Mark Gatiss: ‘Sherlock’ Season 4 Includes A ‘Tragedy,’ Will Mary Watson Die?

Fans of Sherlock are already starting to speculate who might meet a grisly end after the show’s co-creator, Mark Gatiss, told fans to “expect tragedy” in the upcoming new episodes.

Unfortunately Sherlock aficionados will still have to wait for quite a while to fully understand what Gatiss meant with his remarks as new episodes aren’t expected to be aired until either late 2015 or early 2016.

A special instalment, which will reunite Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock with Martin Freeman’s Watson, is set to be shot in January while an entire fourth season will also be produced at the end of the year.

Mark Gatiss, who co-created the show alongside Steven Moffat and also stars as Sherlock’s brother, Mycroft, in the series, was speaking to the Radio Times when he made his remarks about what might be in store.

“You can always expect tragedy as well as adventure, that’s just how it goes.”

So who might be on the brink of death in the beloved programme? It’s safe to assume that both Benedict Cumberbatch and John Watson are safe, but the most likely victim is probably John’s wife. Mary Watson is actually played by Amanda Abbington, who just so happens to be Martin Freeman’s partner in real-life.

In the past Freeman has even teased that he expects Mary to perish “at some point” during the show because that’s exactly what happened to the character in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories.

He made the remarks to The Telegraph earlier this year, stating that he believes Moffat and Gatiss will “follow the trajectory” of the original Sherlock Holmes tales, which were produced from the late 1880s until the end of the 1920s.

“While we play fast and loose with the original stories, we generally follow the trajectory of what Conan Doyle did. So [John] gets married, and then Mary dies – so at some point presumably she’ll die.”

However Mark Gatiss went on to insist that audiences shouldn’t assume anything of the sort.

“Just because it’s in the stories doesn’t mean it’ll happen in the series because there’s an awful lot of changes and an awful lot of places to go and things to do. It should be clear by now that while, of course, Doyle is our absolute god, we have gone quite a long way away as well – we’ve introduced Sherlock and Mycroft’s parents [for instance], I don’t think they’ve ever been seen in any adaptation – so there are lots of surprises to come.”

[Image via BBC]