With excitement mounting for the finally underway season 3 of Sherlock, executive producer Sue Vertue recently announced that Lars Mikkelsen has been cast as a new villain for the show, Charles Augustus Magnussen. Mikkelsen, best known for his work as aspiring Mayor Troels Hartmann in the original Copenhagen set version of The Killing, might also sound familiar to Hannibal fans, as he is the brother of Hannibal Lecter actor Mads Mikkelsen.
Lars Mikkelsen’s role on Sherlock is still unclear to a certain extent. Executive producer Sue Vertue only tweeted out the image above with the caption,
Sherlock’s new nemesis – introducing Lars Mikkelsen as Charles Augustus Magnussen.
No information about the character has been given beyond the fact that he is a new nemesis of Sherlock’s. However, some astute Sherlock Holmes fans have recognized that the name bears a striking resemblance to that of Arthur Conan Doyle‘s character Charles Augustus Milverton. Milverton appeared in the short Sherlock Holmes story “The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton”, written and published after the book version of Sherlock Holmes’ death in “The Final Problem.” Sherlock Holmes’ in-book-death on the edge of the Reichenbach Falls, which occurs during the events of “The Final Problem,” inspired the devastating, perplexing final episode of season 2 of the BBC show, “The Reichenbach Fall”.
The timeline of Magnussen’s appearance in Sherlock and his name both indicate that he is likely a version of Charles Augustus Milverton. This means that Lars Mikkelsen is very probably joining his brother as an on screen murderer, though not a cannibal. Instead, Milverton, and likely Magnussen, is a talented blackmailer, taunting Sherlock Holmes and Watson with his skill.
Season, or series, 3 of Sherlock has been taunting fans for quite some time now with sporadic updates and a delay brought on by stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman’s work on The Hobbit. The show was filming the third and final episode of the season during Comic-Con a week and a half ago, but there is no indication as to which episode, or episodes, Mikkelsen will appear in. For now, Sherlock fans will have to wait for more news. We’re good at that by now.
Sherlock is set to return to television on Halloween of this year, October 31, 2013, with an episode entitled “The Empty Hearse.”
(via Digital Spy, Sue Vertue Twitter, IMDb)
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