Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | Film | July 7, 2026
The first Enola Holmes, directed by Fleabag’s Harry Bradbeer, was an absolute delight, and it helped make Millie Bobby Brown a Netflix star outside of the Stranger Things universe. The second Enola Holmes — again from Bradbeer — was not quite as good, but it remained watchable. The third one? Barely watchable trash.
The third installment comes from Philip Barantini — who did clearly superior work on Adolescence but is woefully out of his league trying to replicate Guy Ritchie’s style — and once again from writer Jack Thorne, with whom most of the fault lies. The first Enola Holmes cobbled together stories from Nancy Springer’s The Enola Holmes Mysteries, but this one is of Thorne’s own making. Thorne can write good shows! (Adolescence, Toxic Town, Lord of the Flies.) He did not write a good third Enola Holmes film. The cutesy flourishes that provided specks of wit in the first film completely dominate the third, which is otherwise a series of tedious exposition dumps and annoying fourth-wall breaks.
Props for centering the story on British colonialism (here, specifically, on the island of Malta), but that only gets you so far. You also need a compelling story and, crucially in the Sherlock Holmes universe, a decent flipping mystery — something that audiences could theoretically solve themselves, instead of a couple of random words and a cipher that inevitably lead to the painfully anticlimactic reappearance of Sharon Duncan-Brewster’s charmless Moriarty.
The story, such as it is: When the movie opens, Enola (Millie Bobby Brown) is late for her wedding (in Malta) to Tewkesbury (Louis Partridge) because she’s having cold feet, basically over giving up the Holmes name. Before she can make it to the ceremony, Dr. Watson (Himesh Patel) arrives with the news that Enola’s brother, Sherlock (Henry Cavill), has gone missing. Enola skips the wedding to begin her investigation; Tewkesbury’s mother is subsequently taken; and Enola is tasked with finding them both with the aid of Tewkesbury and Dr. Watson.
That involves following a series of painfully random clues, which eventually leads Enola to Moriarty and some barely coherent story about the British stealing gold from Malta during a war. There are also a few mostly lifeless action sequences, some obligatory appearances from Cavill’s dull Sherlock, and a lot of Millie Bobby Brown overacting.
It’s all very tired and tiresome. The streaming franchise’s sense of fun has faded, the script is barely serviceable, and even Helena Bonham Carter can’t bring much life to the proceedings. It’s just a bad movie coasting on the goodwill of mostly the first film, which at this point feels like it’s practically from a different franchise.
