Everything You Need to Remember Before ‘Enola Holmes 3’ Arrives on Netflix

With Millie Bobby Brown’s scrappiest Victorian sleuth returning to Netflix on July 1, now is the perfect time to revisit how she got here. ‘Enola Holmes 3’ is directed by Philip Barantini, making it the first film in the series not helmed by Harry Bradbeer, and it takes the young detective beyond London’s fog-draped streets to the island nation of Malta. Before the stakes get any higher, there is a lot of ground to cover.

Two films deep into this franchise, the ‘Enola Holmes‘ series has quietly built one of Netflix’s most beloved female-led adventure universes. The first movie was featured in Netflix’s list of most-watched movies of all time, clocking 189.90 million hours watched in the first 28 days, while the second movie picked up 158.03 million hours watched across four weeks in the global top 10. Those numbers do not lie, and with the threequel days away, here is your essential refresher.

Enola Holmes Recap and the Case That Started It All

‘Enola Holmes’ is a 2020 mystery film starring Millie Bobby Brown as the title character, the teenage sister of the already famous Victorian-era detective Sherlock Holmes. The film is directed by Harry Bradbeer from a screenplay by Jack Thorne that adapts the first novel in The Enola Holmes Mysteries series by Nancy Springer. It arrived on Netflix in September 2020 after its theatrical plans were derailed, and it immediately found an enormous audience.

England, 1884, a world on the brink of change. On the morning of her 16th birthday, Enola Holmes wakes to find that her mother Eudoria has disappeared, leaving behind an odd assortment of gifts but no apparent clue as to where she’s gone or why. After a free-spirited childhood, Enola suddenly finds herself under the care of her brothers Sherlock and Mycroft, both set on sending her away to a finishing school for proper young ladies.

The secondary case in ‘Enola Holmes’ is that of Viscount Lord Tewkesbury, whom Enola meets while escaping on a train at the beginning of the film. When they first cross paths, Lord Tewkesbury is on the run from his family, but also from an assassin who has tracked him to the train. What seems like an inconvenient detour ends up being the heart of the entire film.

The Dowager emerges with a rifle, revealing herself as the mastermind behind the assassination plot. She had ordered her own son’s murder and fires at Tewkesbury so that he would not vote for the Reform Bill. Tewkesbury survives, having been wearing a chest plate, and the Dowager is exposed for her villainy. Enola closes out the film having secured her independence in London, with Sherlock agreeing to take over as her legal guardian and her detective ambitions firmly set in motion.

The Missing Mother Mystery and What Eudoria Was Really Doing

Enola’s mother Eudoria is a radical in the cause of women’s suffrage, and plotted with another group of like-minded women to use violence to push their goals. Eudoria also wants to create a better, fairer world for her daughter. Her disappearance is not a tragedy but a deliberate choice rooted in political conviction.

Thanks to the reward money for finding the Marquess, as well as the money left for her by Eudoria, Enola is well set up to establish an independent life in London. Her older brothers, Sherlock and Mycroft, even agree that Sherlock will take over as her guardian if they find her again. It is a bittersweet resolution that trades family reunion for hard-won freedom.

The breaking-the-fourth-wall narration style, where Enola talks directly to the audience, was inspired by ‘Fleabag’, also directed by Harry Bradbeer. Henry Cavill’s Sherlock is intentionally warmer and more empathetic than traditional portrayals, giving a new dynamic to the Holmes legend. These tonal choices are what set this franchise apart from every other Holmes adaptation, giving it a freshness that kept fans hungry for more.

The Matchgirls Strike Case in ‘Enola Holmes 2’

Unlike the film’s predecessor, ‘Enola Holmes 2′ does not adapt one of Springer’s novels and instead takes real-life inspiration from the matchgirls’ strike. In addition to Brown and Cavill, Louis Partridge, Susie Wokoma, Adeel Akhtar, and Helena Bonham Carter reprise their supporting roles while David Thewlis and Sharon Duncan-Brewster join the cast. The sequel raised the stakes by grounding its mystery in genuine Victorian-era injustice.

At the start, Enola opens her own detective agency after solving her first major case in the previous film. But being young and female in Victorian London, she struggles to attract clients. Just as she’s about to give up, a matchstick girl approaches her for help: her sister Sarah Chapman has gone missing. This request propels Enola into a far bigger conspiracy than she ever imagined.

Sarah, Mae, and William wanted to expose the owners of the Lyon factory and the people who profited at the cost of young girls’ deaths. Sarah shares that she stole the papers from the register in the factory office, as it mentioned 100 names of the girls who died due to the use of cheap phosphorus. Sherlock’s own parallel investigation into financial fraud turns out to be directly connected to the same corrupt network, forcing the siblings to finally work together.

Enola pieces together that a noblewoman she met at the ball, Cicely, is actually Sarah. As Enola puts the pieces together with Tewkesbury, the two of them have a romantic moment where they confess their love. The emotional payoff between Enola and Tewkesbury lands just as hard as the mystery’s resolution.

What the ‘Enola Holmes 2’ Ending Sets Up for the Threequel

There is a mid-credits scene introducing Dr. John Watson to Sherlock Holmes, teasing the beginning of the classic Holmes-Watson partnership. For any fan of the source material, that moment lands like a promise, and it is one the third film is clearly ready to deliver on.

Narratively, ‘Enola Holmes 3’ looks set to pick up from the second film’s new status quo: Enola running a London office, Sherlock sharing digs with Watson, and Moriarty at large somewhere in the world. Sharon Duncan-Brewster’s Moriarty, revealed through an anagram of her character’s name Mira Troy, escaped the events of the sequel with her plans intact and is confirmed to be returning.

The latest installment in the adventures of the young detective sees her tackling another mystery this time on the island nation of Malta. As Enola heads to the altar to wed Lord Tewkesbury, she learns the distressing news that Sherlock has been kidnapped. The gumshoe is immediately on the case, all while grappling with her complicated feelings around marriage. The trailer even teases the tagline, “It will take a Holmes to save a Holmes.”

According to Deadline, director Philip Barantini’s pitch for the third film was darker in tone, explaining that the third installment would do “for the franchise what ‘Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban’ did for the ‘Harry Potter’ series.” That is an ambitious benchmark, and if the previous two films proved anything, it is that Enola Holmes rarely disappoints when the pressure is on. Whether you are rooting for the wedding, dreading Moriarty’s next move, or simply desperate to see Sherlock rescued by the sibling he once underestimated, share your predictions for ‘Enola Holmes 3’ in the comments.