Peanut butter and jelly, salt and pepper, Blanche, Dorothy, Sophia, and Rose — these are all just things that go together. And now, Morris Chestnut’s titular character on CBS’ latest hit series, Watson, has his other half thanks to the casting of Robert Carlyle (Trainspotting) as none other than the legendary detective himself: Sherlock Holmes. For now, Carlyle is confirmed to be appearing in a recurring guest role, which will be an exciting one, as the character of Sherlock Holmes was presumed to be deceased at the top of the debut season. But now we know that the mentor of Chestnut’s Dr. John Watson will rise again — although he’ll now be forced to face demons from his past.
In a statement paired with the casting announcement, Watson executive producer and showrunner, Craig Sweeny, said:
“We are thrilled to have the mighty Robert Carlyle join the cast of Watson in Season 2. The man has played iconic roles in projects like Trainspotting, The Full Monty and 28 Weeks Later, and now he steps into the shoes of the most iconic detective of all, Sherlock Holmes. When Watson’s best friend and former partner makes a shocking reappearance in his life, Watson is forced to confront their shared past — and a secret that may lie buried within Watson’s own body.”
The reveal of Carlyle as the great Sherlock Holmes comes after the showdown between one of the greatest foes to cross paths with the detective which went down during the first season. Throughout its debut set of episodes, Watson and his team at the Holmes Clinic in Pittsburgh, fought the ever-elusive big bad — Moriarty (Randall Park) — who played a cat and mouse game with them until the very end. After solving the medical crisis that Moriarty created and bringing him down once and for all, the show had plenty of open space for another infamous character from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famed books to join in on-screen form.
Will Moriarty Return in Season 2?
With all the attention turned to Sherlock Holmes and his grandiose arrival in Watson’s second season, is there a possibility that perhaps Moriarty isn’t as dead and done with as audiences first thought? Previously addressing this very question with TV Insider, Sweeny said,
“I definitely wouldn’t rule it out. I mean, definitely the act will haunt Watson, and you’d be a fool to say, I would never allow Randall Park to act in our show. I mean, I would love to see him again… We didn’t start the season going, ‘Oh, Moriarty is going to die at the end of the season.’ But we created this constellation of circumstances where no matter what happened, no matter what they did with him, even if they put him in a lockdown prison in Colorado where there’s no contact with anybody, he still has this trove of DNA somewhere that would allow him to do to essentially anybody in the world what he did to Adam and Stephens.”
via Collider