‘Watson’ Team Teases ‘Powerful Revelation’ About Doc’s Relationship With Mary

Right now, two episodes into Watson, there are a couple of things that the titular doc doesn’t know. Morris Chestnut‘s version of Dr. John Watson, in CBS’s modern-day take on the iconic Arthur Conan Doyle characters, has no idea that the villain, Moriarty (Randall Park), who was responsible for the death (but is he really dead?) of his friend and sleuth Sherlock Holmes, is still alive. He also doesn’t know that he has someone close to him, Shinwell Johnson (Ritchie Coster), working for him. Plus, he doesn’t know that his ex-wife, Dr. Mary Morstan (Rochelle Aytes), is hiding something from him.

Ahead of the series premiere, Chestnut told us that when Watson left and joined Sherlock in London, “he left Mary in a very bad situation but didn’t realize it.” Since then, when talking to Chestnut, Aytes, and executive producer Craig Sweeny for TV Insider’s digital cover story leading up to the second episode, we’ve gotten a few more details.

“There’s something that she knows that he doesn’t, that happened while he was over there, and if you rewatch the pilot really closely and Rochelle’s performance, there’s a moment where you can almost take a guess at what it is. I’m not going to say what it is, but I’ll say it’s in the last act of the pilot. There’s something that she does in her performance there that really hints at what’s to come in a way that I found really impressive as a viewer of her performing,” teases Sweeny.

“But it becomes a mystery for Watson to unfold. He realizes that there’s something he doesn’t know in a particular episode, and so he becomes sort of obsessed with uncovering what that is,” he continues. “It’s actually the same episode where he’s hallucinating the voice of Sherlock Holmes, our seventh episode, and he winds up coming to this very powerful revelation about something he didn’t know about their relationship at the end of that episode.”

That secret that no one else knows, adds Aytes, “explains a lot and of why Mary has kind of moved on because she’s just been hurt and she’s over it for now.” After all, “Watson over and over again has chosen Holmes over our relationship, and I think Mary just had had enough.”

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In general, there are layers to Watson and Mary’s relationship. Not only are they exes (and yes, she’s in a new relationship, with a woman he doesn’t know), but she’s also his boss. Chestnut enjoys the “fun” of that. “Sometimes Watson knows what he did was something that he can’t take back, and he’s really remorseful for his behavior in following Sherlock, but Mary doesn’t want to let him in,” he says. “So the fun is trying to get her to crack, trying to get her to loosen up a little bit when it comes to Watson and what he did with their marriage. And there are going to be a few things that are revealed about the relationship later on in the season that I think will shock the audience.”

There is a “delicate balance,” as Sweeny puts it, to their relationship now. “They’re not done with each other yet,” he stresses. “They’re in this hesitant process of, who are we now? Might they see the qualities that made this relationship worth preserving in the first place, and might that tempt them to put things in a different context?”

It falls on Mary to “maintain that balance,” says Aytes. “She’s trying to focus on the work, and a lot of the times, Watson is bringing the personal relationship stuff back in it.”

What do you think Mary’s hiding? Let us know your theories in the comments section below.

Watson, Sundays, 9/8c, CBS