Enola Holmes 3 Teases An Even Zanier Mystery

There are guilty pleasures, and then there’s the Enola Holmes franchise. The Netflix films, adapted from the Nancy Springer novels that gave the famous Sherlock a plucky teen sister, are designed for a younger audience in every way. Their mysteries are not nearly so sophisticated as those one might expect after watching literally any other live-action Sherlock story, and they lean more on the teen angst and romance, too. But there’s also something perversely freeing about its scope. Sometimes you just need to kick back and watch Millie Bobby Brown get herself into increasingly perilous, Victorian-era hijinks, navigating her own version of Arthur Conan Doyle’s universe (Moriarty is an evil woman here!) while cheekily breaking the fourth wall.

With Enola Holmes and a handful of other Netflix Originals, Brown has become the mistress of her own niche: if she wants to wile away her days in fun-but-forgettable actioners, more power to her. Because the Enola Holmes movies, if nothing else, are oodles of fun — and after four years, the franchise is poised to crank that dial to even zanier levels.

Enola Holmes 3 puts that aforementioned romance center stage, taking Enola’s relationship with the well-meaning Lord Tewkesbury (Louis Partridge) to the next level. When Tewkesbury proposes, our self-sufficient heroine must grapple with what that’ll mean to her personhood. Can she still be a Holmes with a new, nebbish surname? Will she still be able to solve miscellaneous mysteries with her new responsibilities as a viscountess?

She may not have to find out. Just as she’s heading to her wedding, Enola is intercepted by Dr. John Watson (Himesh Patel), who informs her that her big brother Sherlock (Henry Cavill) has been — gasp! — kidnapped. How anyone could get one over on the greatest living detective is part of what makes this case too tempting to pass up: after all, Enola has been (lovingly) duped by another family member before. She was tasked with locating her missing mother (Helena Bonham Carter) as a rite of passage in the first Enola Holmes, and there’s a chance that Sherlock’s disappearance is a similar test of her competence.

Then again, Sherlock could also be in actual danger. The sleuth’s greatest adversary, Moriarty (Sharon Duncan-Brewster), was first introduced at the very end of Enola Holmes 2, teeing up the kind of rivalry that will leave only destruction in its wake. Enola will have to lean on both Tewkesbury and Watson — and surely a few other new allies — to find her brother, and it could be her most dangerous mission yet. We shouldn’t expect the mystery to break new ground, but if Enola Holmes 3 is even half as wild as its predecessors, we’re in for a treat either way.

Enola Holmes 3 hits Netflix on July 1.