Haha that's the thing, with so many different theories I keep thinking well one of them has to be right but who knows, we could all be completely way off the mark.

If something were to happen to Mary and/or the baby or they leave him because he somehow chose Sherlock over them I could see that as being the reason why John would feel guilty and blame Sherlock which would lead to them becoming estranged but that seems almost too simple.

You know, maybe John has been Moriarty's agent all along. Now that would be really revolutional. And would put their friendship to a test. And explain the punch. And be the dark secret from the past for the first ep (if it's about John).

Not entirely serious here, just going crazy from all the anticipation.

Last edited by ewige (December 28, 2016 9:12 pm)

Well, is it possible that the writers want to see the friendship between John and Sherlock destroyed? And that would be "the groundbreaking" thing they were speaking about?
Nobody before them made a SH adaptation in which John Watson actually hated SherlockHolmes and wanted to see him suffer.... so maybe they would?

Liberty wrote:

Yes, it could be Mycroft's house - his is rather grand and seems to be on fire in the trailer. 

I'm not sure what the lipstick could mean - kind of odd because Sherlock doesn't actually smoke a pipe, but it's still one of his symbols outside of the show ... Does it mean there will be a female detective, temporarily?  Mary?  Yes, the red lipstick reminds me of Irene, but also of Molly in ASIB.  Mrs Hudson not so much. Of course, it could be Uncle Rudy!  There seems to be a female (police) detective actually cast, but I don't remember her having red lipstick in the publicity picture.

If it's blood, I don't know - my first thought with the pipe-smoking and blood was TB (coughing up blood), which made me think of the dying detective.  But it seems kind of morbid to have it on the pipe like that - although any blood from the mouth seems strange.  I'm going to go with lipstick, I think.

If the red stuff on the pipe is blood it could be a reference to an incident that is mentioned by Sherlock Holmes in The Empty House:

"... Mathews, who knocked out my left canine in the waiting-room at Charing Cross,..."

Writers being puzzled over Chinese posters. LOL!

Hah!

It could mean that they've made their own promo materials which give something away (which is what we're puzzling over) or it could mean they've made promo materials which are misleading.   We can only wait and see!

If anybody missed the Piccadilly Circus thing, there's a video here:
http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/sherlock/news/a817853/sherlock-teaser-moriarty-return-series-four/

I'm kind of excited because my feeling was that they were going to overlap with "real life" somehow for S4, and I wonder if this is leading up to it.  There's the Telegraph announcement as well.  And whatever we're getting instead of the blogs. 

Advertising at Piccadilly Circus is ridiculously expensive though so probably not far from the truth!

Not our eyebrows? lol

I thought the big tam-tam around the Piccadilly Circus was a huge let-down for the fans that actually appeared there. It seems they were sort of misused for the ad campaign. I get it that the screen time must be very expensive but why not show something new (while not necessarily more meaningful) in those three seconds? Wouldn't cost more but would make people very happy.