Millie Bobby Brown returns in Helena Bonham Carter’s Enola Holmes 3, and the film’s biggest story is not the wedding but the review’s verdict: this third installment is an often thoughtful yet ultimately lesser threequel. The franchise, once one of Netflix’s cleaner movie bets, is now being judged as if it is running short of gas.
Jack Thorne returns as screenwriter, while Philip Barantini takes over directing duties from Harry Bradbeer. Enola is getting married to her beau, Tewkesbury, in Malta, then learns that Sherlock has been kidnapped. Henry Cavill appears as Sherlock in glorified cameo mode, which keeps the film tied to the earlier entries even as the review argues the series is losing the energy that made it work.
Netflix and the sequel test
The review opens by saying “the streamer has continued to struggle with its most obvious aim,” a blunt line about Netflix and the harder business of building original movie franchises that last. The same review says the second Enola Holmes film was another unqualified smash, and that makes this third outing read less like a fresh launch than a test of how much attention the brand can still command.
That matters because the film is not being judged in isolation. The review places Enola Holmes alongside other Netflix titles that were meant to prove the same point on a bigger scale — Red Notice, The Grey Man, The Electric State, KPop Demon Hunters, and Fear Street — and the pattern is familiar: a strong first response does not automatically become a durable series. Netflix got a sequel that was arguably slightly better than the first Enola Holmes film; this time, the review sees less lift.
Malta, wedding, kidnapping
Enola’s wedding on Malta gives the film its clearest built-in stakes, but the plot immediately folds back into the mystery engine when Sherlock disappears. That structure keeps the series recognizable, yet it also shows how much the franchise now depends on moving the same parts around rather than expanding what they can do.
Henry Cavill’s glorified cameo mode fits that pattern too. It keeps Sherlock present without giving the part much room to reshape the movie, and the review’s complaint is less about any single scene than about the smaller, flatter payoff around the familiar formula.
Third film pressure
A 3rd film has less margin for repetition than a first sequel, and the review says this one delivers less of what worked before. Millie Bobby Brown still carries Enola, but the franchise now has to prove that her return can do more than preserve a title Netflix already knows how to market.
For viewers, the practical read is simple: Enola Holmes 3 arrives as a continuation, not a reset, and the review does not treat it as evidence that a fourth chapter is inevitable. The question hanging over the series is whether Netflix will keep spending on a mystery brand that is being described as thoughtful, passable, and already tiring at the same time.
