Film / Enola Holmes

"If I have to stay hidden from my brothers, I must become something unexpected. A lady."

"There are two paths you can take, Enola. Yours, or the path others choose for you."

— Eudoria Holmes

Enola Holmes is a 2020 historical detective film directed by Harry Bradbeer (Fleabag) and written by Jack Thorne (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child). It adapts the children's novels of the same name by Nancy Springer.

The film chronicles the adventures of Enola Holmes (Millie Bobby Brown), the younger sister of Sherlock (Henry Cavill) and Mycroft Holmes (Sam Claflin), as she embarks on a quest to find their missing mother Eudoria (Helena Bonham Carter). On the way to London, she becomes entangled with the runaway Viscount Tewksbury (Louis Partridge), a young aristocrat whose disappearance has far-reaching consequences. Enola must now solve multiple mysteries while staying a step ahead of her brothers, especially Mycroft, who would prefer to send her off to a dreaded finishing school.

The film was produced by Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures, with its distribution rights having been acquired by Netflix, which started streaming it on September 23, 2020. A sequel was greenlit almost immediately; Brown, Cavill, Partridge, and Bonham-Carter all reprised their roles, though Claflin was unable to return. The sequel was released on November 4, 2022 under the title Enola Holmes 2.

Previews: Trailer.

---

Enola Holmes contains examples of:

• Accidental Murder: In a surprisingly grisly scene Enola's attempt to subdue the hitman ends with his skull smashed against a statuette.
• Adaptational Context Change: In the novels, the Holmeses' mother left to live among the Romani to escape Victorian society, here she left to take part in revolutionary activities, implied in favor of women's votes.
• Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole: With Dr. Watson Adapted Out, Sherlock's fame as a detective is paradoxical because it came from the publication of Watson's stories. Before A Study in Scarlet, Sherlock was only known among a select circle with the police largely taking the credit. Watson was the biographer who brought Sherlock Holmes into the public eye. The original book even has Enola reference Watson's accounts for information on her brother. While it's mentioned that there are numerous newspaper articles about him, one has to wonder just how a detective became so famous, especially since Lestrade mentions that he's "been trying to avoid the press."
• Adapted Out: Dr. Watson doesn't appear at all, with it being explicitly stated that Sherlock always works alone, implying that the film takes place before their meeting. Strangely enough, Mycroft looks much more like Watson than his usual portrayal, though.
• Age Lift: In the books, Enola is 14 when Eudoria leaves their home. In the film, she's 16.
• The Alibi: Sherlock deduces that Tewksbury's uncle is innocent because when his brother was murdered he was out of the country, fighting in the second Afghan War.
• All There in the Script: Linthorn's name is never mentioned. He's only ever referred to in dialogue as "the man in the brown bowler hat."
• Anachronism Stew: Enola's mother and her friend Edith are suffragettes who know Jiu-Jitsu, which Eudoria teaches Enola. The movie is set in 1891 and sufragettes wouldn't start learning Jiu-Jitsu until the 1900's, when Edith Garrud started teaching them to protect themselves from police brutality.
• And Starring: "With Henry Cavill and Helena Bonham Carter".
• Artistic License: With his father deceased, Tewkesbury is now the Marquess of Basilweather and should be addressed as such by himself and by everyone else, yet the film flip-flops on it. The newspapers and Mycroft do so, and Tewkesbury himself does introduce himself secondarily as such to Enola, yet he and everyone keep calling him by his subsidiary Viscount title thereafter. Whilst it is understandable that Tewkesbury is likely grieving his father, the previous marquess, and is more used to the title that was once his by courtesy, there is no etiquette in the British peerage that allows for someone to continue to use their lower titles in this manner. Victorian society was especially rigid and Tewkesbury would have almost immediately been called Basilweather, or more properly Lord Basilweather by all but his closest friends, the moment his father passed on.
• Artistic License – Martial Arts: Enola's fighting style resembles more our modern Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (which is actually an eclectic, mid-20th century offshoot of Japanese Judo) than the mix of Shinden Fudo-ryu and Fusen-ryu jujutsu Edith should be teaching at the time and place. She even has the Running Gag of trying and failing a particular leglock entry that only became popular in BJJ by influences of Sambo (another eclectic offshoot of judo very posterior to the time the series is set).
