In the Enola Holmes franchise, a plucky young detective investigates disappearances, murder plots, blackmail schemes, and conspiracies, all while exposing complex truths about the historical period she inhabits. That’s a lot to accomplish, but if anyone’s up for the job, it’s Enola (Millie Bobby Brown).
“I’m fascinated by the so-called Golden Age of Britain,” Jack Thorne, the English writer and producer behind the franchise, tells Tudum. And, early in the process of adapting the source material — Nancy Springer’s The Enola Holmes Mysteries, set in Victorian-era England — he realized Enola’s various adventures could serve as a “really good way of getting inside that history.”
While the first two movies focus on specific issues of the day, including land reform, voting rights, and the birth of labor unions, Enola Holmes 3, which is now streaming on Netflix, zooms out to explore colonialism and the very foundation of the British Empire.
When it comes to the history of Malta — a British colony throughout the 19th century — yes. “Malta’s a really interesting country,” Thorne says. As the headquarters of the British Mediterranean Fleet for well over a century, beginning in the 1800s, Malta served as what Thorne calls a “gateway to the rest of the world.” In this particular story, it’s also a gateway to the “damage that the British Army did to that world.”
With the latest installment of the franchise, Thorne set out to “get inside the cause of Maltese independence.” To do that, he first needed to make sure he was painting an accurate picture of 1800s Malta, consulting experts and working closely with a researcher. “Together, we tried to uncover as much detail as possible.”
Embedded among scenes celebrating Malta’s beauty and cultural history are moments that remind viewers the country was still under the shadow of colonialism. We meet Mikiel Mizzi (Joe Azzopardi) of the Partito Anti-Riformista, a group fighting for a free Malta. “We wish to be rid of your crown, of your destruction, of your need to control a country of which you know nothing about,” he tells a shocked Enola. And we witness the British governor reprimanding a Maltese police sergeant for questioning Enola after she’s spotted at the scene of a crime. “Enola Holmes is English. She is your better,” he says, again to the young detective’s surprise. But the global harm caused by the British Empire is most clearly exposed through the Battle of Khost, a fictionalized armed conflict Thorne wrote into the story’s central mystery.
When Enola discovers that Sherlock (Henry Cavill) has been kidnapped, she and Dr. Watson (Himesh Patel) notice the word “Khost” scrawled in Morse code across the mirror in her brother’s ransacked hotel room. Both are aware that Khost is a city in Afghanistan, and eventually, by examining a military medal that once belonged to Tewkesbury’s (Louis Partridge) father, Enola pieces together that the Battle of Khost, which unfolded during the 1800s Anglo-Afghan Wars (the countries fought three times between 1839 and 1919), may have a connection to Sherlock’s disappearance.
Unlike in Enola Holmes 2, which tells the true story of the match girls — a group of women and girls who fought for humane working conditions — this battle was only inspired by historical events. “We based it upon part of the Anglo-Afghan wars, when [Britain] attacked Kabul and the Bala Hissar fortress fell,” says Thorne. According to his research, British prize agents plundered Afghanistan’s capital city, and “soldiers got rich off” the operation.
While Enola Holmes 3 was written around true events, it was important to Thorne that they not pull directly from history out of respect for those impacted. “The Match Girls Society was delighted that we highlighted them and that it led to people looking into them,” Thorne explains. He wanted to ignite a similar curiosity about British colonialism, but approached it differently. “We fictionalized the story because we felt like if we dealt with the real stealing of national treasures by the British army, then we might cause hurt, and we didn’t want to do that.”
In search of more details about the battle, Tewkesbury pays a visit to Brigadier Sampson (Jason Watkins), who fought in Khost alongside Tewkesbury’s father, while Enola breaks into the records room inside the British military headquarters. After knocking out a soldier, locating damaged files, and successfully restoring them, she comes to understand what really happened during the Battle of Khost.
The death toll, it turns out, was incalculable, and the British Armed Forces returned to Malta with one ton of Afghan gold. While the Empire classified this as “advanced reparations,” locals labeled it cleansing and theft.
When Enola confronts Brigadier Sampson about her suspicions, he finally cracks and reveals more details about the operation. “The British government and the armed forces were at loggerheads, and we were under pressure to reduce costs. But there was no way of reducing costs — this was war. So the decision was made to right matters,” he explains. “It’s established practice after war, for our cost and our loss.”
As Brigadier Sampson explains, Tewkesbury’s father, who led the operation, experienced a “crisis of consciousness.” But instead of returning the gold to Afghanistan, he sank the ship, claimed the stolen riches went down with it, and then blamed the Maltese soldiers for the incident.
After they learn of this horrendous reality, Watson opens up to an understandably distraught Tewkesbury about similar atrocities that his own family was involved in.
In an emotional reveal, Watson tells Tewkesbury, “My father was a soldier as well — a loyal servant of the British Raj. He loved the crown, believed in its right to rule India, and I thought he was right to do so. I was a child, and he was my hero.” Watson shares that it wasn’t until he served as a medic in the British Army as it attempted to colonize the Ashanti Empire in West Africa that he realized the atrocities the crown was capable of.
Patel — who happens to be one of Thorne’s favorite actors — came on as Watson well before Enola Holmes 3 was ever written, but his identity and input helped shape this portion of the story. “The fact that an Indian man was cast as Watson became significant,” he explains. “If we’re going to look at Britain’s relationship with the world, then where Watson stands on that becomes very interesting.”
Every historical reference made in that impactful conversation with Tewkesbury is real. “We made sure we got the facts right there,” Thorne says. “And the fact that Watson is kind to Tewkesbury at that moment is really, really important and speaks to the goodness of the man. He’s beautiful, and Himesh plays him beautifully.”
Finding out about the “ill-begotten riches” eventually leads Enola to Moriarty (Sharon Duncan-Brewster), the person who kidnapped her brother and is set on stealing the gold for herself. Once she is apprehended, the treasure and its origin are revealed, setting the wheels of change in motion for the nation. “Moriarty’s actions exposed a great wrong,” Mizzi says to the brigadier before arresting him for his involvement in crimes on Maltese soil. “The time may have even come for Malta to be free of the British.”
As Enola Holmes 3 ends, Malta’s push for independence is just beginning, but Thorne is sure to point out that Enola, Tewkesbury, and Watson are merely witnesses to this great chapter of history. It would take another hundred years and countless unnamed, real-life heroes to declare independence from Britain. “Enola is not the hero that saves Malta,” Thorne says. “We are not suggesting that she’s somehow the answer to the Maltese finding their way. What we are looking at is the complication of empire and how that empire was resolved.”
