Enola Holmes has spent two films proving she does not need anyone’s permission to be brilliant, so it is a little funny that her third outing opens with her nearly being late to her own wedding. Enola Holmes 3 hands the reins to Philip Barantini, the Adolescence director, and swaps foggy London streets for the sun-bleached stone of Malta. The results are handsome to look at and oddly tired to sit through.
A Bride With Cold Feet and a Brother Who Vanishes
The film wastes no time setting its hooks. A shadowy prisoner gets pulled from his cell by a stranger asking if the name Tewkesbury means anything to him, and then we cut straight to the actual wedding day, with Tewkesbury sweating it out at the altar while Enola sits at home in her dress, spiraling about whether marrying into nobility erases everything she built for herself.
That internal conflict is genuinely the film’s strongest thread. Millie Bobby Brown sells Enola’s panic without making her look weak, and her fourth-wall asides still land more often than not. But the mystery machine kicks in fast. Watson shows up mid-crisis to reveal Sherlock has been kidnapped, and just like that, the wedding gets shelved for a treasure hunt.
Malta Looks Gorgeous, the Plot Less So
Once the film relocates fully to Malta, it leans hard into colonial history, military cover-ups, and a stash of Afghan gold that Tewkesbury’s late father apparently sank rather than hand over to corrupt officers. It is a heavier, more political angle than the earlier films dared to touch, and there is something admirable about a Netflix franchise picture willing to sit with the ugliness of empire rather than skate past it.
The problem is pacing. Scenes meant to feel tense, like the engagement dinner where Brigadier Sampson humiliates Enola in his toast, or the blowup between Enola and Sherlock over her choosing a title over her surname, land with all the urgency of a Wikipedia summary. Even the reveal that Moriarty has been operating under the alias Professor Adeline Rathe this whole time arrives with a shrug rather than a gasp, mostly because the film has already tipped its hand well before the twist.
Sharon Duncan Brewster is clearly having fun chewing through Moriarty’s monologues, and the sequence where she needles a chained-up Sherlock about his mother’s hypocrisy is one of the sharper bits of writing here. It is a shame the film surrounds her with so much narrative padding, including a swimming scene between Enola and Tewkesbury that exists mostly to remind you they are in love, and a cave heist for the gold that plays out with surprisingly little tension for something billed as the franchise’s darkest chapter yet.
The Ending Tries to Have It Both Ways
Where the film earns its keep is in the climax. Sherlock getting Moriarty at gunpoint and genuinely considering pulling the trigger, only to be talked down by Enola, insisting that Holmes solve cases instead of settling scores, is the rare moment when the stakes feel personal rather than procedural. Tewkesbury renouncing his title so Enola can keep her name is a sweet enough button, and the smaller, quieter second wedding suits the character better than the lavish one the film spent an hour building toward.
Enola Holmes 3 is not a disaster. It looks stunning, Brown remains an easy reason to keep watching, and the gold heist plot at least tries to say something about who the Empire actually robs. But the spark that made the first two films so much fun to sit through is running low here, replaced by a solemnity the franchise never quite earns. Fans will still show up for the wedding. They just might leave wishing it had moved faster to the vows.
Enola Holmes 3 is now streaming on Netflix.
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