What to Expect From 'Miss Scarlet & the Duke' Season 4

As a show heading into its fourth season, there's a lot about the mystery series Miss Scarlet & the Duke that feels like a known quantity. After all, we've all done this before, and the beats are all still pretty familiar. Eliza Scarlet, Victorian London's first female private investigator, solves crimes, works to prove herself to a patriarchal society that refuses to take her or her skills seriously, and repeatedly puts up with what often feels like every other person she meets expressing disbelief about the basic facts of her profession. She shares a complicated history with Scotland Yard detective William "The Duke" Wellington, with whom she solves a lot of cases while they very determinedly do not deal with their years' worth of unresolved sexual tension or unspoken but glaringly obvious feelings for one another. 

The show is a lot of fun, and the will they / won't they vibes are immaculate, but part of what makes it so appealing is the comforting, predictable nature of its formula. This isn't a show that has frequently chosen to rock the boat, narratively speaking. It does what it knows works, and it sticks with that framework. But, as we look toward Season 4, which premieres on PBS Masterpiece in early January, for the first time in a long time, it seems there are significant changes ahead in the world of Miss Scarlet for almost all its characters. 

First of all, the show's very premise is shifting slightly. The main idea behind the show has always been that Eliza Scarlet is a female private investigator trying to make her own way under her own name. (Under the awning of the very agency her beloved father used to run.) Now, as Season 4 begins, she's left that behind her to lead the London office of Patrick Nash's agency, which comes with the additional staff, funding, and public awareness she's been longing for. 

While Eliza's choice to do what makes the most sense for her financially while still allowing her to do the work she loves is both an admirable and understandable one, Miss Scarlet & the Duke will also now have to calibrate what this new working relationship between her and Nash will ultimately look like. We got a brief glimpse of what it might be like for most of our significant characters to work together on a case in the Season 3 finale, "The Jewel of the North," Eliza and Nash did spend the bulk of last season as rivals, often at direct odds with one another. What does a world look like in which they are business partners and professional colleagues look like? Who is Nash if he's not trying to recruit, impress, or undercut Eliza? And how does William react when Eliza perhaps doesn't need his help quite as much as she once did, now that she has her own resources?

And that's only one of many Eliza and William-related questions Season 4 will have to deal with. Miss Scarlet Season 3 kept William and Eliza apart for a relatively large part of it, both by necessity (star Stuart Martin didn't appear in fully a third of the episodes) and narrative choice (the show also decided to give him a girlfriend in the form of Eliza's frenemy Arabella). Season 3 concluded with Arabella's (surprisingly awesome) realization that she doesn't need to waste her time with a man who's obsessed with someone else, which led to her both dumping the Duke and informing him that it's evident to anyone with eyes that he's in love with Eliza. Which, I mean, the woman's not wrong. But this revelation appears to have come as news to William, in the way that suggests Season 4 might finally be the moment when Miss Scarlet & the Duke has to face what its two leads mean to one another.

Though Miss Scarlet & the Duke has occasionally tip-toed close to the line of having Eliza and William confront what they so obviously mean to one another, the show has also been fairly reluctant to rock the boat of its own success. After all, the will they / won't they vibe between its central duo is a key element of its entire identity, and like all television programs, the show clearly fears running out of stories to tell if it ever puts its lead romance into an actual, you know, romance. (The Moonlighting curse is a myth, and don't let anyone tell you differently. Happy, functional couples who tackle problems together exist!) 

But at some point, Miss Scarlet & the Duke has to stop repeating the same narrative steps. How many times can we watch these two learn the same lessons about trust and collaboration or reaffirm how much they care about one another without actually going so far as to define what those feelings are or mean? I mean, William and Eliza have still never really dealt with the emotional fallout from that "we have to stay just friends" talk from way back in Season 2, and that happened before she almost died, he almost moved to Scotland, and then they both almost died again (at least together this time). Get it together, kids!

In theory, William suddenly being made to face the fact that he's in love with Eliza should do a couple of things. First, here's hoping it causes him to reevaluate his (admittedly quite dated) ideas about what relationships and marriage are supposed to look like because it is very apparent he is not attracted to traditional, stay-at-home kind of women the way he claims to be. (Arabella runs her own restaurant!) And second, it's time—truly, it's so past time—for him to finally have a real conversation with Eliza. One in which neither of them is trying to run away or being immediately threatened with death or planning to move hundreds of miles away. The show desperately needs to find a way for these characters to grow together rather than continually coming up with new ways to push them apart. We live in hope, Scarleteers. 

Miss Scarlet and the Duke Season 4 premieres Sunday, January 7, 2024, on Masterpiece. Seasons 1-3 are currently streaming on PBS Passport.