• Assassin Outclassin': During their visit to Basilwether, Tewkesbury and Enola are attacked by Linthorn, whom they manage to do in.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: More like Belligerent Teenage Flirtation, but there is indeed a considerable amount of bickering and even more flirtation — though most of the bickering comes from her side. She warms up to him (Tewksbury) considerably by the end, though (and there's still plenty of flirtation).
• Big Brother Instinct: Though he tries not to show it, Sherlock is clearly worried about Enola when she runs away, enough that Mycroft comments on it.
• Big Brother Worship: Enola looks up to Sherlock, though she's upset when he doesn't help her stand up to Mycroft.
• Blown Across the Room: A blast from a shotgun sends Tewksbury flying a good two feet. Fortunately, he had an armor chest plate.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: Linthorn bringing out the garrote to strangle Tewkesbury. He could have smashed his head in quickly with the shotgun he brought since he used a similar albeit nonfatal move on Enola, rather than strangle him slowly. Because of that, Enola has enough time to corkscrew-kick Linthorn and break open his skull.
• Borrowed Catchphrase: Enola says "The game's afoot!" at one point. It is Sherlock's Catchphrase, usually.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Enola narrates the movie through asides to the camera.
• Bulletproof Vest:
  • Tewksbury wears one in the final scene. In the best traditions of this trope, he gets Blown Across the Room and thought dead for a minute.
  • A variant is when it turns out Enola's whalebone corset is able to turn a knife.
• Campfire Character Exploration: After jumping off a train and spending the afternoon walking through the countryside, Enola and Tewksbury settle down by a campfire for the night. They bond over their missing parents and what made them run away.
• Casting Gag:
  • Fiona Shaw previously appeared in the Sherlock Holmes TV series starring Jeremy Brett, as Miss Morrison in the episode "The Crooked Man".
  • The same Fiona Shaw as an unremarkable adult woman who has to "educate" (and belittles) a young teen who doesn't fit in the mold and is destined to become remarkable? One can make a case about Petunia Dursley here.
  • In Three Men and a Baby Fiona Shaw plays Miss Elspeth Lomax, the headmistress of a girl's academy.
• Chekhov's Gun: Linthorn shoots several suits of armor while trying to kill Tewksbury. The breastplate of one of these is used to shield him when his grandmother tries to shoot him.
• Comedic Underwear Exposure: Of a sort. When Enola brings Tewksbury back to her room, he notices that she has a pair of her underdrawers drying on a rack. Enola, mildly embarrassed, moves in front of them to block his view.
• Comically Missing the Point: Tewksbury has this a few times, such as the Hormone-Addled Teenager sequence (below) or when Enola tells him all the ladylike things she can't do, but that she was taught to fight, to watch, and to observe. Tewksbury looks at her in astonishment.
  Tewksbury: You can't embroider?
• Companion Cube: When she was a little girl, Enola had a pine cone attached to a string named Dash, inspired by Queen Victoria's dogs. According to Sherlock and Eudoria, she never wanted to be parted from it.
• Contrived Coincidence:
  • Enola, who is running away from home via a train station she doesn't normally use, meets Tewkesbury (who is also running away) when he cuts himself out of a bag on the same train.
  • Enola deduces that her mother may be planning something on Limehouse Lane, and goes there to investigate. Tewksbury had planted a false trail at home before running away, which also wound up at Limehouse Lane. Linthorn ambushes Enola there, thinking she is working with Tewksbury and knows where he is.
• Crisis Makes Perfect: Enola struggles to execute the corkscrew jiu-jutsu move until Linthorn has her cornered and she pulls it off against him, accidentally killing him in the process.
• Dangerous 16th Birthday: Enola's mother disappears on her sixteenth birthday. It's this event that kickstarts the plot and leads Enola to dangerous but exciting adventures. (In the novel, it happened on her fourteenth birthday.)
• Darkest Hour: Briefly happens more than halfway through the film. Enola sacrifices her freedom to keep Tewksbury safe, and is taken to Miss Harrison's Finishing School by Mycroft to begin her reeducation to become a 'proper lady.' When she rebels, she's punished by being locked in what amounts to solitary confinement. On top of that, her feelings of being abandoned by her mother are compounded cruelly by Miss Harrison herself. Sherlock's unexpected visit strengthens her resolve until Tewksbury comes to rescue her.
• Deadpan Snarker: Apparently, snark is a genetic trait of the Holmes family. Tewksbury is no slouch either.
