It has been over a year since new episodes of Endeavour graced our screens and if you're anything like us, you're dying to know what the next season holds for our favourite TV detective.
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However, it seems that fans have kept themselves entertained by re-watching previous seasons of the drama, and for one viewer, this has led them to form quite an interesting theory about where certain characters could end up.
Writing on an Endeavour fan page on Facebook, they speculated: "I'm thinking Joan Thursday is going to become Mrs Jim Strange. Just a feeling I've had for a while!"
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Other fans were quick to respond to the theory. "We had that feeling too, something in the show just made us think it would happen, to be honest," one replied. Another suggested that a potential romance between the pair has perhaps been hinted at by the show's writers, pointing out: "Strange does call her 'Joanie'".
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"If she did, it would provide an easy transition to the original Morse series," a fourth viewer theorised. "We would understand why she and Endeavour were not an item anymore and in the Inspector Morse series, we don't know anything about Jim Strange's wife."
Throughout the show's previous seasons, Shaun Evans' Endeavour and Joan, played by Sara Vickers, have had something of an on-and-off romance. In season four, the detective even got down on one knee and proposed. Joan sadly turned him down, and fans of the original Inspector Morse series will know that the detective lives out his older days as a single man.
© Photo: RexCould Joan end up marrying Jim Strange?
Shaun has previously opened up about how the show has approached his character's eternal bachelor status, which does seem to support the theory that Joan ends up marrying someone close to him.
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"What we meet in the Inspector Morse series, or indeed if you pick up the books, there's a guy who never ends up getting married, and is kind of the broken at the beginning, I think," he told the Radio Times. "So we have to have a bit of romance now in order to take us to that point. There has to be a sort of heartbreak thing. So I think just narratively there does need to be."
Whether the theory is correct or not, viewers can rest easy knowing that they haven't got much longer to wait until more episodes of the show hit screens. Creator Russell Lewis has revealed that if all goes to plan series eight - which is speculated to be the show's final run - will be out later in 2021.
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