‘Elementary’ Season 6 Spoilers: Will Natalie Dormer Return As Moriarty?

Natalie Dormer may finally reprise her role as Moriarty in Season 6 of “Elementary.”

Executive producer Rob Doherty teased to TVLine that Moriarty’s return to the show could be just around the corner. “With respect to Sherlock (Jonny Lee Miller), we’re working hard to see an old flame come back to the show,” Doherty said at CBS’ summer press soiree.

While Doherty didn’t mention Moriarty’s name, the showrunner did say that the mystery ex “may or may not lead a league of assassins — or once led a league of assassins,” which is outright confirmation that he’s indeed referring to Dormer’s character. At the London Film and Comic Con last month, Dormer also said (via Radio Times) that the chances of her going back to “Elementary” are “pretty high.”

READ: Which “Dexter” alum will appear in Season 6 of “Elementary”?

At the same convention, Dormer revealed that she actually had no idea that she would be playing the role of Moriarty when she agreed to join the series. “[Doherty] offered me the role [of Irene Adler] straight off but he didn’t tell me I was Moriarty,” the 35-year-old English actress shared. “It was a stroke of genius. He told me before we started shooting but he just offered me Irene Adler [first]. … The icing on the cake was ‘Oh, you’re the first ever female Moriarty’ so it’s very, very cool.”

Despite the gender-swapping, Dormer thinks that the CBS series remains true to the spirit of Arthur Conan Doyle’s original Sherlock Holmes stories. “What Rob Doherty did with Irene and Moriarty I think is very clever and just a reimagining of the wealth and texture of the writing,” Dormer said. “Because if you know the books, then [you know] Moriarty and Sherlock are sort of dependent on one another, they are two guys who exist to beat the other one, so the idea of putting an ex-love affair, to make people obsessed about each other, is actually a very shrewd clever writing move, so I think it was very intelligent. And it brings Sherlock Holmes to a whole new generation.”

Although mentioned several times in the last three seasons of “Elementary,” Moriarty hasn’t been seen on the show since Season 2, episode 12.

Would you like to see Moriarty next season? Tell us in the comments section below!

The 13-episode Season 6 of “Elementary” will premiere midseason on CBS.