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Watson Season 2 Episode 20 Wraps Up The Series With a Rushed Ending After One of Its Weakest Stories

Critic's Rating: 2 / 5.0
2

What on Earth was that?

Watson Season 2 Episode 20 would have been disappointing enough if it had just been a season finale.

But as the final wrap-up for the series, it fell even further short of what it should have been.

(Colin Bentley/CBS )

Watson Season 2 Episode 20’s Story Was Too Disjointed To Be Compelling

Watson used to be the show I couldn’t take my eyes off for a second, but the series finale didn’t hold my interest at all.

The Moriarity-type stuff never interested me. I was in it for the medical mysteries.

Sebastian Moran and his idle threats against Mary because he wanted Sherlock healthy enough to keep him captive did nothing for me.

It was a waste of time that could have been used to wrap up the series properly, rather than a weird episode that only entered the territory of the finale in the last five minutes.

(Colin Bentley/CBS)

Watson’s insistence on solving the real Sherlock’s medical mystery when he had only hours to remove a tumor before he risked losing everything might have been true to character, but it felt somewhat unrealistic.

This whole tumor arc ruined the last half of Watson Season 2, only to be solved quickly after all hope seemed to be lost. I didn’t want the series to end with Watson dying, but this was hardly better.

Not only was the tumor quickly removed in the last two seconds of the episode before a time jump, but its existence left me wondering what was real and what wasn’t, which was a distraction throughout the hour.

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Trying to figure out what was really going on was exhausting, and the medical mystery took a back seat to all of that weird Sebastian stuff.

Sebastian killing the nurse should have been a bigger deal than it was, too. She died, everyone was shocked, Sebastian was revealed as the killer, and then the story devolved into a question about whether Shinwell would go back to his old ways to deal with this.

(Colin Bentley/CBS)

Shinwell’s relationship with his supervisor has always been the least interesting part of his storyline. His becoming a nurse was supposed to be a redemption story, but that seemed to have been forgotten.

His supervisor/girlfriend told him that she didn’t want him to go back to killing people to get revenge, and then he had a weird conversation with his enemy before turning him over to the cops off-screen.

How incredibly anti-climactic! There seemed little point to the shooting and Sebastian’s entry here — it was all plot stuff just to give Shinwell a decision that he didn’t even make on-screen.

The only interesting thing about Sebastian was his dyslexia, which was used to explain why he joined Moriarity in the first place.

That was not cool. Dyslexia doesn’t make people violent, and it gets enough of a bad rap without stories like this that suggest these types of negative associations.

(Colin Bentley/CBS )

The Real Sherlock’s Illness Should Have Taken Center Stage

Watson was supposed to be a medical mystery show. It usually went off track when Sherlock showed up (Especially after Watson hallucinated him for months), but it could have redeemed itself by having one last medical storyline.

Technically, it did have one, but trying to find out what was wrong with the real Sherlock was the least of anyone’s concerns during Watson Season 2 Episode 20.

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The team did some work with Watson in his lucid moments.

But the episode quickly chugged along from Sherlock having amnesia to remembering who he and Watson were to eventually realizing the same radiation that caused the brain tumor altered his genes.

(Colin Bentley/CBS)

This mystery was not in any way satisfying. It was competing with too many other things, plus I half expected it to turn out that the entire thing was a coma dream Watson had after his brain tumor progressed to a near-fatal state.

Watson And Mary’s Ending Would Have Been Satisfying If They’d Had a Real Story

During the first half of Watson Season 2, the series built a genuine love triangle, with Watson slowly realizing his feelings for Mary, only to discover he was too late.

I was so excited to find out what would happen after the midseason finale, when Watson arrived with flowers, only to find Mary kissing Josh.

Sadly, what happened was… nothing.

(Colin Bentley/CBS)

Throughout most of the season, Mary dated Josh, while Watson dated Laila.

Mary planned to go to LA to be Chief of Medicine, leaving Watson behind, only an episode ago, and it was only when Watson lay hovering between life and death that she admitted what she really felt for him.

That’s not a story. That’s the writers realizing the series needed to wrap up and suddenly tacking on the happy ending the characters deserved, without Mary and Watson having to do the work to get there.

That brief time jump was better than the series ending with Watson going into surgery and us not knowing if he lived or died, but come on!

We also left Sasha and Ingrid in limbo, with Sasha breaking up with Stephens because of her confusion over who she wanted to be, and Ingrid possibly being charged in Beck’s death, but maybe not.

(Colin Bentley/CBS)

And poor Adam got a throwaway line about naming his son after Watson last week, but nothing else.

If you ask me, this was no kind of series finale, but what did you think?