• Decided by One Vote: The stakes surrounding the Case of the Missing Marquess are considerably heightened by the deadlocked debate of the Reform Bill of 1884 in the House of Lords. Tewksbury, being liberal in his views, does indeed break the tie in the end and allow the passage of the bill.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: In Victorian England, it was a lot less understandable than it is to a modern audience that a woman might want a life other than settling down with a husband. Mycroft expresses disdain that Eudoria chose to raise Enola so liberally.
• Dye or Die: Tewkesbury initially has long hair, and his description is in the paper. Enola guesses that he will need to be disguised, and cuts his hair short with a knife. She herself doesn't need to do this, as she's easily able to disguise herself as a boy by hiding her hair under a hat, and this also gives her the advantage of switching back and forth between women's clothes when she wants.
• Every Man Has His Price: Woman in this case but the owner of the dress shop Enola visits for her 'lady' disguise is all too eager to offer her services and find lodging for her when Enola flashes her notes. Regrettably this backfires when she catches wind of the reward for Enola's return and swiftly turns her in to Lestrade for a greater sum of money.
• Everyone Has Standards: Enola is initially wary of Tewksbury, and wants nothing to do with him, but she is horrified to see Linthorn dangling him out of the train. Before that, when the young marquess thinks that he has escaped his family, she gives him a heads up by telling him that they got someone (Linthorn) on the train looking for him (At this point, she had no reason to help him. The only thing she knew before meeting him is that a marquess is on the train, and his family wants him to come back.)
• Failed a Spot Check: When Enola meets Tewkesbury while he sells flowers, she fails to notice the missing persons poster with her picture on it.
• False Widow: Enola sometimes masquerades as a widow. She mentions it's a great way to travel incognito because death makes people uncomfortable, and in Victorian society, it would have been all but unthinkable for a stranger to ask a widow about the circumstances of her husband's death.
• Finger-Twitching Revival: As Enola cries over Tewksbury, whom his grandmother just shot, she places her hand in his… and then he takes a hold of her hand.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: When Enola demands to know who Linthorn is working for, he answers "England", indicating that the motive for Tewksbury's murder is not inheritance, but politics. This allows the viewer to piece together that the villain is Tewksbury's grandmother, who spoke to Enola about the importance of keeping England as it is, seconds before the culprit arrives on the scene. The sound of her cane tapping on the floor is heard much earlier, but it's largely unsettling background noise and is completely ignored by the other characters, who are all busy fighting.
• Flower Motifs:
  • Eudoria's signature flower was the chrysanthemum, which Sherlock and later Enola learn to check in order to search for clues.
  • The language of flowers is a plot point; irises meaning messages are plot important twice.
• Freudian Trio: The three Holmes siblings.
  • Enola (Id), the impetuous Spirited Young Lady and the youngest, Skilled, but Naive.
  • Mycroft (Superego), the Stuffy Brit eldest sibling who wants Enola to go to finishing school.
  • Sherlock (Ego), the middle sibling who's objective-focused but more accommodating of Enola.
• Gilligan Cut: Enola is skeptical of Tewksbury's plan for escaping and even asks the audience for better ideas. After the cut, it's obvious that no better ideas were available.
• Halfway Plot Switch: The first half of the movie is about Enola trying to find her mother. After Enola faces off against Linthorn in London, she realizes that someone is trying to murder Tewksbury. The second half of the film is her trying to save him and find out who is behind the assassination attempt .
• Hate Sink: Tewksbury's grandmother. A unscrupulous political fanatic who has no qualms about killing her own son and grandson in favor of her political convictions.
• Hero Antagonist: Enola's brothers and Inspector Lestrade are on the good side of the law, but won't let her investigate, leading her to conduct that work in secret and through the use of disguises.
• Heroic Sacrifice: A non lethal example. Enola holds off Inspector Lestrade and tells Tewksbury to make a run for it. Her reasoning is that if she is caught, she will be forced into a life she does not want. If Tewksbury is caught, his life will be in danger.
• Hidden Depths: Upon finding Tewksbury's treehouse hideout and seeing the plans he made to run away, Enola realizes that he's much more clever than she initially gave him credit for.
• I Know Karate: Enola tells the Dowager that "I know jiu-jitsu."
• Improbable Weapon User: Edith threatens Sherlock with a teapot, which he takes completely seriously. Justified by Edith being a jiu-jitsu expert... and the teapot very probably being filled with boiling hot water.
