One Sherlock Season 4 Scene Reveals Everything Wrong About The Show After Moriarty’s Death

Sherlock was never the same after Moriarty’s death, with a flashback moment from season 4 perfectly expressing the problem. BBC’s Sherlock is, in many ways, a triumph. The series, a modernization of Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic Sherlock Holmes stories, is still one of IMDb’s top 25 highest-rated TV shows ever made. The series’ pitch-perfect casting, dynamic pace, and sharp writing cohere to deliver two seasons of groundbreaking TV drama. However, Sherlock has its share of flaws, some of which become too egregious to ignore in later seasons.

As Sherlock blows past its season 2 climactic confrontation between Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty, the show struggles to relocate its footing. It’s this struggle that defines the problems with Sherlock’s third and fourth seasons. The show becomes obsessed with sounding echoes of its season 2 high note, rather than starting fresh. One scene in season 4 typifies this problem. In the midst of a showdown between Sherlock and his secret, super-intelligent sibling Eurus, the teases of Moriarty’s return that have peppered season 4 finally pay off in the most frustrating way possible.

Sherlock Season 4, Episode 3 Brought Back Moriarty (In A Flashback)

One of the most dramatic moments in season 4’s climactic final episode “The Final Problem” is the seeming return of Moriarty. However, the drama of this moment deflates nearly as quickly as it appears, with the revelation that Moriarty’s return is nothing more than a flashback. What’s more, the flashback doesn’t even materialize into anything consequential. It’s revealed that Moriarty agreed to record some video messages for Eurus, which she uses to taunt Sherlock. After an entire season of buildup and fanfare, Moriarty’s “return” manifests as a handful of mildly annoying soundbites.

Sherlock Could Never Move On From Moriarty

The disappointing not-quite return of Moriarty represents the wider problems of Sherlock’s third and fourth seasons. After two masterful seasons of slow buildup, Sherlock’s season 2 finale presents an explosive confrontation between Sherlock and Moriarty. The battle of wits between the two egotistical geniuses is a series high point, but this comes at a cost. Following the epic climax, in which Moriarty shoots himself and Sherlock seems to die, the series is left with no idea how to top itself. The result is a frustrating third and fourth season in which the series’ already tenuous grip on reality descends into full-blown absurdity.

Eurus Holmes is the final straw. In a bid to top Moriarty, the writers conceive a plot so absurd, so nakedly lacking in Eurus’s purported super-intelligence, that Sherlock’s cracks are fully laid bare. The show’s earlier seasons succeed by constructing a sense of epic scale and significance with their sophisticated plots, but as Sherlock continues to strive for higher and higher peaks of significance, it becomes untethered from the basic rewards of narrative storytelling. The season 4 Moriarty teases hearken back to when Sherlock was great, but if the rumored Sherlock season 5 hopes to recapture that greatness, it needs to forget about Moriarty.