Spoilers ahead for Episode 8 of CBS’ Watson Season 1, called “A Variant of Unknown Significance” and available streaming next day with a Paramount+ subscription.
Watson has been slowly but surely adapting famous elements of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes lore into its medical mystery/detective drama in the 2025 TV schedule, including the early reveal of Randall Park as Moriarty. In “A Variant of Unknown Significance,” Watson went all out by introducing not only Irene Adler, but also Mycroft Holmes. The doctor himself even name-dropped Baron Adelbert Gruner, a character from one of Doyle’s short stories. The episode ended by getting rid of what I thought would be the Chekhov’s gun of Season 1, but I also see a way that the storyline could continue.
Unsurprisingly, Irene Adler came to UHOP as part of a long con. Her son Angus wasn’t sick with a mystery illness after all, as Watson ultimately proved medically and Ingrid proved somewhat more crudely by giving the young boy a shove. Irene’s attempt to pass Angus off as Sherlock’s son who he’d never known about was a ploy to gain access to Sherlock’s DNA, which was hard to come by due to his cremation. Watson in fact had to send Shinwell to Mycroft, Sherlock’s brother, to get it. Morris Chestnut’s character connected the dots that Irene wanted the DNA to sell to Baron Gruner in Austria, who had a habit of purchasing the DNA of remarkable people.
She did have a sympathetic reason, as she needed the money to leave to her son in light of her diagnosis with an incurable disease. Watson agreed to set her up with a treatment that could give her the miracle she needed, and is willing to be Angus’ guardian if Irene does indeed due. I don’t really see Watson using its newly-renewed status to kill off the character and put Watson in the position of raising her son, and the other element of the deal was more interesting to me. Namely, that Irene handed over the DNA sample that she’d stolen.
And I was fully prepared for that DNA sample to be put away and forgotten until it suddenly became absolutely necessary to prove Sherlock’s involvement in a plot at some point before the end of the season. Imagine my surprise when Watson exposited to Shinwell that the DNA was courtesy of a ring belonging to Mycroft, which still had Sherlock’s blood on it after a fistfight years earlier. Instead of putting the ring with its valuable DNA in a safe space until a finale or a premiere required it as a plot device, Watson just dropped it in a glass of liquor to presumably get rid of any residuals.
That took care of my expectation that they would need to use to ring to identify whether somebody is Sherlock – since I’m of course not convinced that the character is truly dead – or other evidence is tied to Sherlock! Once I got over my surprise, though, I realized that the possibility of a storyline involving Sherlock’s DNA hasn’t been ruled out just because Watson cleaned the ring. We just met Mycroft Holmes earlier in the episode, after all, and while brothers don’t share identical DNA, any sample from one Holmes could be used to confirm or rule out a connection to the other.
Does this mean that we’ll see Mycroft again before the end of Season 1 or even that DNA will matter again any time soon? Of course not, and it’s not even a given that Sherlock is actually alive, but it’s fun to wonder now that we know Watson is guaranteed a second season. CBS finally announced the good news more than a month after several of its other dramas were renewed. The finale won’t air until May 11, however, so there are still several episodes left to go before summer hiatus starts. Keep tuning in to CBS at 9 p.m. ET on Sundays for what’s next.