• Interrogated for Nothing: By the time Linthorn catches up with Enola and questions her on Tewksbury's whereabouts, she hasn't seen Tewksbury in a day or two and so genuinely has no idea where he is. He does eventually seem to believe her protests that she doesn't know, but that doesn't improve her situation any as Linthorn points out she's seen his face.
• Ironic Echo: While spending time at their estate, Sherlock tells his little sister, "You're being emotional. It's understandable, but unnecessary." After coming to visit her at the finishing school, she says the same thing to him, and he lampshades it with a smile.
• Irony: Despite rebelling against Mycroft since the beginning, Enola actually comes close to fulfilling one of his wishes for her: finding a suitable husband. While Enola and Tewksbury became close friends in their adventures together, they seem to have a budding romance going on and on paper, marriage between a lord and a woman from a family of landed gentry would be not at all objectionable in Victorian times.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • For all his abrasiveness and misogyny, Mycroft's disdain and anger towards Eudoria is partially justified. He financially supported her based on the letters she wrote about needing to maintain the estate, pay staff and give Enola a 'proper' education. And then he discovers their estate unkempt, almost no servants, Eudoria gone and his younger sister without a formal education (a point which even Sherlock is aghast at). It's also heavily implied that the money he was sending Eudoria was used to fund her revolutionary activities, which could cause serious trouble for him, a government employee, if that was ever found out. In his eyes, he was swindled and then left with the responsibility of raising Enola after their mother seemingly abandoned her.
    • Mycroft considers Eudoria dangerous, among other things. When Enola discovers that Eudoria is prepared to use terroristic methods in order to change the world, she admits out loud that Mycroft was right about that one.
  • Several of the characters, among them the less sympathetic ones like Miss Harrison and Mycroft, point out that if Eudoria cared so much about Enola, then why leave her (under Mycroft's care and on her birthday, no less)? While Eudoria says that she left in order to forge a better world for Enola to live in, she nonetheless apologizes for leaving her like that.
  • When Sherlock notes that it was Mycroft's choice to accept Eudoria's requests' for money, Mycroft accuses him of judging him for the way he takes care of their family when Sherlock himself has taken no part in it. Sherlock is clearly bothered by the accusation, and several other characters also call him out of how little his family seems to interest him.
• Kicking Ass in All Her Finery: In the second act, Enola walks around London dressed like a "powder puff", to use Edith's words. She runs into Linthorn and fights with him while wearing the fancy red dress.
• Kindly Housekeeper: Eudoria's housekeeper Mrs. Lane, who keeps the house in shape as best as she can and worries after Enola.
• Logo Joke: The Legendary Pictures logo is filtered to have a more illustrated look, and is bordered with images of flowers.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: Tewksbury's father was killed in what was made to look like a botched burglery.
• Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: Enola and Tewksbury, as much as Victorian gender roles allow. Enola is the Masculine Girl, a Spirited Young Lady who resists finishing school and is trained to fight, while Tewksbury is the Feminine Boy, a rich boy who ran away from his family's plan of going off to the army, and a Nature Lover who knows his way around local flora and cooks for himself and Enola while on the run.
• Match Cut: Sound example as Mycroft's yell when he finds Enola's Sleeping Dummy is partially dubbed over with a train whistle.
• Mean Boss:
  • Ms. Harrison mocks Tewksbury when she thinks he's a porter waiting for a tip.
  • Tewksbury's grandmother gives serious consideration to having a gardener fired for giving Enola his clothes, though she seemingly backs off after Enola protests that she used martial arts to subdue him.
• Meaningful Echo: When Tewksbury shows that he can recognize plants and mushrooms, knows their Latin names, and promises to make a meal out of them, he voices Enola's thoughts out loud: "I'm not entirely an idiot, you know." In the climax, he repeats these same words to her when he's revealed to be wearing under his coat a breastplate that just saved him from being killed by his grandmother's shotgun round.
• Middle Child Syndrome: Inverted with Sherlock Holmes; he's the middle child between Mycroft and Enola, but is the most famous and respected of all three.
• Mr. Fanservice: The Victorian version, so a bit downplayed as befits the times. Mr. Cavill fills his suits wonderfully, especially the dark blue one near the end of the movie, which so neatly highlights his blue eyes.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Tewkesbury's grandmother has this look on her face after she seemingly kills him. She did love him, but her love for England as she idealized it was stronger. She even seems a little relieved when it's revealed that he survived unharmed.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The film features some of the famous Sherlock Holmes illustrations by Sidney Paget when Enola introduces her famous older brother, only here his face is replaced by that of Henry Cavill.
