The more I consider things the more I think the S4 cliffhanger has to be John in some sort of mortal danger.   I know we had the bonfire in TEH but in the world of Sherlock this could be considered a minor incident.  I think at the end of S4 we'll either get John rushing into danger and it being left where we and Sherlock don't know if he's dead or alive.

Something happening to Mycroft would be my second guess.

But I'm hoping for John.  Not that I want John to be hurt.  I just want to see Sherlock weeping with rage and sorrow. 

Actually I could picture two scenarios:
it could be some sort of blah they all give to the press like " Oh, it's gonna be so much more devastating, funny, romantic, angsty....just anything in tv world times million" for just a bit of building up more tension.
Or they could go on for another season to milk the trope of Sherlock just doing anything to save John's marriage and family and happiness, more and more sacrificing himself and his own health and happiness and career.

Another possibilities:  
- falling in love at the wrong moment or in the wrong person
- getting against Mycroft in a case in a serious way (till now Mycroft has accepted each time Sherlock had ruined his plans)
- his friendship with John put at stake once again 
 

"Never seen him being really pressed yet" has got to be the Understatement of the Week. Or Month. Or Year. What kind of man would say that about Sherlock, an idiot, a drunk, or a criminal?

Supposing that the scripts for Season 4 are not yet written, much less being circulated among the cast and crew, of course this is just the usual media blah blah.

That said, I think I find Sherlock almost-but-not-really-crying much worse to bear than a full-on storm of tears would be...

They're not going to be stupid and kill John off. Talk about sawing off the branch you're sitting on.

What I would find interesting would be a scenario (whatever it is, maybe something to do with Mary, maybe something engineered by Mycroft) which really threatens to break John and Sherlock's friendship apart. There was a hint of that in TRF, but even then John never seriously doubted Sherlock, and not for long, at any rate. And while John kind of moves away from Sherlock in series 3 in more than one sense, with Mary and all, and is truly pissed off at him in the Leinster Gardens/221b confrontation sequence, Sherlock just lets him, even follows him as far as he can, never letting John doubt his friendship, never making John feel like he has to choose between Mary and him.

I'd like to see something happening that truly shakes the foundations of that friendship with all sorts of doubts and disappointments and coflicting loyalties and what have you (as long, of course, as it is restored in the end).

Last edited by La Jolie (September 26, 2014 3:21 pm)

La Jolie wrote:

What I would find interesting would be a scenario (whatever it is, maybe something to do with Mary, maybe something engineered by Mycroft) which really threatens to break John and Sherlock's friendship apart. There was a hint of that in TRF, but even then John never seriously doubted Sherlock, and not for long, at any rate. And while John kind of moves away from Sherlock in series 3 in more than one sense, with Mary and all, and is truly pissed off at him in the Leinster Gardens/221b confrontation sequence, Sherlock just lets him, even follows him as far as he can, never letting John doubt his friendship, never making John feel like he has to choose between Mary and him.

I'd like to see something happening that truly shakes the foundations of that friendship with all sorts of doubts and disappointments and coflicting loyalties and what have you (as long, of course, as it is restored in the end).

 
Gosh, LaJolie, you're cruel... That tarmac scene with their conflicting emotions was quite enough shaking through of their friendship, I want balance to my universe!!
Agree with the held back tears though...

tonnaree wrote:

No full scripts yet no.
However, Moffat and Gatiss have said they sat down with the actors and explained to them where S4 was going to go.  They said it reduced them all to tears!

Oh, I think I missed that piece of information! Well, in that case, we'd better wrap up warm.

UNLESS it's all just about taking Mary and the Baby out of the equation, and that wouldn't reduce me to tears in the slightest.

Talking of the Baby, I can't help suspecting that if the special really is a Christmas special, we're in for some very sticky sweet Christmas fluff featuring Baby Watson.

I'd much prefer it to be a quick and final resolution to the "Moriarty is Back" thing.

mrshouse wrote:

Gosh, LaJolie, you're cruel...

Yeah, I know. Don't read some of my fanfic. That said, I did find the tarmac scene very sad and totally heartbreaking in every way. But I felt that it was more about John and Sherlock preserving their friendship even in the face of great adversity, rather than them questioning their friendship as such. The latter is what we haven't really seen yet and what I'd find psychologically interesting to explore.




 

That's going to sound harsh and wrong, but reading announcements like that make me feel a bit bored. Superlatives make me feel uneasy and a bit defensive. And Reichenbach reduced me to tears quite well, thank you, so give me something new. I'm longing for some crime solving with John, and not for another Mycroft-saves-Sherlock-saves-John-saves-Mary-saves-probably-baby script. Action fine, tears fine, but... could they please go into detail, be more subtle, and stop saving worlds and wifes? My wish for christmas.

Also I think Benedict wouldn't judge his character wrong, would he? I wonder what he means by "really pressed". I agree, if everything Sherlock had on his plate this far doesn't qualify for that category, I'm really a bit at a loss. Maybe I've gotten Sherlocks character quite wrong, but there are moments when he panicks. And shooting people because there's no other way out, that's what someone under pressure does, right? Or is shooting Magnusson just... one action among others? Risking exile and death but pressure? noooo.
I'd rather believe it's talky talky for the media

You don't sound harsh and wrong to me at all, Whisky. I totally agree, my expectations of and wishes for S4 are very much like yours.

I mistrust superlatives, too. OK, in terms of scale and scope, S3 was bigger than S1 and S2, and it worked (for me, at least), but I hope that TPTB know that always going even bigger and bigger with a sequel is not always the best way to making it better and better. There are many examples of things going wrong like that in the history of movie-making...

But then, what would it sound like if Mofftiss were to talk about S4 like, "Yeah, we'll just slow things down a bit. More deductions. Less life and death. More sitting in their armchairs in 221b, bantering happily. Less earth-shaking revelations about wives and lost brothers. More two guys just having fun." Even if they're going to do S4 that way (which would be totally fine with me), they're never going to sell it that way. Talking about sequels in superlatives is part of the game. I would be seriously surprised if they sounded any different at this point.


And I'm sure Benedict judges his character perfectly whenever he's actually playing him or preparing to play him, otherwise we would never have seen what we have seen so far. But whenever he's off doing a hundred other projects and the shooting of S4 not even scheduled yet, he's entitled, in my opinion, to focus on those other projects and just do meaningless talky-talky about Sherlock. I think we identify him so much with the role that we think he must "live" Sherlock 24/7, 365 days a year, but of course he doesn't. That's the whole point of being a professional, isn't it, that you don't.

Last edited by La Jolie (September 27, 2014 2:40 pm)

I hope it's right!