In an interview with GQ’s U.K. edition, Benedict Cumberbatch (aka Doctor Strange, aka Khan the lesser) dropped some hints Sherlock’s long anticipated fourth season could be its last.
“It might be the end of an era. It feels like the end of an era, to be honest. It goes to a place where it will be pretty hard to follow on immediately,” Cumberbatch told GQ.
Could this mean a central character, perhaps even Holmes himself, dies at the end of Sherlock Season 4? Cumberbatch obviously wasn’t at liberty to say, but his words do seem to hint the Season 4 finale brings things to an emphatic, final resolution.
Cumberbatch’s recent comments about Sherlock echo those of the show’s co-creator, writer and executive producer, Steven Moffat. In July, he told the U.K.’s Daily Telegraph, “We do have two film stars in the programme. They haven’t needed to do these jobs for a very long time. They’re coming back because they want to. There’s never going to come a time when we do a longer run, because this is what the series has become. It’s an occasional treat where you get three movies. It’s how it works.” Indeed, part of the delay for Sherlock Season 4 can be attributed to Cumberbatch’s role in Marvel’s upcoming Doctor Strange.
Still, Cumberbatch didn’t rule out stepping into the shoes of the world’s most famous detective in the future. “We never say never on the show. I’d love to revisit it, I’d love to keep revisiting it, I stand by that, but in the immediate future we all have things that we want to crack on with and we’ve made something very complete as it is, so I think we’ll just wait and see. The idea of never playing him again is really galling.” This opens the door to future one-off specials, like the 2016 Christmas Special, “The Abominable Bride,” which have more of a standalone feel from the overall Sherlock story arc.
The BBC series has aired since 2010, punctuated with several gap years throughout. Season 3 left off with the wily Moriarty seemingly coming back to life after shooting himself in the face. Holmes figured out Moriarty was, in fact, dead in “The Abominable Bride,” but that doesn’t mean that the criminal mastermind couldn’t continue to pose a threat for Holmes and Doctor Watson. As Variety points out, Sherlock Season 4 will likely be complicated one; Toby Jones joins the show as another, yet-unnamed villain.
Filming for Sherlock Season 4 wrapped in August. BBC has yet to confirm a release date, though the series is set to premiere some time in early 2017.
