The Johnlock Conspiracy (Encore)
Decoder Ring
Slate Podcasts
4.6 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 25 March 2026
⏱️ 53 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For over a century, fans of Sherlock Holmes have been analyzing, debating, and creating new texts with Arthur Conan Doyle’s characters. But when a fan theory emerged about the BBC TV show Sherlock that posited the inevitability of a gay romance between Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson—it wreaked havoc on the community. In this episode, which originally aired in 2018, we explore the Johnlock Conspiracy, with help from historians, journalists, and the fans at the heart of the controversial idea. It’s almost a Holmesian tale itself, full of brilliant theories, false leads and mysterious motives—except for the ending, which, unlike in a Holmes story, isn’t very neat.
This episode was written by Willa Paskin. It was produced and edited by Benjamin Frisch, who also created the episode art. Shasha Leonárd provided production assistance, and Danielle Hewitt helped us fact check the episode. Decoder Ring is also produced by Katie Shepherd, Max Freedman, and Evan Chung, our supervising producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.
If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com or leave a message on our hotline at (347) 460-7281.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, it's Willa. We have an episode for you today that in the scheme of decodering episodes is old. |
| 0:06.1 | It's the second episode we ever made all the way back in 2018. But in the last few months, it's felt oddly relevant, and we wanted to play it for you. |
| 0:15.2 | The episode itself is about fans of Sherlock Holmes and particularly fans of the British TV series Sherlock. |
| 0:21.7 | Sherlock aired from 2010 to 2017 and starred Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes and Martin Freeman as Dr. Watson. |
| 0:29.9 | Sherlock, the TV show, is actually pretty delightful. |
| 0:32.6 | But as you'll hear, the fandom around it got very dark, thanks to a subset of viewers who believed in a theory called |
| 0:39.7 | the John Locke conspiracy. And though that fan theory is now a decade old, like I said, it's been |
| 0:47.2 | resonating lately. Like a lot, actually. The first time it came up was with heated rivalry Rivalry. Heated Rivalry is the surprise, |
| 0:56.9 | massive hit TV show that premiered at the end of 2025 on HBO in America and on Crave in Canada. |
| 1:03.8 | It's about two-star hockey players who secretly start having sex and then fall in love. |
| 1:08.0 | And though it is based on a series of romance novels, |
| 1:13.3 | I think it's fair to say those novels themselves are based on a certain genre of fan fiction |
| 1:15.9 | that has been extraordinarily popular |
| 1:18.5 | since at least the days of Star Trek. |
| 1:21.2 | It's called slash fiction, |
| 1:22.7 | and it's when fans queer the text of a TV show or a movie or a book |
| 1:26.7 | by taking what is subtextual sexual |
| 1:29.5 | tension between characters and making it explicit. Heated rivalry is like if that genre of |
| 1:36.2 | fan fiction stopped being fan fiction and was just the show itself. And that is pretty much |
| 1:42.7 | exactly what a cohort of fans around Sherlock really wanted |
| 1:46.9 | to happen with Sherlock and actually thought was happening with Sherlock. So in short, there's a |
| 1:53.4 | connection between heated rivalry and Sherlock, and there's also a connection between Sherlock |
... |
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