Enola Holmes 3 review: A sunlit mystery that forgets its own spark

The game, it seems, has gone a bit soft around the edges. When Netflix first introduced Enola Holmes back in 2020, it felt like someone had kicked open the dusty doors of Victorian detective fiction and let in a gust of Gen Z chaos. Actor Millie Bobby Brown made Enola less of a sidekick, more of a storm system - breaking the fourth wall, rewriting the rules, and generally treating Baker Street like her personal playground.

Now, with the third outing, the franchise trades foggy London grit for Mediterranean gloss. And while the shift to Malta is undeniably cinematic, it also exposes a problem: Shine cannot substitute for substance forever.

Destination mystery that looks expensive, but feels stretched thin

The film opens like a society-page fantasy. Enola is preparing for a high-profile wedding with Lord Tewkesbury, played by Louis Partridge, whose perpetual wide-eyed sincerity still works like a charm. Think Bridgerton meets Sherlock, with just enough charm to keep things interesting.

Watch the trailer here:

But the romance barely has time to breathe before the plot detonates. Enter Dr Watson with urgent news: Sherlock Holmes has vanished. That’s your hook and your obligation to keep watching.

The problem is that what follows tries to juggle too many genres at once. There’s espionage, political intrigue, family drama, and the looming presence of Moriarty, the franchise’s favourite ghost in the machine. Moriarty looms large again, but more as narrative seasoning than a fully realised threat.

And somewhere in the middle of all this, Sherlock himself (still played by Henry Cavill) gets stranded in what can only be described as narrative limbo. Present enough to matter, absent enough to feel like a contractual obligation.

Malta looks like a dream. The story, less so

There’s no denying it: Malta does heavy lifting here. Golden-hour cinematography, cliff-side chases, and sun-bleached architecture give the film a glossy, postcard-perfect aesthetic. It’s the kind of backdrop that would make even a standard procedural feel like a prestige drama.

But visuals can only carry a mystery so far. Where the earlier films thrived on bite-sized puzzles and street-level deduction, this instalment swells into something more unwieldy. The result is a narrative that feels less like deduction and more like endurance.

Enola’s signature fourth-wall breaks (once sharp, witty, and disruptive) start to feel like a habit rather than a device. It’s giving Deadpool-lite energy, but without the same self-awareness or bite.

And that’s the core issue: The film knows it wants to grow up, but it hasn’t quite decided what it wants to grow into.

Directed once again by Harry Bradbeer, the film never collapses into chaos, it’s too well-made for that. But it does lose the tight, scrappy identity that made the original instalment feel like a small revolution in a corseted genre.

Enola Holmes 3 is, at best, a glossy in-between chapter. The kind of sequel you watch on a Sunday afternoon while half-scrolling through your phone and still feel like you've mostly kept up.

There is entertainment here, certainly. But not the electric unpredictability that once made Enola feel like she might actually out-think the entire Victorian establishment. Instead, she is now caught in something far more modern and far less interesting: Franchise drift. The mystery isn’t just what happened to Sherlock. It’s what happened to the edge.

Enola Holmes 3 is streaming on Netflix.