Packed with suffragettes armed with Jiu Jitsu and bombs, Netflix’s new film Enola Holmes spins the historically misogynist Sherlock Holmes into a jovial (and surprisingly violent!) young Victorian feminist tale. Based on the YA series of the same name by Nancy Springer and directed by Fleabag director Harry Bradbeer, Enola Holmes follows the adventures of Sherlock’s younger sister, played by Millie Bobby Brown.
When Enola’s mother Eudoria (Helena Bonham Carter) mysteriously disappears from the countryside home where she and Enola live in seclusion, Enola’s elder brothers Sherlock (Henry Cavill) and Mycroft (Sam Claflin) return home to sort Enola out. But Enola, finding mysterious clues left by her mother, escapes to London instead to locate Eudoria and avoid being shipped off to finishing school to become a proper young lady. On the way she meets another young runaway, Lord Viscount Tewksbury (Louis Partridge), whose strange family circumstances tack another case onto Enola’s growing list of mysteries to solve. Both mysteries at the center of the film hinge upon the issue of women’s suffrage—Enola’s mother has disappeared to London to work more closely with her secret suffragette society leading up to the vote for a reform bill. The film ends after that very bill has passed, thanks to the vote of the young Marquess Lord Viscount Tewksbury, who owes his life to Enola after their chance encounter.
At the close of the movie, Enola is still alone in London, with plenty of promising routes for a potential sequel to take. In the film’s final scene, Enola evades her brothers one final time. Yet Sherlock states his desire to take his young sister on as his ward, leaving room for the talented sibling duo to join forces and solve mysteries together in a sequel. Eudoria Holmes is still at-large at the end of the film as well, unable to reunite with Enola. Her work with the suffragette society is not yet complete, which leaves the door open for Enola to continue looking for her mother and learn more about the feminist group’s mission in a future film. The movie’s end also teases a budding romance between Enola and Lord Tewksbury.
Millie Bobby Brown, who produced as well as starred in Enola Holmes, is all for a sequel. She told Entertainment Weekly that she is “optimistic about the future” and “so looking forward to [hopefully] getting back to work.” Brown also said that playing Enola “has been my favorite thing that I've ever done in my life. So to do it all over again would be a dream."
And with five more books in Springer's Enola series, there's plenty of more material for sequel movies. The second book in the series, The Case of the Left-Handed Lady, has Enola once again evading her famous brothers and solving the mystery of another disappearance. While Netflix has yet to announce a second film, given the rave reviews, and the early placement in the most-streamed content on the platform—we can hopefully count on seeing more of Enola's scrappy detective work.
Lauren Kranc is the assistant content strategy editor at Esquire, where she runs the brand’s social media accounts and covers pop culture and television, with entirely too narrow an expertise on true crime shows
