SPOILER WARNING: The following article goes deep into spoiler territory for Enola Holmes 2. If you have not yet seen the film, proceed at your own risk!
Just when pop culture seemed to have its fill of new versions of the Sherlock Holmes mythos, along came Enola. It late 2020, Harry Bradbeer’s Enola Holmes arrived on Netflix, and it proved to be an utter delight that provided audiences with a fresh take from the universe of the World’s Greatest Detective. It didn’t take long for a sequel to move into development, and now the critically-acclaimed Enola Holmes 2 is here – featuring a brand new mystery and quite the killer ending.
The movie finds the titular detective searching for a young woman named Sarah Chapman who works at a matchstick factory and has gone missing, and it leads her to discover a vast and deadly conspiracy. So how is the case resolved in Enola Holmes 2’s ending, and what does it mean for the future? I break it all down below.
How The Case Is Solved At The End Of Enola Holmes 2
The beginning of the end in Enola Holmes 2 comes as Enola (Millie Bobby Brown), Sherlock (Henry Cavill) and Tewkesbury (Louis Partridge) figure out the code in the mysterious sheet music and discover that it is referencing the balcony seats at The Paragon theater. While up there, they discover the evidence collected by Sarah (Hannah Dodd), William (Gabriel Tierney) and Mae (Abbie Hern) connecting the deaths of match girls to their employer changing the type of phosphorus that is used in matchstick production. Sarah comes out of the shadows, and while Tewkesbury promises to use his position to help her, she learns the sad news that William has been killed.
Superintendent Grail (David Thewlis) arrives with his pair of corrupt cops holding Bessie (Serrana Su-Ling Bliss) at knife point, and demands that Enola hand over the evidence – but Bessie bites his hand and gets away. Chaos erupts as the villains fight and chase the heroes, and eventually Enola escapes to the rafters above the stage. When it looks like Grail has her pinned down and is going to kill her, she rolls to freedom and uses a sandbag on a pulley system to evade her would-be murderer. His head is smashed against a wooden beam and his body crashes down to the stage below.
Inspector Lestrade (Adeel Akhtar) arrives with Lord McIntyre (Tim McMullan), who reveals he was told to come to the theater by Sherlock and wishes to have Sarah arrested. Sherlock, however, explains that he invited McIntyre as a means of drawing out Moriarty, the criminal at the center of the massive extortion plot that has stumped him. He has successfully deduced that Moriarty is Mira Troy (Sharon Duncan-Brewster), McIntyre’s personal secretary, who has turned to crime as a means of expressing her genius in a world that always denies her opportunities because she is a woman.
When Moriarty is arrested, McIntyre burns the evidence, and for a moment all seems lost… but Enola, Sarah, and Bessie refuse to give up fighting. At the match factory, Sarah leads a walkout and a strike, and Tewkesbury uses his position of influence to have McIntyre investigated and arrested.
Enola plans to restart her detective agency with a “pay what you can” policy, and she rejects Sherlock’s offer to form a partnership, fearing that working with him would mean permanently being in his shadow. She does like the idea of her brother being more open to friendship, however – which pays off in a mid-credits sequence that sees Sherlock meet Dr. John Watson (Himesh Patel). While Enola goes for a lovely stroll with Tewkesbury outside, Sherlock reads in a newspaper that Moriarty has successfully managed to escape from police custody.
How Enola Holmes 2 Sets Up The Future
In Enola Holmes 2, the mystery of Sarah Chapman’s disappearance is the film’s primary narrative thread, and Sherlock’s hunt for Moriarty is more of a B plot… but it feels like it is safe to say that focus won’t stay the same for the next sequel (which hasn’t been given the green light yet, but feels like a guarantee). Now that Mira Troy – an anagram of Moriarty – has been introduced, the door is wide open for her to be the primary antagonist in the next story.
While we obviously have no idea what Moriarty will be getting up to in the next chapter of this series, one thing we can keep our fingers crossed for is that the movie leans into everything that makes Sharon Duncan-Brewster’s version of the character different from previous interpretations. The fact that she is a black woman in 19th century England very much changes the way that the audience looks at her as an egomaniacal psychopath, and that challenging perspective will hopefully end of being highlighted in the mystery.
One can also expect that the introduction of Dr. Watson into this canon will have an impact on the relationship between Enola and Sherlock in Enola Holmes 3. The two detectives make sharp partners in this movie, but Sherlock’s budding friendship with his new flatmate will almost certainly change his professional relationship with his sister. Perhaps it will lead to Enola finding a Dr. Watson of her own?
Even if Enola doesn’t find an investigative partner to work with, she does have her relationship with Lord Tewkesbury. The two young adults declare their true affection for each other in Enola Holmes 2, and surely that romance will only progress in the next story. Depending on how long it takes for the next movie to get made (Millie Bobby Brown has a rather full plate at the moment, including Stranger Things Season 5), their lives together could be very different by the time we catch up with them in the next sequel.
Stay tuned for the latest updates on an Enola Holmes 3 here on CinemaBlend, and for now you can watch Enola Holmes and Enola Holmes 2 on repeat provided you have a Netflix subscription. Read our 2022 Netflix Movie Release Calendar to discover all of the new films set for release in what remains of the year, and find your next series to obsess over in our Best Shows On Netflix feature.