  • Enola says at one point, "I don't think, I know." Her elder brother liked to say something similar when making deductions ("I don't know, I observe").
  • Tewksbury's uncle is a veteran of the Second Afghan War, the same war Dr. Watson served in.
  • When preparing to leap from the train, Enola tells Tewksbury they need to time it right, as they're coming up on a bridge over a river. This is like a scene in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows where Holmes and the Watsons are similarly fleeing assassins, except in that movie, Mrs. Watson lands in the water.
  • In the original stories, Holmes was said to have been related to the (real-life) French painter Vernet. Eudoria's maiden name is Vernet.
  • The first image of what Eudoria taught Enola is beekeeping; Sherlock retired to bee-farming on the Sussex downs in the short stories.
• My Life Flashed Before My Eyes: While Tewksbury was outdoors by his treehouse, a branch collapsed and he saw his entire life flash before his eyes during the fall. He realized he did not want to follow the path his family wanted him to do and ran away.
• Noblewoman's Laugh: In the finishing school, the girls are taught how to laugh "politely".
• "Not So Different" Remark: They don't fit together perfectly, but Enola and Tewksbury have a brief moment of connection as they talk by the campfire after their first meeting, where they learn they're both being stifled by familial expectations. This connection is gradually reinforced throughout the film.
• Oblivious to Love:
  • Ms. Harrison is clearly enamored with Mycroft, who seems completely oblivious to this. The fact that she was a schoolmate of Mycroft's mother (and thus probably at least twenty years older than him) might have something to do with it.
  • When Tewksbury is in Enola's room it is obvious that he has a serious crush/admiration for her but Enola thinks he is pitying her and does not take it well.
• Of Corset Hurts: Played with. While Enola says that corsets are a way of women being oppressed and is shown screaming in pain from being tight-laced while at the boarding school, they aren't shown to hinder her in any way when walking through London or fighting against an assassin. This is Truth in Television as the tightlacing movement was considered to be highly harmful to the body (especially as regards childbearing abilities), and most corsets, either custom-made by highly trained specialists or — for the working class — bought off-the-rack from industrial makers, were in fact sensible undergarments made to support the body without restricting movement overmuch (there were even sports versions, only lightly boned to promote freedom of movement).
• Offing the Offspring: The previous Marquis was killed by his own mother who also nearly kills her grandson.
• Off to Boarding School: Mycroft and Sherlock initially plan to send Enola off to a strict finishing school, where she will learn to be a lady. Enola resists this by running away instead.
• Older Than They Look: Invoked by Enola. When investigating the Tewkesbury house, she goes in disguise as a widow. She lies to The Dowager that she's twenty-two, presumably because her actual age of sixteen would be quite young to be a widow, even in Victorian England.
• Parental Abandonment: The Holmes siblings' father died years ago, and Enola was young enough to not remember him much, while their mother disappeared and now Enola's out to find her.
• Person with the Clothing: Justified example, as Enola (the narrator) and Tewksbury have no reason to know the name of the hitman pursuing them, and only ever refer to him as the "man in the brown bowler hat". The subtitles and credits list his name as Linthorn.
• Pimped-Out Dress: Enola is smart enough to realize Sherlock and Mycroft will figure out she dressed as a boy for her escape and be looking for her like that, so she spends most of her time in London wearing some quite ornate gowns.
• Politically Incorrect Villain:
  • More along the lines of anti-villain, but Mycroft sneers when he learns his mother is into feminism.
  • The Dowager wanted her grandson dead because his tiebreaker vote would have gone against everything England stood for, in her political opinion.
• Practically Different Generations: While their exact ages aren't clear, Sherlock and Mycroft are by now both established career men who would prefer not to have to suddenly deal with a sixteen-year-old sister. The solution (at least for Mycroft, who legally becomes her guardian when their mother seemingly abandons Enola) is to ship her off to boarding school.
• Professional Killer: Linthorn is an assassin hired to kill Tewksbury on the orders of Tewksbury's grandmother.
• Promoted to Love Interest: In the book, Viscount Tewksbury is not only still a child, but several years younger than Enola. Here, the two are about the same age, and have plenty of Ship Tease going on between them.
