Well, this is just a normal day on the internet, everything is calm and normal… But, wait, hang on a minute – Sherlock‘s getting a fifth series!

Whoah, whoah, calm down there, guys. As you well know, the cast and crew of Sherlock have long maintained that they don’t know whether a fifth season of the show will ever happen. Likewise, fans have just as long believed that this is a big giant fib and that the BBC are secretly working on more episodes.

Now, a Russian website has been found to casually mention new episodes of Sherlock arriving as early as next year. Here are a few screenshots from the site. Alternatively, visit the website here.

The site claims that, while it has not been officially announced, Sherlock Series Five will arrive in January 2018. It will have a similar set-up to Series Four, apparently. There will be one special in 2018, followed by the usual three episodes a year later.

So… Is this real? Is it fake?

Well, we are inclined to believe that there will be a fifth season at some point, as Moffat and Gatiss have stated several times that they don’t want “to let go of it because it is a wonderful thing”. But so soon? Is this even possible?

In theory, yes. If the script for the special is already written and the actors are free then one feature length episode could absolutely be made by next January. But that would be ridiculously fast for Sherlock. There has always been a minimum of 18 months and now there should be only 12 months between Series Four and Five?

Besides that – and this is a pretty damning piece of evidence – we know that Benedict Cumberbatch is currently busy with The Current War and Avengers: Infinity War (he’s in a lot of wars).

Or, who knows, maybe they already filmed it? Remember, under all of the pre-release pictures (and in the trailers) we got, there were a couple of scenes we didn’t see in season 4. Are they just deleted scenes or even scenes from season 5?

So does this site have the wrong end of the stick or are Moffat and Gatiss messing with us again?

What do you think? Do you even believe that there will be a fifth season? Let us know in the comments down below!