Magnussen, eh?

This morning, I don't know if I love the way BBC Sherlock is keeping the flame alive with teasers or not. The word spread across the Sherlockian web like wildfire, season three is going to feature the villainous Charles Augustus Magnussen.

Those Sherlock fans who never read "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton" can grab their Canon and see what sorts of thing may await. Those of us that know the story well can start going, "Magnussen? Why Magnussen?"

Sure, it could be as simple as not wanting to use "Milverton" now that Elementary grabbed that name first in their run. Or it could imply more.

My first thought was the Nordic association with the new name giving the tale a WikiLeaks twist.

My second thought was the mistaken notion that there was a character called "Magnussen" in Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth.

My third thought, after a little Google searching, was, "Hey, Norwegian royalty! Holmes was headed for Norway at the end of 'The Adventure of Black Peter.'"

And that's just me. BBC Sherlock's fandom is a very hungry fandom, one that will analyze individual frames of their favorite show and milk every possible connotation of three individual words tossed their way by devious showrunners. Handing them a name like "Charles Augustus Magnussen" is very apt to produce entire fanfic stories before any of us has even heard the character speak a single word. Just look at how much lore got built up around Moran in the Cumberverse . . . Nature may abhor a vacuum, but Sherlock fandom is chock-full of eager godlings ready to create entire realities of Sherlock to fill even a potential void.

So now we have Charles Augustus Magnussen. Let the games begin!