Hit the comments with your opinions about Watson Season 2 Episode 20, along with whether you’ll miss this show.

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If you enjoyed this article, check out our coverage of Tracker and Marshals, the other CBS Sunday night shows.

Watson has ended, but all episodes of the series are currently available on Paramount+.


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Pat

Monday 25th of May 2026

Well of course the series finale felt rushed! What else could it be after CBS suddenly cancelled it. I think the writers did the best they could trying to wrap things up. This was a great show that always kept us intrigued and trying to figure out what would happen next. It should have stayed on for many more years! Shame on CBS for canceling it!

L Anderson

Monday 18th of May 2026

Love shows great acting

The Observer

Sunday 17th of May 2026

At what point in the season was it announced that the series was cancelled? The ending seems like it was quickly grafted on to a story originally intended to be the season finale with Watson's life in question because of that tumour and Ingrid's legal fate being left up in the air. I suspect that Lestrade would have let her go in the first minutes of the new season because of who Ingrid killed. Unless someone can get the writers to spill the beans I guess we'll never know.

This is just another guess but I suspect if the series had continued the real Sherlock and Lestrade would have somehow found themselves teamed up. Near the end she was showing quite an interest in the great detective. Perhaps she would have been Sherlock's liaison with the local police.

This hasty wrap by the way brings up something I have suggested when other series have been similarly canned without a proper ending. It should be a given for the networks/streamers etc. to offer an extra one or two hour final episode early in the new season to tie up all the loose ends properly to satisfy the viewers. The audience who have watched a show loyally sometime for many years deserve that.

Kai

Sunday 10th of May 2026

Watson having the surgery immediately wasn’t so important that it couldn’t wait a day or two. Glioblastoma is fatal. Surgery can postpone death, but in the end, generally within 3 years of diagnosis, the patient dies.

Kai

Sunday 10th of May 2026

I would like to add, as the relative and friend of several people who died of glioblastoma, that I was very angry at the way it was treated on the show. It’s an actual death sentence, and Watson himself kept denying it, even while the other doctors kept trying to make him take it seriously. Watson was having audible and visual hallucinations, and he didn’t seek treatment or another doctor’s medical opinion. Even after the brain tumor was diagnosed and he knew the hallucinations were because he was ill, he kept insisting he was fine to treat patients and make complicated treatment decisions. So damn arrogant.

Amy

Wednesday 6th of May 2026

I enjoyed the Watson/Sherlock scenes, but this was incredibly disappointing as a finale.

I saw an interview where the writers said you could interpret the last scene either as real or Watson's last thought before dying (or possibly in several other ways too). I'd rather take it as a real scene (since they also said they shot this as a season finale rather than a series finale), but it doesn't make that much sense. And so much as skipped. Mary resented John's time with Sherlock living in 221B. That was when she lost their child. Why would she want to move in there with him? Does Sherlock live there too now? And did they both just give up their jobs at UHOP? This version of Watson is an American. I don't remember how much time he spent in London here. A couple years at most? Why take his wife (who I don't think has ever been) and move there when they seemed perfectly happy in the US? What kind of work is Mary even doing in the flash forward?

What exactly was the point of breaking Sasha and Stephens up? They seemed mostly drama free until the last few episodes where there's suddenly the issue of having kids. You could get whiplash trying to keep up with what Sasha wanted. Every time Stephens caught up to where she was, the goal post was moved. First she wanted kids, but he wasn't ready. So she had her eggs frozen. Then as he's coming along, she has the off-screen revelation about her birth mother. It's entirely understandable that this would affect her, but it would be easier to sympathize with her if we could see her reaction to Ingrid telling her the truth. Last episode, she was numb but seemed to have accepted what happened. She said she was back to where she started which I kind of interpreted to mean she didn't lose anything (like her adopted family, her work, friends, etc.). Then at the end of this episode, she suddenly breaks up with Stephens after he decides he wants what she has wanted because she's now confused about who she is. So we just leave her in this sort of limbo with Beck winning in a way because he accomplished what he set out to do with her. If the writers did have any idea of the series being cancelled after this season (especially with the Sunday time slot it had been moved to), I think they just should have kept them together and gone for the happy ending. At least Adam doesn't look like he's going to go after this ex-girlfriend too.

Ingrid has been such a frustrating character. I wish she could have suffered some kind of consequences for everything she's done, but she's obviously the writers' favorite. So nothing much would have happened to her.

Shinwell's romance with his superior has been one of the least developed storylines. Them getting married is rushed. His scenes with John and Sherlock were more interesting anyway.

I am disappointed we won't get a series three. There were some storylines that needed more time, and I enjoyed so much about this show. Besides, it was nice to see Watson take center stage instead of Holmes in one of these adaptations.

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