‘Sherlock’ season 4, episode 1 review: Can John and Sherlock move past Mary?

It has been a long wait for new episodes of “Sherlock”, but Holmes and Watson are back for another season with all new cases to crack. There will of course be some cool villains and smart mysteries, but we will also see how Watson and Sherlock’s lives have changed now that Watson is a father. Will he be putting himself in as much danger as before so he doesn’t leave his child fatherless, or will Watson’s dangerous nature get the best of him? Also, how is Sherlock going to react to someone new that he has to share Watson with? Let’s see how it all unfolds in the season 4 premiere.

Mary and John have had their baby (a little girl named Rosamond Mary Watson) and have asked Molly and Mrs Hudson to be the god mothers and for Sherlock to be the god father (which they all accept). We weren’t sure how Mary and John were going to balance parenthood with their love of danger, but as we saw tonight – they may have agreed not to bring the baby on cases, but somehow the baby ended up on the case they were working that involved stolen/broken busts of Margaret Thatcher.

As for that last message that Moriarty left from beyond the grave, Sherlock is convinced that he’s still dead, but that he has a long term plan that’s going to be carried out. Does it have to do with the busts of Margaret Thatcher? When one of the busts are smashed, Sherlock finds a flash drive inside… the same one that Mary gave to Watson last season saying that everything about who she is was on that flash drive. If you remember, that flash drive was burned by Watson in a fire. He learns that this whole case isn’t about Moriarty like he thought, but has to do with Mary and this man named AJ is looking to kill Mary.

What’s their connection? They used to work together as part of a group of four “agents” and they each had a flash drive containing the same information about all of their backgrounds – this way they could never betray each other. Six years ago the four agents were on a mission together and she was the only one that made it out alive, but Sherlock informs her that AJ is also alive and that he has been looking for his flash drive (that he hid in the Thatcher bust), so that he could find Mary and kill her.

Mary panics and takes off, leaving John alone with the baby and a goodbye note. She promises that she’s not running off, but that she wants to move the target off of him and their daughter and once that’s taken care of then she will return. After all that she did to hide and traveled to the other side of the world, Sherlock and Watson still found her by putting a GPS on the flash drive. They are not the only ones that found Mary, so did AJ. He tells her that he thought she had betrayed him before being killed, but they learn that there is an English woman that actually betrayed this group – a secretary (Vivian Norbury) from inside MI6 who was selling their secrets. When Mary and Sherlock confront Vivian, she shoots at Sherlock, but Mary takes the bullet and she dies. This death strains John and Sherlock’s relationship since Sherlock had been promising John that he would protect Mary.

So is Mary really dead? It appears that she is, but at the same time (as we learned over the years), if we don’t see her body going into the ground then there’s always a chance that she is not dead and we have to remember that she was an agent so faking her death might be a possibility. Also can we talk about John starting up something with that woman on the bus? That whole story line really threw us off since there was no motivation for John to stray – he was married to the woman he loved, and just had a baby. The only thing we can think of is that this woman has something to do with either Moriarty or a larger plot coming up. Last but not least this wouldn’t be a CarterMatt “Sherlock” review without mentioning how great it was to see Mycroft again. He’s just as brilliant and arrogant as he always is and we love him for it. Outside of the whole John is starting up an affair storyline, this was a great premiere and they held nothing back. Episode grade: A-

What did you think of the premiere of “Sherlock” season 4 and is it worth the long wait? Leave us a comment in the box below. Also, if you want more scoop on “Sherlock” then head on over to the link here and let us be your guide for previews, news and reviews. (Photo: BBC One)