Millie Bobby Brown in Enola Holmes 3. Photograph: Netflix Inc./PA View image in fullscreen Millie Bobby Brown in Enola Holmes 3. Photograph: Netflix Inc./PA Film Review Enola Holmes 3 review – Netflix mystery franchise is starting to lose steam Millie Bobby Brown returns, along with the creative team behind Adolescence, for an often thoughtful yet ultimately lesser threequel
Benjamin Lee Wed 1 Jul 2026 01.00 CEST Last modified on Wed 1 Jul 2026 03.49 CEST Share Prefer the Guardian on Google D espite the ever-increasing size and dominance of Netflix , the streamer has continued to struggle with its most obvious aim. While viewers might flock there for smooth-brained dating shows, tawdry true crime, Harlan Coben thrillers and junky romcoms, the platform is yet to be known for creating original movie franchises, the bread and butter of most old-fashioned Hollywood studios, for better or worse.
Read more The problem Netflix often faces is that to turn a big-budget bet into a cultural event, it requires more than a low-stakes click at home and a brief weekend’s worth of chatter. Big numbers might have met wannabe franchise-starters Red Notice and The Grey Man but a lack of real long-term interest has meant that sequels haven’t followed, while its most expensive film ever, Chris Pratt vehicle The Electric State, sank with both audiences and critics. It’s why the success of last year’s KPop Demon Hunters, a genuine all-consuming juggernaut, was such an important win, even if the film technically started its life at Sony. A sequel is, of course, coming although there always felt like something a little accidental about the first film’s transformation into pop culture phenomenon, as if no one quite knew just what they had on their hands.
Enola Holmes was another film made elsewhere – this time, at Warners – and one of the many theatrical propositions sold to a streamer during the pandemic (a similar route saw Fox’s Fear Street trilogy become, for me, the platform’s greatest film series yet). Netflix has proved to be sturdy caretakers of Enola, delivering a sequel that was arguably slightly better than the first , and the inevitable third film (the second was another unqualified smash) continues along the same route with returning names in front of and behind the camera. But the journey is already starting to grow a little tiring, more of the same providing markedly less of what worked in the first place.
What had worked was a mixture of sprightly energy, engaging-enough mystery and some admirably well-handled history and life lessons for its younger female audience. There are intermittently successful bits of all three again but not enough of any to make this one glide in quite the same way, a safely passable franchise perhaps reaching premature exhaustion. British playwright Jack Thorne returns as screenwriter, fresh off his Adolescence success, and brings that show’s director, Philip Barantini, with him, taking over from Fleabag’s Harry Bradbeer. Anyone hoping for Enola to take on the dangers of toxic masculinity or for the film to be one uninterrupted take shall remain disappointed, however, Barantini proving to be a safe yet rather anonymous pair of hands.
It’s time for Enola (Millie Bobby Brown, once again looking a bit too much like someone who uses Instagram to convince as a Victorian 20-year-old) to get married to her slightly drippy beau, Tewkesbury (Louis Partridge). But their wedding, taking place on the island of Malta, is throw…