Sherlock Holmes' (Jonny Lee Miller) own father Morland (John Noble) took over the leadership of Jamie Moriarty's (Natalie Dormer) treacherous criminal organization in order to protect him and his partner Joan Watson (Lucy Liu) in the final episode of "Elementary" season 4.

Morland accepted Professor Joshua Vikner's (Tony Curran) proposal to lead their organization in exchange for his son's safety. But Morland had other plans, including the killing of Moriarty's former lover.

Executive producer Rob Doherty talked about the repercussions of Morland's intentions,and how they will affect Sherlock and Watson in the future.

According to Doherty, Morland is really sincere with his intentions of protecting Sherlock and Watson but he has an underlying reason for doing it.

"He expresses to Sherlock in their last scene together that he doesn't think people like them are meant to have family ties or friendships or partnerships, that it's inevitable these things will go poorly because they are who they are," the executive producer told TVLine. "He's disappearing back into the shadows, he's cutting his meaningful ties and will probably live out his days just trying to take apart this group."

It was previously reported by the publication that Noble will not return as a series regular in season 5, which means that his act toward the end of season 4 could pave the way to his eventual departure from the show.

Doherty said that they originally planned to center on Noble's character in season 4 to set up a lot of story arcs for the series.

"I feel like we told the one long story we wanted to, but we [also] got to tell a lot of smaller stories about Sherlock and his father, and then Morland trying to develop a relationship with Joan. We feel like we did everything we set out to do," he stated.

But it does not mean that Noble will be out of the show completely.