Everything to Remember Ahead of 'Miss Scarlet' Season 5: Where Does the Show Go From Here?

Mystery series Miss Scarlet is set to return for its fifth season in January, but the show will look a great deal different than it has in the past when it does. It's got a new title, dropping the "and the Duke" that has defined the series for the bulk of its run, a new leading man in Tom Durant Pritchard (This Is Going to Hurt), and what feels like a whole new outlook on what the show is supposed to be and do. Season 5 acts as a soft reboot of the entire series, and it's difficult to know how much of what has come before viewers will need to remember in the face of this new blank slate. Given how last season ended, it seems equally impossible Miss Scarlet won't be forced to reckon with its past before anything else happens. 

We'll have to wait and see precisely what that looks like; however, it's hard to overstate what a shift this season will be for the show. Miss Scarlet (previously called Miss Scarlet & The Duke) follows the story of Eliza Scarlet (Kate Phillips), Victorian London's first female private investigator and a woman determined to make her way professionally in a man's world. Her relationship with Scotland Yard detective William "The Duke" Wellington (Stuart Martin), which dates back to their youth, gets her resources she wouldn't otherwise be able to access, and the pair frequently team up to solve various crimes. 

They also do a lot of flirting, from longing looks and laden silences to meaningful hand touches and regular dinner dates. It's the sort of slow burn will they / won't they romance that has powered television series for decades, and the folks behind the scenes seemed to revel in dragging out any meaningful conversation and/or self-reflection between the pair about what they meant to one another. 

Until they didn't, but by then, it was too late.

The first three seasons of Miss Scarlet & The Duke often felt like one step forward, three steps back in terms of its central relationship. But things slowly shifted for the pair after William got dumped by Eliza's friend Arabella after she (rightly) sussed out that he was in love with his supposed BFF and colleague. But it took William nearly dying in Season 4 to push him to confront his feelings. 

The romance genre has a long history of using the threat of mortal peril or near-death experiences to motivate would-be lovers to get their act together, and it felt like that's what was happening. William confessed his feelings! He said the L-word! He took a temporary post out of the country for a year to allow Eliza to sort through her thoughts on the subject of the two of them. They kissed! The show even gave us an entire flashback episode dedicated to how the two first met! Finally, Miss Scarlet fans the world over thought — it's happening! The show, at least, will have to deal with what these two mean to each other in an honest and tangible way.

The joke's on us, though, because it did not. William went to America, and the rest of Season 4 never showed us Eliza doing anything to wrestle with or process these romantic revelations. (She was mean to virtually everyone around her for two episodes, though!) Then, when the show's Season 5 renewal was announced, it came with the news of Martin's departure, the show's rebranding, and what felt like a complete abandonment of the original premise. Miss Scarlet & The Duke, as many knew and loved it, had ceased to exist. 

Where does the show go from here? The circumstances surrounding Martin's departure are unclear; however, it's not the show's fault if its leading man got tired of wash-rinse-repeating the same storylines. (Or wanted to do something different, Dan Stevens-style.) I'll never understand why the show bothered with such a romance-coded season if Martin was leaving, but perhaps there were extenuating circumstances we're simply unaware of. We'll likely never know, but, for many of us (read: me), it's hard to have much faith in whatever this newly retooled version of the show will look like. 

Miss Scarlet will have to do some form of narrative cleanup if only to explain why the guy whose name used to be in the title and who declared his love for the show's heroine like five minutes ago isn't around anymore. But it's unlikely we should expect much more than that. Eliza, at least, has a long history of ignoring and refusing to deal with her feelings where William is concerned, so I doubt we'll ever get any answers when it comes to whether she loved him, too, or would have been willing to make a go of things when he returned from America. 

But, what we will get is a new partner. I don't envy Durant Pritchard, who's getting handed a problematic and relatively thankless task. In truth, he seems lovely, and his character, Detective Blake, seems more open-minded and progressive, according to early marketing materials, than many of the male characters in this series. But it also doesn't help that the series' trailers have indicated we may be swapping one flavor of crime-solving sexual tension for another. How many viewers want to watch another painfully slow-burn relationship unfold in front of them when the last one ended unsatisfyingly?

Relationship drama (new or old) aside, there's still plenty to recommend Miss Scarlet. Phillips remains a charismatic star who more than deserves her leading lady status. Its supporting cast is solid, and almost all of the main cast outside of Martin is returning. (Though technically, her on-again, off-again business partner Patrick Nash (Felix Scott) is in jail at the moment...)

It's also worth noting that the show's unique focus on female characters and feminist themes set it apart within the larger mystery television landscape. Miss Scarlet's cases of the week have never been what you would call innovative or even coherent most of the time. Still, even the most mundane mysteries are firmly grounded in a uniquely female lens, exploring perspectives and characters that most procedurals view as afterthoughts (or, worse, victims). 

We don't know what the newly rechristened Miss Scarlet will look like or how much the four seasons that have come before will play into the story we're about to see. But there are still worthwhile elements to hold on to — and we'll have to find out together for the rest of it. 

Miss Scarlet Season 5 will premiere on most local PBS stations and the PBS app on Sunday, January 12, 2025, at 8 p.m. ET, ahead of the new season of All Creatures Great and Small. The new episodes are available for PBS Passport members and the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel to binge before their on-air broadcast.