‘Elementary’ season 2 spoilers: When could Natalie Dormer return?

The great thing about getting an actress of Natalie Dormer’s quality on your show is that you have an opportunity to form a great character around her. Luckily for “Elementary,” that character was both the love of Sherlock Holmes’ life (in Irene Adler), and also his greatest foe (in Moriarty).

Unfortunately, here is where the problem comes in. Dormer is a very busy woman, thanks largely to the fact that she is also a star on “Game of Thrones,” and spends several months every summer / fall filming in Northern Ireland and Croatia. This means that she’s not always available when producers could want to do something, and you may not see her for any fall season in the near future.

However, this is not to remove the possibility of Dormer ever coming back to the CBS hit at all. She could still appear in the spring, and executive producer Rob Doherty suggests per TV Guide that she is not going to be the primary villain of the season. For a little while, the focus will instead be on how Sherlock processes everything that happened with her at the end of season 1:

“Is Sherlock completely over everything that happened? No, but he tends to internalize and compartmentalize everything,”

The early part of the new season is going to focus more on Sherlock’s family, and what happens when he returns to London with Watson in tow at the start of the year. From there, we expect some more standalone mysteries to take hold over the story, as these two characters begin to form an even better working relationship.

There is going to be some more explanation into Joan’s past on this upcoming season, which you can read more about here. The new “Elementary” season premieres on Thursday, September 26 at 10:00 p.m. Eastern time.

Photo: CBS