Sue Vertue, Amanda Abbington, Benedict Cumberbatch, Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss attend the 'Sherlock' press line at Comic-Con International 2016 - Day 4 on July 24, 2016 in San Diego, California. (Photo : Getty Images/ Araya Diaz)
"Sherlock" Season 5's fate may have just been sealed. Following the current season's finale, the BBC One TV series received its lowest ratings ever. This triggered speculations that there is no more hope for a Season 5 renewal.
According to the Daily Mail, Season 4, episode 3 received just 5.9 million viewers. This figure is the lowest number of viewership "Sherlock" has ever received for the past four seasons.
This may be the result of the leak of episode 3 just a day before the finale aired on the network. On her Twitter account, executive producer Sue Vertue urged fans to not watch the episode that was illegally released from Russia.
However, despite Vertue's request, it seems that fans of "Sherlock" did not want to wait for another day or two before they watched the finale.
Following the leak, a spokesman for BBC One explained that the leak was not done by anyone from the network. "BBC Worldwide takes breaches of our stringent content security protocols very seriously and we have initiated a full investigation into how this leak has occurred. Initial investigations suggest our content system was compromised by an unauthorized external third party. Channel One Russia has been cooperating with BBC Worldwide from the moment we were alerted to the appearance of the leaked episode and we are doing everything in our power to determine the source of the breach."
Meanwhile, "Sherlock" has not really been faring well in terms of ratings even when the show premiered a few weeks ago. In 2014, approximately 13 million viewers watched the episode where Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock survived a fatal fall.
As of late, "Sherlock" Season 5 has not yet been renewed, and there is a bigger chance that it will be canceled. Previously, cast member Martin Freeman said that no one knows what the future holds of the series.
While speaking with Radio Times (via Telegraph), Freeman said, "Truly, I do not know how long it will go on. But these days we want everything yesterday, we are never stated, we want what is next..." he said.
Executive producer Steven Moffat seconded his statements by saying that no one really knows what will happen to the series especially because Cumberbatch, Freeman and even himself are all busy with other engagements.
