that the Christmas special will be one of those ten minute teasers. He states that it’ll be a 90 minute episode. So series 4 will essentially be a four-episode series.
Just read through this whole thread & didn’t see a word about Sherlock’s Mum. In my mind, she will very likely be the focus of the next Series. The foreshadowing has been brilliant.
