It was clear going into the second part of Watson‘s two-part first season finale that some dark choices were going to have to be made, but the episode ended on a darker note than ever imagined.
The team only had the ability to save one of the twins as they were both dying of an illness genetically created just for them and their genes by the evil Moriarty (Randall Park). They chose Adams, the twin played by Peter Mark Kendall who doesn’t wear glasses, to quickly cure. Stephens, the twin played by Peter Mark Kendall who does wear glasses, had to wait for some sort of miracle, or for someone to steal more cultures from Moriarty’s genetics lab.
🎬 SIGN UP for Parade’s Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox 🎬
First, Watson (Morris Chestnut) and his team used a nine-year-old brain tumor patient named Ashley as leverage. Her mother is Moriarty’s minion, the fake pharmaceutical rep (Kacey Rohl) who’s been bossing Shinwell (Ritchie Coster) around. And in exchange for her daughter being saved, she was supposed to bring the cure from Moriarty’s lab.
The extra shocking part was that her lab break-in was a ruse. Ingrid (Eve Harlow) was the one Moriarty was trying to woo over to his side via blackmail, so Ingrid used that to her advantage and told him about the plan to get the cultures back. But her meeting with Moriarty on his favorite gondola car was just a way to poison him with his own custom genetic illness that Watson created just for him. Soon, his vision was gone, and he showed up at Watson’s lab with the Stephens cure in hand, knowing only Watson could now cure him.
He was doing exactly what Watson knew he would do. And once Stephens was on the mend, Watson restored Moriarty’s vision. This is the kind of show where you’d think the hero couldn’t possibly stoop to the level of the villain. A mild-mannered doctor like John Watson is the kind of guy you’d expect to take his oath as a doctor extremely seriously. So when he sat by Moriarty’s bedside and explained that there was no cure and that death via stroke was imminent and that it was all Watson’s doing, it felt like the show shifted into something else.
“You took an oath,” Moriarty mumbled from his deathbed.
“I did. First, do no harm. You are the harm, James Moriarty,” Watson said. “I treated you. But for the good of the world, I am glad you’re not going to be walking out of here. I did give you your eyesight, but all that really means is that I am the last thing you will ever see.”
Related: CBS Announces Its Fall 2025-2026 Schedule
Watson tried a couple of last-minute questions, like, “Who are you?” and “What made you this way?” But Moriarty decided to “die with his secrets.”
“What else do I have left?” he said, then laughed menacingly as the stroke began.
All season, it’s been a mystery as to what Moriarty is up to and why, and now he’s no longer around to tell us or explain himself or continue the game of cat and mouse that Moriarty canonically loves to play. What’s the point now? And is this a new development for Watson, or is this the man he’s always secretly been?
The rest of the clinic (aside from Ingrid) got their happy endings. Adams and Stephens had a heart-to-heart about Adams marrying Stephens’ ex-girlfriend, and Sasha (Inga Schlingmann) told Stephens about her little crush on him. While Ashley celebrated successful treatment for her brain cancer, her oncologist (Tika Sumpter) caught Watson’s eye. Even Watson’s hospital administrator ex Mary (Rochelle Aytes) is chill with both his new girlfriend and his having murdered Moriarty.
The only person not having a good time heading into Season 2 is Ingrid. Mary may have allowed her to stay at the clinic on a probationary basis, but Stephens told her in no uncertain terms that he could not work alongside the woman who nearly got him and his brother killed.
It’s not yet clear where this show will go in Season 2 now that the main Sherlock Holmes antagonist has been vanquished. But it does feel like the game has changed a bit. Can we even trust that Moriarty is fully dead, and that Mary “handling it” didn’t mean something other than legitimizing the death?
It’s not entirely clear that the show knows exactly who and what it is yet. But having Watson murder Moriarty is certainly one way to make sure it’s at least headed somewhere interesting.
Related: Find Out If Your Favorite Show Is Coming Back or Canceled with Our Fall TV 2025-2026 Guide!
