Miss Scarlet gets a worthy new opponent in season 5 teaser

Scotland Yard’s newest Detective Inspector isn’t making life easy for Miss Scarlet in the first teaser for season 5 of the Masterpiece on PBS series. She’s just had to say goodbye to her beloved William—a.k.a. the Duke—who left the agency (and the series as a whole) for a job in New York City, and took the pair’s four-season will-they-won’t-they dynamic with him. But never fear, Scarleteers; this is a series inspired by Jane Austen’s Elizabeth Bennet after all, which means there’s always going to be another love interest.

Season five—newly rebranded to just Miss Scarlet to reflect the Duke’s departure—is clearly setting the female detective up to find that maybe-lover in Alexander Blake (Tom Durant Pritchard), the Duke’s replacement. The show isn’t making it easy for her, though—what would be the fun in that? “He doesn’t use private detectives,” Scarlet is told in the short teaser, endangering the future of her independent agency.

“In Season 5, Eliza’s agency is thriving, and her professional life is on a successful path—on the personal side however, Duke has now been away in New York for several months and Eliza is forced to make a difficult decision,” reads the season’s synopsis. “Meanwhile, a new Detective Inspector comes to Scotland Yard and Eliza must navigate building a relationship with him if she’s going to continue having access to police resources. All these changes and decisions beg the question—can Eliza Scarlet have it all?”

According to Kate Phillips, who returns once again as the titular character, the answer to that question is yes. “When it comes to Eliza’s independence, before William’s departure, she was always independent and knew what she wanted. So that hasn’t changed with his departure,” she said in a statement. “I think what we do begin to see is a real softening in her, interestingly.”

Season 5 will release on streaming on December 8. It will have its broadcast premiere on MASTERPIECE Mystery! on January 12.