SPOILER ALERT: The following contains information and links that reveal confirmed information about Sherlock Season 3 content. Please Stop Reading Now if you do not wish to know anything in advance of the actual airing of the Sherlock Series 3 in your area.
Okay, you can’t say you haven’t been warned.
So, Sherlock, that’s what you’re planning to wear to the wedding, is it?
Just in case you missed the furor and flurry of tweets, posts, screams, shrieks, wails, and general hysteria, Sue Vertue (Executive Producer of BBC’s Sherlock), Steven Moffat (Executive Producer/Co-creator/Writer), and Mark Gatiss (Executive Producer/Co-Creator/Writer/and occasional minor civil servant for the British Government), did a Sherlock Season 3 panel at the San Diego Comic Con. Along with bringing a charming video of Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch consoling Sherlock fans about their lack of attendance, they brought a brief clip of Episode 2 of Sherlock Season 3 which confirms that “the wedding” alluded to in the three teaser words — Rat, Wedding, Bow — was indeed John Watsons. Apparently, according to those in attendance, the clip begins with Sherlock’s Wedding Speech (and I can only image it to be a decidedly-more-intelligent-yet-equally-obtuse version of the disastrous one from Four Weddings and a Funeral).
The clip then flashed back to John Watson asking Sherlock to be his Best Man. Several articles (see below), bloggers, and tweeters report that it is ROFLOL funny. It also was reportedly very touching. Entertainment Weekly reported:
…it was one of the show’s most flat-out funny scenes in its short history, and it could imply a slight tonal shift in the three 2014 episodes. As Moffat explained, the show has “moved on a bit. There’s slightly more humor.” And tenderness: The scene foregrounds the depth of Watson and Sherlock’s friendship, with a kicker that led to an audible “awwww” in the audience.
I’m imagining the Bachelor Party went something like this video.
Now I’m getting really anxious and having trouble being a Fan Who Waits. But more on that later this weekend.
The other confirmed information is that Jim Moriarty is dead. No, really. You suck on a gun barrel of a very large gun and blow out your brains and you are dead. And given that Moriarty actually dies in the Reichenbach Falls in the Canon (see the list of Sherlock Holmes stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle here if you need to bone up), it is only logical, Spock, that he would die in BBC’s Sherlock. Moffat and Gatiss, in particular, began the project because they are true Sherlockians and fans of the work. However, Andrew Scott does return in Sherlock Season 3 to play Moriarty’s corpse (I will refrain from commenting on how clean and neat and tidy the suit looked in the various shooting photos leaked by the tabloids. Gunshot wounds, particularly to the head, of the size and kind Moriarty inflicted on himself are far from neat — to use a bit of English understatement. I mean a “clean kill” is one thing, but I’m pretty certain this is a bit beyond the definition.)
Also confirmed is that BBC has commissioned a Sherlock Season 4. But you may want to hold your Dance of Joy since no production date has been scheduled — and no Sherlock Season 4 production is foreseen in the near future. Attempting to work out a production plan that can juggle the other professional commitments of Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch, not to mention the Moftiss, makes D-Day logistics (or SD Comic Con panel coordination) look like organizing the Proust Appreciation Program in Tupelo, Mississippi. On the plus side, everyone reiterated their commitment to continuing the series as long as possible.
“There is something lovely about the idea of Benedict and Martin aged 55, around the same fireplace,” said Gatiss, “becoming the same age we associate with Holmes and Watson.”
Here! Here!
For those wishing to read some “live” reports as well as the official one, check out the links below:
Entertainment Weekly (source of the quotes above)
San Diego Comic Con 2013 Official Spoilers
Los Angeles Times Hero Complex blog post (and if you can’t believe the LA Times on Hollywood, who can you believe?)
(possibly BBC America?) BBC America’s Anglophenia post — from which I freely admit I got the charming picture below as well as this lovely homage to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle:
…when asked what they’d say if they could talk to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Gatiss replied, “We owe everything to Conan Doyle. He’s a genius writer, possibly the greatest writer of short stories that’s ever been, and everything thing we do we owe unto him. So I’d like to say, ‘Thank you but, by the way, spiritualism isn’t true.’”
Moffat added, “He sort of affected to believe throughout his life that he didn’t really matter, that his stories weren’t very good. But his stories are simply the best storytelling of its kind,…
