Who Is Enola Holmes? Millie Bobby Brown’s Sherlock Character Explained

Enola Holmes introduces Sherlock and Mycroft’s youngest sister, played by Millie Bobby Brown – but who is Enola Holmes? Let’s take a look.

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Millie Bobby Brown plays a different member of the Holmes family in Enola Holmes, but who is she and what is her relationship with Sherlock Holmes? Since his first appearance in A Study in Scarlet in 1887, Sherlock Holmes has been one of the most popular characters in literature and has been adapted to all types of media for over a hundred years. Over time, fans of the Great Detective have also taken the character and made them theirs, either through art, theatre plays, or books, giving him new and different cases and changing what Sir Arthur Conan Doyle established about the character.

Such is the case of Nancy Springer’s book series The Enola Holmes Mysteries, which gave the famous detective a younger sister. Enola Holmes has been well received by critics and readers, who find her to be a “bright and endearing character” and her stories to be suspenseful and easy to follow. The success of Enola’s stories were enough to allow her to jump from the book pages to the screen, in the movie simply titled Enola Holmes. Like many other movies with scheduled 2020 release dates, Enola Holmes was affected by the coronavirus pandemic but found its home at Netflix.

Directed by Harry Bradbeer (Fleabag, Killing Eve), Enola Holmes is based on the first book of the series, titled The Case of the Missing Marquess, and follows Enola on a quest to find her missing mother. Along the way, Enola will come across with other threats that will require her to explore her own investigative and deduction skills. It’s well known that Sherlock and Mycroft are both exceptionally intelligent men, but how does Enola compare to her siblings and what are the origins of this peculiar character?

Enola Holmes Isn’t From Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes Stories

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle didn’t explore Sherlock Holmes’ family background in any of his stories, but he did introduce his brother, Mycroft, who’s seven years older than the detective. Mycroft is a government official and a founding member of the Diogenes Club, a gentleman’s club which according to Sherlock’s description (found in “The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter”), “contains the most unsociable and unclubbable men in town”.

Although Springer took characters from Doyle’s stories to build her own, Enola Holmes is an original character created specifically for this book series. Through her (and their mother), Springer has also given Sherlock and Mycroft a family backstory, but ultimately, the star of the books is Enola, and her brothers are there as supporting characters. Of course, all this means that Enola isn’t part of the canon of Sherlock Holmes, instead being a character whose stories are completely separate from the books written by Conan Doyle.

Enola Holmes’ Origins Explained

As mentioned above, Enola is the youngest Holmes sibling, 20 years younger than Sherlock. She grew up with her mother Eudoria in the family estate, and she stopped seeing her brothers when she was around four years old, as they grew apart after various disagreements with their mother. Enola, like her mother, doesn’t follow society’s rules on what women should wear, be, and act like, which has been controversial among their community. In addition to that, Eudoria isn’t people’s favorite simply because she had Enola 20 years after Sherlock’s birth, which was quite scandalous in the 18th century.

Springer is not the only author who has borrowed Conan Doyle’s characters to make her own stories, and as a result, she isn’t the only one who has heard from the Conan Doyle estate. Surprisingly, they’re not suing the Enola Holmes movie over the character itself and her relationship to the Holmes brothers, but for depicting Sherlock Holmes as having emotions. Given that they still own Conan Doyle’s final 10 stories, in which Sherlock is a bit more open with his emotions, they are accusing the movie and Springer of copyright infringement.

How Enola Holmes Is A Different Detective To Sherlock

Enola, just like her famous brother, is also a detective, but she’s very different from him. Enola doesn’t have the experience nor education Sherlock had (it’s important to remember that Sherlock Holmes was very skilled in different things, such as boxing, chemistry, and more). In the first book, Enola points out these differences, explaining that her abilities are limited to writing, reading, fishing, finding bird’s nests, and digging up worms. While she’s very intelligent, she lacks the deductive skills of her brothers, but that doesn’t mean she can’t work on that – she only needs practice.

Enola’s biggest obstacle is the simple fact that she’s a girl, and so she’s expected to have certain education and dedicate her life to specific tasks, something she’s not willing to accept (in big part thanks to her upbringing). Sherlock didn’t have to fight his way through the world to become a detective, whereas Enola did. Another big difference is that Enola is much more connected to her emotions than Sherlock, even if this version of the Great Detective is a bit more open and warm than the canon one.

Millie Bobby Brown Plays Enola Holmes In The Netflix Movie

Enola Holmes is still a fairly new character, whose first book was published in 2006. During all this time, Enola has only lived in book pages, and her only adaptation has been into graphic novels. Now that she’s making the jump to film, she’s being played by Millie Bobby Brown, who also served as producer. Brown is mostly known for playing Eleven in Stranger Things as well as Madison Russell in Godzilla: King of the Monsters. Brown is close to her character’s age – Enola is 14, while Brown is 16 –, so if an Enola Holmes sequel happens, she could definitely reprise her role.

The stories of Enola Holmes, as well as her development from Sherlock and Mycroft’s youngest sister who was pretty much left behind along with her mother, to a detective skilled enough to work alongside her famous brother, has been successful with readers, and it remains to be seen if the cinematic adaptation will have the same impact. What’s true is that Enola is a different type of hero: one that defies gender stereotypes while also bringing interesting cases that are at the level of those of the Great Detective.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/enola-holmes-sherlock-millie-brown-character-origins-explained/