• The Proud Elite: Mycroft represents a typical British gentleman of the landed gentry regarding his disdain for women (including his sister and mother) and distaste for the idea of extending the vote to men less privileged than he.
• Public Secret Message: Enola publishes an anagrammed message to her mother in papers she knows Eudoria keeps up with. Later, Sherlock does the same to send a message, supposedly from their mother, to her, though Enola immediately recognizes it as being from him.
• Race Lift:
  • Inspector Lestrade is played by a South Asian actor here.
  • Edith, implied to be the historical Edith Garrud, is played by a black actress.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Edith criticizes Sherlock by telling him that he's a fence sitter when it comes to the reform bill and how it feels like for women to live with little rights because he is content with his own life and that he isn't there for his little sister enough.
  Edith: Because you don't know what it is to be without power. Politics doesn't interest you. Why?
  Sherlock: Because it's fatally boring.
  Edith: Because you have no interest in changing a world that suits you so well. [...] You're intelligent enough to know that every word of it is true. [chuckles] What a family! A lost child, a puffed-up misanthrope, a revolutionary, and yourself. No wife, no friends, just a strange occupation obsessed with footprints and coal dust. You see the world so closely, but do you see how it's changing? The reform bill is just the beginning.
  Sherlock: If it passes.
  Edith: I have to get back to work now, Mr. Holmes. Customers to serve. Cakes to bake. [sighs] I'm pleased you're interested, at least. Eudoria thought that you'd just ignore your sister, like the ostrich you are. But I suspect that she needs you.
• Rule of Three:
  • Enola encounters Linthorn three times during the film.
  • Enola makes two unsuccessful attempts to use the "corkscrew" maneuver on someone. The third time, it works.
• The Runaway:
  • Mycroft finds out Enola left the house by discovering a ragdoll instead of her in her bed. She ran away to try finding her mother on her own.
  • Viscount Tewksbury as well, who is introduced having snuck onto a train away from his mother, grandmother and uncle to avoid being sent into the army.
• Running Gag:
  • Enola attempting a "corkscrew" jiu-jitsu maneuver (a leglock entry from the bottom). Due to her small frame and height, she consistently fails to execute the move several times before managing it.
  • Enola offering someone five pounds to sell her their clothes (she never has any problem with this, because five pounds is more than most of the people she makes the offer to would earn in a month).
• Say My Name: When Mycroft finds in Enola's bed a Sleeping Dummy and the caricature she draw of him, he shouts Sherlock's name.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Enola arrives in a London dress shop still disguised as a boy, and pays generously to be transformed into a Proper Lady. The shopkeeper is particularly stunned when she emerges from the changing area having immaculately dressed herself, complete with corsetry and hairpieces.
• She Knows Too Much: Once he's decided that he's not going to get anything useful out of Enola, Linthorn tries to kill her since he's already let her see his face.
• Sheltered Aristocrat:
  • Enola, to a certain extent. She has great natural intelligence and deductive reasoning instincts near or on par with Sherlock and Eudoria saw to it that she's extremely well-read, as well as being able to defend herself. However, she's lived virtually her entire life in isolation, and has almost no experience of the outside world.
  • Tewksbury seems this, at first. Later on though, he shows an in-depth knowledge of local flora which helps him and Enola to eat while they find their way to London. And when Enola investigates his case, she discovers that he deliberately left a false trail for his family to follow so they wouldn't find him. Most notably, he's the only character who immediately sees through Enola's disguise and guesses that she's not a boy.
• Ship Tease: Between Enola and Tewksbury, two similarly-aged plucky teens who become close on their mutual runaway journeys and save each other's lives. Both are aware of it, but never do more than hold hands and hug. Even Sherlock notices and points it out to Mycroft, who snarks that maybe they'll get married and be each other's problem (which wouldn't have been out of the ordinary for two people their ages back then).
• Shotguns Are Just Better: Linthorn uses a double-barreled shotgun as his main weapon when facing off against Enola and Tewksbury in the climax.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: When Mycroft tells Enola he wants her to be happy, she shoots back that what he really wants is for her to be controlled. Enola would be perfectly content for them to stay out of each other's lives, but Mycroft refuses to take the risk to his standing.
