So if you haven’t yet seen Sherlock Season 4’s opener, ‘The Six Thatchers’, go and watch it now and come back because I’m about to ruin everything for you.
Ok, so let’s talk about Mary. Or rather, how the show will develop with the lack of Mary!
For any die-hard Sherlock Holmes fans, you will have suspected that Mary would be killed at some point, especially as she died in the Arthur Conan Doyle originals. The writers, Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, are extremely good at honouring and drawing parallels between the original stories and their modern adaptation, so it came as no surprise that she would be killed off.
The timing of Mary’s death was a great surprise, however, as most of us were expecting it in the season finale, so this really kept us on our toes. Some may think that Mary died too soon, but I do not agree. I feel this gives us two thirds of the new season to see how John and Sherlock’s relationship will change and not the predictable finale we were all expecting.
So, how will the Watson and Holmes dynamic change in the rest of Season 4? Half of Tumblr will surely be hoping that the pair can now become a couple (Johnlock) and that their fan-art will become true, but I wouldn’t hold your breath on that.
They all seemed to have relaxed into their own little roles as Mary and John settled into their domestic lifestyle, with Sherlock as their adopted genius. So now, we left ‘The Six Thatchers’ with John as a single father, overcome with immense hate and anger towards Sherlock for not fulfilling his vow to keep them safe and allowing Mary to die.
John hasn’t had the best of luck, bless him. Although I’m not sure we all feel as sorry for him as we did when Sherlock faked his death, as we could empathise with his anger and emotion. We have seen another side to John now, with his text-affair and now his nastiness and spite towards Sherlock, in an event that could not have been prevented.
I suspect that there will be no contact between them for some time (perhaps allowing the show to catch up with real-time, as ‘The Six Thatchers’ was still set back in 2014), as John will hold the grudge and Sherlock’s sociopathic nature will prevent him from fixing their relationship, until a case of some sort will force them to reunite, and a heartfelt, emotional reconciliation will occur.
I have a feeling that Sherlock will do something huge to protect John’s daughter, the most important thing left in his life, which will kick John’s conscious into action, and realise that Sherlock had good intentions all along.
John’s priorities have changed now he is a single father; he cannot drop everything for Sherlock anymore. Sherlock’s character has developed so much due to John’s influence that he has become the more empathetic one of the two, even giving in to visit a therapist to seek help.
He is not a man to accept his weaknesses, so surrendering himself in this way just shows how much John means to him. Let’s just hope that John lets him back in to his life in ‘The Lying Detective’ this Sunday.
Pre-order Season 4 on DVD on Amazon.
Pre-order Season 4 on Blu-ray on Amazon.
What direction do you think the show will go in next? Let us know below…