I still think the new dramatic events in S4 will probably revolve around Mary. The action in S3 kind of set her up for a role and the plot involving wife having harmful secrets that hurt her husband or family appears quite a lot in the original stories of AC Doyle. Strange for a happily married man, but he certainly loved this plot device a lot (there are other stories that I have not yet mentioned, like "The Veiled Lodger" and "The Greek Interpreter" that also toy with the idea). So such thing would be canon-compliant at the same time.

I remember now that S3 revealed some parts of the past of Mrs Hudson that weren´t so pleasant either. So it might also be that it will be her past that comes to haunt our heroes.

The surprise we don´t await can be also positive and not a negative one. For example, Mary having another child from her previous marriage and John being confronted with the fact would be certainly surprising - nobody thought about such possibility yet. 

MartaSt wrote:

I really want to know how they are going to deal with Sherlock being murderer. Because according to law he is criminal now. What producers will do about that fact? And I'm also wondering about both Sherlock's and John's feelings about this. We know that Magnussen was evil but that was all in all murder. I really want to know if Sherlock will have some remorse. I know that he is not like normal human being but we saw his change in season 3 so I wonder how this affect his life. Maybe this dark twist is Sherlock being haunted by guilt.

I actually kind of wondered why the British government treated Sherlock as a murderer in this instance of killing CAM (whom they all hated), when it's really not that much of a stretch. If he was on an M16 mission in Serbia for the two years he was away, he's pretty much a "James Bond" for them, which is not THAT far removed from an "A.G.R.A." I am sure the British government employes people like Mary...

And speaking of Serbia, and "dark twists," I would think Sherlock would be experiencing some sort of emotional trauma or fallout from his experiences there. I don't think we saw obvious signs of that in S3. Even in the mind palace scenes, I don't think he flashed back to Serbia.

But given that the British government did criminally punish Sherlock for CAM, it kind of made me feel like we were back to the end of S2, where a villain set Sherlock up to be in disgrace. CAM may not have planned it, but it felt like him winning after all. EXCEPT - don't forget that all the time we thought Moriarty was destroying Sherlock's reputation and bringing him down, all along it was all part of the Holmes' brothers plan to bring down Moriarty. So I somehow feel they must have similar aces up their sleeves with regards to CAM. I feel that if we just leave it there, with Sherlock having committed a murder, it's a victory for CAM and, indirectly, Moriarty.

Someone raised the possibility of CAM asking Sherlock to help him fake his death. I can't believe CAM never feared being murdered if he was blackmailing people like Mary.

Maybe the gun contained, not a real bullet, but a variation on Wiggins' drug, in bullet form, so CAM could be tranquilized? Maybe Sherlock said, "you can play dead and then run away," but then set it up so CAM would end up in custody. 

Or, maybe there was a fake shooting planned, (with or without CAM's complicity), but someone then switched real bullets into the gun? I even had the crazy idea that the "CAM" walking around was a robot, or that the Sherlock at Appledore was an impostor. (I've really caught the Mofftis bug now!)

I thought maybe the Smallwoods killed CAM before the final scenes, and used his body to fake Lord Smallwood's suicide...but that doesn't get around the fact that Sherlock shot SOMEBODY at Appledore. Someone said maybe there was another shot at the same time, that did the real killing?

I wonder if the MPs staged the trial of Sherlock because there was someone else involved with CAM's operation that they wanted to lull into a false sense of security.

Much as I would rather ship Sherlock with John than either Janine or THE woman, I can't help wondering if one of them staged Moriarty's return to help him out (or maybe both of them together - I can believe they're connected somehow.) I think Janine might have been grateful to be free of CAM. Irene might not have such objections to things CAM did...she did a lot of the same...but she might have felt she owed it to Sherlock to save him...or be trying for another "chance" with him.

maryagrawatson wrote:

As for Janine, I'm convinced she's Moriarty's sister and the author of the letter Sherlock received at the beginning of The Great Game. The handwriting was definitely feminine and too fluid to have come from a coerced hand. There were two Moriarities in the original Holmes stories and I wouldn't put it past Moftiss to have made this idea their own and made the other Moriartity a female. The similarity of the names Janine and James combined with the Irish accents and dark features is all very suspicious.

love this theory.   I was always struck at the similarity in their accents, brown eyes,  Janine,/Jim,  chemistry with Sherlock, uncertain backgrounds,  etc.
 

Schmiezi wrote:

maryagrawatson wrote:

There were two Moriarities in the original Holmes stories (...)

Seriously? Mentioned where? 

Yes, there are two Moriartys - if not three:

"The stories give contradictory indications about Moriarty's family. In his first appearance in "The Final Problem", Moriarty is referred to as "Professor Moriarty" — no forename is mentioned. Watson does, however, refer to the name of another family member when he writes of "the recent letters in which Colonel James Moriarty defends the memory of his brother". In "The Adventure of the Empty House", Holmes refers to Moriarty on one occasion as "Professor James Moriarty". This is the only time Moriarty is given a first name, and oddly, it is the same as that of his purported brother; to wit The Valley of Fear (written after the preceding two stories, but set earlier), Holmes says of Professor Moriarty: "He is unmarried. His younger brother is a station master in the west of England."[12]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professor_Moriarty

 

Yes Solar, I would too. 
As long as he's still alive!
But I still wonder if this baby is John's...

Well, to make John stay with her? It could indeed be another deduction about her that Sherlock got wrong, and Mary certainly has the means and knowledge to fake all sorts of data about her pregnancy. 
But I do suspect this might be one of the few things she did indeed not lie about to John.

Gently: well, people do crazy things because of love

Yep, like commit murder.

To some extent most people in the world try to make happy themselves in the first place I just can't think of Mary as a bad person. I think she is just lost. She did terrible things in her past, finally she found happines and peace with John, and when she thought that she will spend rest of her life like that her past came back. So, to some extent, I don't blame her that she was trying to keep her happines, even when she was doing it in hmm... not ordinary way.

Okay, then definitely Sherlock is the bad one.