'Sherlock' season 4 release date rumors: New season to arrive this year; new character makes an entrance?
"Sherlock" season 4 was initially announced to premiere next year but Martin Freeman, who stars alongside Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes' trusty sidekick John Watson, stated it will arrive this year.
"We are back filming now and the three shows will, I imagine, be out around Christmas," the actor told Graham Norton on his talk show "The Graham Norton Show."
Due to Freeman and Cumberbatch's packed schedules and the popularity they gained in between seasons, "Sherlock" season 4 was delayed to 2017, three years after the third season ended.
Production for the fourth chapter of the series is well underway, and it seems to be moving along fast, which might explain why Freeman predicted a Christmas premiere.
If "Sherlock" season 4 won't make it on Christmas, fans won't wait that long for the new season, though. The second and third season of "Sherlock" were released on the first day of January in 2012 and 2013 respectively.
If "Sherlock' season 4 will follow the same schedule, fans will only wait a week this Christmas if Freeman's words about a holiday release do not come to pass.
Either way, it will be an exciting 2017 for "Sherlock" fans. It's the longest wait they have ever gone through for the show, but Cumberbatch assured in an official statement that it will be "worth it."
The latest talk about the "Sherlock" season 4 plot hints that it will end with a cliffhanger. More characters are expected to return and debut including Sherlock's supposed-to-be-dead nemesis James Moriarty (Andrew Scott).
Jabez Wilson, a flame red-haired London pawnbroker featured in the stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in the "The Red-Headed League," is rumored to be on the small screen too. In the books, he comes to Sherlock and Watson after his pawn business started to stall.
Here is the description for "Sherlock" season 4 as provided by executive producers and co-creators Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss in the official statement:
Sherlock series four - here we go again! Whatever else we do, wherever we all go, all roads lead back to Baker Street - and it always feels like coming home. Ghosts of the past are rising in the lives of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson bringing adventure, romance and terror in their wake. This is the story we've been telling from the beginning. A story about to reach its climax...
