Sherlock: 7 Things We Can Look Forward To In Season 4

4. The Return Of Irene Adler?

We knew we hadn't seen the last of Irene Adler. The writers could easily have killed her off at the end of 'A Scandal in Belgravia'; instead, in the last five minutes of the episode, we are shown her near-execution, where Sherlock saves her just in time. What other reason would the writers have to save her if not to bring her back at some point? Her brief cameo in The Sign of Three is also a sign that we may be seeing more of her in Season 4. She may have only shown up as an apparition in Sherlock's mind palace, but the fact that he still thinks about her after over two years is interesting in itself. With John settling into domestic life with wife and child, perhaps it would be good for Sherlock if the Woman came back to bring chaos into his life again, as she's prone to do. Her sexual advances may serve as a distraction, but her intelligence makes his own intellect sharper, too; with some fans bemoaning the fact that Season 3 lost Sherlock's clever deductions in place of sentiment, perhaps another encounter with the Woman would give us the chance to see Sherlock's brilliance again. After all, it was for the Woman that he deciphered a coded email in eight seconds; I personally wouldn't mind seeing such a breathtakingly brilliant sequence of deductions again!