With “Enola Holmes 2”, Millie Bobby Brown returns as the brilliant detective. For her first official affair, the heroine investigates in a match factory where the employees are exploited and where the revolt is brewing. A setting and adventures inspired by real events.
Enola Holmes 2 : the arrival of an emblematic enemy
Two years after her first adventure, Millie Bobby Brown is back as Enola Holmes on Netflix. The heroine created by writer Nancy Springer, little sister of the famous Sherlock (Henry Cavill) and Mycroft (Sam Claflin), has opened her own agency but is struggling to attract clients because they don’t take her seriously. She still manages to embark on her first official affair when a teenager named Bessie (Serrana Su-Ling Bliss) tasks her with finding her big sister Sarah Chapman (Hannah Dodd).
Enola Holmes starts to investigate a match factory run by a wealthy family, where employees die of typhus and where the missing young woman worked. Her investigations lead her to collaborate with her brother Sherlock, who must solve riddles scattered in London by his greatest enemy, whose identity he has not yet discovered.



Helena Bonham Carter, David Thewlis, Louis Partridge, Susan Wokoma, Adeel Akhtar and Sharon Duncan-Brewster complete the cast of this second installment still directed by Harry Bradbeer (Fleabag, Killing Eve). An opus for which the director and screenwriter Jack Thorne were partly inspired by a true story.
A plot based on a real revolt
WARNING, the following lines contain spoilers!
In the conclusion ofEnola Holmes 2, the heroine understands that the employees of the factory do not die because of typhus but because of a poor quality phosphorus used for the design of matches. Alongside Sarah and her little sister Bessie (Serrana Su-Ling Bliss), she joins the general anger of the workers. An adventure inspired by the strike of the workers of the factory Bryant & May, organized in London in 1888 and supported by socialist and feminist activist Annie Besant.



The latter protests against the deplorable treatment of employees, generally teenagers. Methods she describes as slavery in an article published in his journal The Link: A Journal for the Servants of Man.
For nearly 20 years, several revolts took place to fight against very precarious working conditions and extremely low wages, but that of 1888 was truly a landmark. Dipping matches in white phosphorus, less expensive than red phosphorus but more toxic, also causes serious health problems that can lead to death. The teeth and gums of worker bees rot, causing abscesses and fistulas.
Sarah Chapman, one of the figures of the movement
Figure of this movement having really existed, Sarah Chapman is one of the workers who asks Annie Besant for help. On July 11, 1888, about 1400 workers ceased their activity. Three weeks after the start of the strike, Bryant & May executives accept their demands, improve working conditions and raise wages, also removing visible punishments in Enola Holmes 2.
Asked by the BBC in 2013 for the 125th anniversary of the revolt, specialist on the subject Louise Raw – who has dedicated a book to it – declared:
These workers showed the way to other exploited workers. It is no coincidence that waves of strikes followed, including the great dockers’ strike of 1889. These were the mothers of the entire modern labor movement and the Labor Party.
An event which, according to her, “changed the world”.