Sherlock, BBC's insanely popular incarnation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's iconic sleuth (which airs in the U.S. on PBS's Masterpiece), set up its biggest mystery in the Season 2 finale when Sherlock leapt to his death in front of Watson's (admittedly discombobulated) eyes. So, the Season 3 premiere was a make-or-break moment as the writers had to concoct a wholly plausible and completely satisfactory explanation for how our beloved brainiac orchestrated and survived his fall.
Keeping with Sherlock's cheeky tone, "The Empty Hearse" gave viewers multiple (and totally acceptable) answers all to this all-important question. Now, a new featurette off the Season 3 DVD — available Feb. 11 from BBC Home Entertainment — takes you inside the making of the "correct one," according to the episode's director, Jeremy Lovering.
The biggest twist, save for the third season finale, ensured Sherlock fans would never be able to fully trust a new character again by revealing — the most massive of spoiler alerts here — that Watson's new wife, Mary, was secretly a former assassin!
"When I was filming Episodes 1 and 2, I didn't know what her story was going to be," Amanda Abbington, who plays Mary Watson (and is Martin Freeman's real-life partner), says in this exclusive clip. "I'm playing it all very innocently, which helps. I would have played her differently had I known her backstory."
But the writers knew Mary's secret from the beginning, and Freeman says that a second viewing of the season reveals clues were in fact embedded throughout the episodes (such as Sherlock deducing that Mary is a liar in their very first meeting and the fact she knew what a skip code was).
In the below video, Benedict Cumberbatch offers his thoughts on what this revelation means for Sherlock's relationship with Mary.