Netflix’s Enola Holmes 3 loses some steam but never loses its charm

📺 Netflix’s Victorian detective is back — and she’s brought a wedding invitation. Enola Holmes 3, directed by Philip Barantini (Adolescence) and written by Jack Thorne, is the third installment in the franchise starring Millie Bobby Brown as Sherlock Holmes’s equally sharp younger sister. Henry Cavill, Louis Partridge, Helena Bonham Carter, and Himesh Patel all return, with Sharon Duncan-Brewster joining as the villain Moriarty.

The plot: Enola is in Malta, on the verge of marrying her longtime love interest Lord Tewkesbury (Partridge), when Dr. Watson (Patel) arrives with alarming news: Sherlock (Cavill) has been kidnapped. With wedding plans shelved, Enola is plunged into her most personal case yet — one that involves chase scenes through Maltese markets, murders, and a long-buried colonial secret that someone very powerful would prefer stayed buried.

What we liked… and didn’t: The film is fun, fast-paced, and colorful. Brown remains enormously watchable, and the performances across the board are hard to fault. The film also tackles colonial history with more ambition than you might expect from a PG-13 Netflix production. That said, the plot doesn’t always hold together — much story is crammed into a running time shorter than its predecessors. Reviews seem to agree, with the film scoring a disappointing 5.8/10 on IMDB.

The verdict: Enola Holmes 3 is the weakest of the trilogy, but weakness is relative. Go in with reasonable expectations and you’ll have a perfectly enjoyable watch. The franchise may be fading — but Brown isn’t.

WHERE TO WATCH- Enola Holmes 3 is streaming on Netflix. Watch the trailer on YouTube (watch, runtime: 2:21).