• Significant Anagram:
  • Enola points out that her name is "Alone" spelled backwards and says her mother named her that on purpose. However, she later observes that neither Tforcym (Mycroft) nor Kcolrehs (Sherlock) means anything so perhaps it's best not to read too much into the name.
  • Later, Enola realizes that three phrases she overheard at one of her mother's meetings were anagrams of locations in London, where they could potentially conduct revolutionary activities.
• Sleeping Dummy: Enola leaves one behind to fool Mycroft when she flees the hall.
• Spirited Young Lady: Enola, who was raised in the countryside by a liberal noncomformist mother, is fittingly free-spirited, knows how to fight, and would rather go on adventures and solve mysteries than be restrained in a finishing school. However, she can convincingly pass for a young lady if she puts in the effort.
• Stupid Evil: Linthorn bringing out the garrote to strangle Tewkesbury. He could have smashed his head in quickly with the shotgun he brought since he used a similar albeit nonfatal move on Enola, rather than strangle him slowly. Because of that, Enola has enough time to corkscrew-kick Linthorn and break open his skull.
• Suddenly Shouting: Mycroft, having been pushed to his Rage Breaking Point by Enola, snaps at her on the way to Ms. Harrison's school, driving Enola to tears.
• The Summation: Played with, when Sherlock informs Lestrade that Tewksbury's grandmother is the one trying to murder the young marquess. Lestrade asks him two questions, the first being how he came by that conclusion. The second one?
  Lestrade: How did your sister get there before you?
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • Enola has been trained in martial arts since early childhood. She can surprise a trained adult twice her size with an unexpected attack, but that's only enough to briefly hold her own. Even more so since that adult has no compunctions about murder.
  • Even genius older brothers make mistakes. Having not seen Enola since she was a toddler, Mycroft and Sherlock completely fail to recognize her as a teenager when they first meet after so many years.
• Textile Work Is Feminine: Discussed. After Enola tells him she was not raised to do traditionally feminine things, Tewksbury expresses surprise that she can't embroider. An earlier scene showed her embroidery as sloppy.
• These Hands Have Killed: Technically legs, but when Enola's grappling accidentally causes the assassin's death, despite his trying to murder her and Tewksbury, she's still horrified by the fact that she's killed someone, even in self-defense.
• The Unreveal: While it's revealed that Tewksbury's grandmother ordered the deaths of her son (the previous Marquess) and grandson (the current Marquess), it isn't revealed whether or not she killed her son or if she hired Linthorn for both.
• Water Torture: Linthorn attempts to extract information from Enola by repeatedly shoving her head in a barrel full of water. (Cue obligatory underwater shot of her panicked face.)
• We Need a Distraction: When Enola runs away, she rides her bicycle in the opposite direction of the train station she intends to leave from in order to lay a false trail, then walks back to the train station.
• We Used to Be Friends: Ms. Harrison mentions that she and Eudoria were this trope, but split due to their differing political opinions.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Mrs. Lane the housekeeper is angry when Sherlock is briefly amused by Enola's escape, saying she is in real danger due to never seeing the world, and also telling him not to abandon her again.
  • Sherlock also gets another one from Edith Bryston, who berates him for both his neutrality in the face of a changing world and for not being there for his sister.
• Would Hurt a Child:
  • Ms. Harrison, the headmistress that Mycroft hopes will groom Enola, slaps her in the face when she protests.
  • The man in the brown bowler hat tries to hold Viscount Tewksbury off a moving train to slam him into a tunnel facing. He later tries to drown Enola and stabs her, but she's saved by her whale-bone corset. And during the film's climax shoots at both Tewksbury and Enola and tries to garrote Tewksbury.
  • The Dowager ordered the hit on Tewksbury to keep him from casting the decisive vote in Parliament for extending the vote, and later shoots him herself - though she at least looks apologetic.
• You Are Fat: When Enola is brought to Harrison, the headmistress remarks she missed supper but could do with "losing a pound or two".
• You Don't Look Like You: While Mycroft Holmes has never had a consistent look in adaptations, here he more closely resembles the classical depiction of Dr. Watson, a resemblance made especially notable by Watson's absence from the film.
• Younger Than They Look: After her visit to Basilwether, Lestrade pegs the sixteen-year-old Enola as at least twenty. Justified - it was intentional on her part, as she was wearing Widow's Weeds to look older and tells the Dowager she is twenty-two.

---

Sherlock: Perhaps she wants to change the world.
Enola: Perhaps it’s the world that needs changing.