BBC One dropped a new trailer last night for the Season 3 premiere of Sherlock, the long-on-hiatus drama that's been tearing fans on Tumblr apart at their heart-seams ever since its second season ended in January 2012. When we left Sherlock (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Watson (Martin Freeman) last, the former faked his own death to defeat arch-nemesis Jim Moriarty, apparently with the help of mousy, heretofore insignificant morgue technician Molly Hooper (Louise Brealey). His partner and landlady, devastated by the loss, will of course now have to deal with his infuriatingly smug return.
But the one thing that this new trailer tells us that we didn't expect — because of course Watson will be furious and stubbornly reluctant to return to the old routine, and of course Sherlock will have to deal with the emotional wreckage he left behind, and of coooouuuuurse there's a greater threat afoot for Sherlock to outsmart, presumably while keeping up appearances of Sherlock's being, you know, dead – is just what does the detective mean by, "the one person he thought didn't matter at all to me was the one person that mattered the most"? He did say something of the sort in the Season 2 finale, but surely Molly's aid in the staggeringly believable stunt wasn't anything more than another of Sherlock's almost-emotional power plays — right? Just what is Molly Hooper?
Sherlock returns in the U.K. (and, presumably, to your proxy-enabled U.K. streaming sites) Jan. 1, 2014.
Correction appended [1:00 P.M. PST/12/9]: A previous version of this story stated the name of Sherlock's nemesis as Peter Moriarty. It is, of course, Jim Moriarty.
