You can easily Google the name “Sherrinford” and you’ll find out that this is the name of the third Holmes brother, someone that a lot of people might not have known about. To be quite honest omission of his presence from the minds of many individuals wouldn’t be too surprising since to many that aren’t up to date on Sherlock Holmes and his expanded world there were only so many characters within the story. But the deeper you go the more well-developed individuals you’ll find, and Holmes’ brothers are in fact characters within the story. In fact at one time Sherlock’s name was meant to be Sherrinford according to Arthur Conan Doyle, but he settled for the name that became synonymous with detective stories instead. At that point there seemed to be no more mention of Sherrinford and he quietly slipped to the background, as did a lot of Holmes’ familial past. The idea of Sherrinford didn’t come back in until William S. Baring-Gould wrote it in, introducing the idea of a third brother and thus bringing him back.
This isn’t the first time that Sherrinford came up in the stories.
While he wasn’t much of a character in his own right he did provide a basis for why Sherlock was allowed to go off on his own adventures and become a detective. Being the older brother, Sherrinford would have been expected to stay at home and manage the estate, while the middle brother, Mycroft, would become a civil servant and retain a large amount of responsibility. This would leave the youngest, Sherlock, to be free and do his own thing since many times less is expected of the youngest in a family unless the youngest is in fact a first or second born. But be that as it may, this in no way stands as a mark against Sherrinford as being vapid or in any way dull. It’s actually been suggested that his intellect is great enough to rival that of his brothers. So it would seem that no matter how far in the background he’s put Sherrinford is still recipient of a gene within the Holmes’ family that seems to breed intelligence. That, or their parents were very much in favor of teaching their sons how to think on their feet and around corners.
How he appears might not be how it’s expected.
If you watch the show then you might remember that Mycroft put in a call and asked to be connected to Sherrinford, so it’s highly likely that the third brother will be showing up, but in what manner is still up for debate. Some think that it might be Tom Hiddleston taking the roll, which would make a lot of people happy since Hiddleston is a proven act and more to the point he’s been on screen with Cumberbatch in the past and done quite well. There’s no guarantee that such a thing will happen since the showrunners like to keep their audience guessing, but it would be something that would be highly anticipated and very much approved of. But the big surprise might be that Sherrinford isn’t a brother, but instead a sister, or could be unrelated to the Holmes family in any way. Keep in mind that Sherrinford might have been thought up and theorized about, but there’s no telling until we finally see just what they’re going to do.
There are reasons why Sherrinford might be coming in now.
One huge problem that Holmes has had to deal with for a while is the problem of Moriarty, his arch nemesis. It doesn’t matter if he’s dead or not, his legacy is still enough to trouble Holmes and it could be that Sherrinford is tied into this somehow. Either he’s the one preserving it (hopefully not) or he’s the one that can help Holmes put it to rest finally. Of course given that Mycroft and Sherlock aren’t exactly the most compassionate of people it’s always likely that they’ve managed to push their brother towards the other side without really meaning to. This would make for a very interesting and gripping twist to a story that is already full of them on many different levels but it would also be something that might shock the audience into disbelief and make them wonder just what the creators of the show are up to. In that case it will have done its job actually.
Whatever does happen the case of who Sherrinford is and whether he’s related or is in fact a woman will be answered eventually and people will be able to go about their day once again finally knowing that the riddle has been solved. Of course like any good Sherlock mystery there’s probably going to be a few twists and turns that people don’t see coming and won’t fully expect. With a show like this it seems pretty standard to expect just about anything within the realm of feasibility.
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