‘Sherlock’ season 4, episode 1: On the Mary Watson – Norbury surprise

The “Sherlock” season premiere came and went Sunday with one of the biggest surprises of the entire series to date — at least in terms of the timing.

Let’s face it: Based on some dialogue in the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle source material, many people believed that Mary died — even though that was never confirmed. This is something that executive producer Mark Gatiss noted while talking about the decision to kill off the character at a screening for the first episode, per the Radio Times:

“It’s a strange thing but actually in the original stories it’s not actually said that she has died … It’s heavily inferred. But it could have been a messy break up. We have obviously been true to Doyle and also very untrue. So we didn’t necessarily have to do this, it just felt actually the right place to do it.”

As for the decision to have Mary die at the hands of Norbury (who was intended to kill Sherlock Holmes), Gatiss said that her death “was definitely going to be saving Sherlock. We did an early road map without any details.” We do think that this is a bold, interesting move for the show to make, largely because of the fact that they didn’t have to kill Mary off this early — think about it like this. Why the rush? They could have kept her for another episode or two just to keep things interesting and show more of Watson’s family life.

Hopefully, the next new episodes are going to give us a better chance to understand a little bit more what’s to come with Watson, and how he recovers from what has to be a devastating moment in his life. We have to imagine that this is not going to be easy.

What did you think about the premiere, and the decision to kill off Marry now? Be sure to share in the comments below! You can also get some more news over at the link here about the episode coming up next. (Photo: BBC One.)