For some fans of BBC’s Sherlock, the most exciting part of the show is always the agonizing multi-year wait between each season. It gives Benedict Cumberbatch time to star in every movie, it lets co-creator Steven Moffat decide which Doctor Who characters will secretly have been dead/Cybermen the whole time, and the fans get a chance to work on their erotic fan-fiction and obsess over the most recent season’s dramatic cliffhanger ending. Season two wrapped up with Sherlock jumping off of a roof, but we didn’t find out how he survived until two years later (and even then…). Season three ended with the apparent resurrection of Moriarty, and—a year later—we’re still waiting to see how that’s going to work out.
Now, we still don’t know when season four will premiere, but it sounds like it’s also going to end on a big cliffhanger that leaves everyone delighted and confused for a few years. That’s how we’re interpreting some recent comments that Steven Moffat made to Entertainment Weekly, at least. Plus, he also offered some vague clues about the future of Sherlock.
Moffat says season four of Sherlock will answer “questions which nobody has asked,” adding that it’s not some huge secret that has been hidden in the series from the beginning, just that there’s “a little thing…no one is talking about.” He also suggests that season four will be darker, and that a lot of it will revolve around the “consequences” of what Sherlock and Watson have been doing. Finally, he says fans will be “desperate for [season five]” once season four ends, which almost certainly means that it’s going to end with a ridiculous mystery that we’ll have to wait another two years (at least) to solve. Assuming the show ever solves it, of course, and doesn’t just goof around and pretend to solve it. But Sherlock would never do that to us.