Enola Holmes 3 Ending Explained: What Does the Ship Wreckage Mean?

The third installment in Netflix’s ‘Enola Holmes’ brings the youngest Holmes back to solve a mystery regarding her brother. When Sherlock goes missing during Enola’s wedding, she has to drop everything and focus on finding him. It becomes clear that the captors need him alive, but time is running out, and she has to piece together the clues as quickly as possible so they make sense. She has to understand what Sherlock was working on before he went missing and what clues he may have left behind for her to follow. She eventually does find the answers, but they are not necessarily what she had been looking for. SPOILERS AHEAD.

Enola Holmes 3 Plot Synopsis

It has been a while since we last saw Enola Holmes, and a lot has changed in the past few years. To begin with, she has come a long way from her days as an amateur sleuth. Over the years, she has earned the Holmes name and has gotten so good that even Sherlock has to accept her investigating prowess. The professional success has mirrored the happy turn of events in her personal life. Her relationship with Tewkesbury has deepened, and they have gotten to the point where he has proposed to her. She is happy to marry him, though as the day of the wedding inches closer, the doubts in her head creep up as well. As if she already wasn’t conflicted, Sherlock makes things worse by telling her what she would be giving up if she were to take on the title that comes with being Tewkesbury’s wife.

Despite her apprehensions about the wedding, Enola knows she loves Tewkesbury. And so, already late enough to spark doubts in the groom’s mind, she rushes to the church to arrive in time. On the way, she is pursued by a masked man who turns out to be Dr. Watson. He reveals that Sherlock has been kidnapped. Enola immediately gives up all thoughts of her wedding and returns to the hotel to investigate Sherlock’s room. There, she finds two clues. One is a patterned fabric, and the other is the Morse code for “Khost,” which likely Sherlock left behind for her to follow. As the guests return to the hotel, Enola thinks about clearing things up with her jilted groom, but then, she notes a soldier in the crowd.

This is the same soldier she saw lurking around at her pre-wedding dinner. Sherlock had gone after him, though he didn’t tell Enola what his purpose was. Enola chases after the soldier for information, but right as she catches him, someone fatally shoots him. Before dying, he says the word “wrath,” which is yet another clue Enola cannot make sense of. By the time she returns to the hotel, she discovers that the buildung is on fire and Tewkesbury’s mother has been kidnapped as well. This means that things are much more serious than initially imagined, and she has to race against time to find her brother and her future mother-in-law before the kidnapper finds what they are looking for.

Who Kidnapped Sherlock? Why?

Enola’s quest to find her brother leads her to a mystery about Tewkesbury’s father. It turns out that “Khost” refers to the place where the late Lord was stationed with his troops during the Anglo-Afghan Wars. He and his men stole the gold from the locals because they needed to keep funding the war efforts after they were told that the government couldn’t invest in the army any more than it already had. The idea was to bring the gold to Malta and make it look as if they had found it there, rather than letting the world know they had looted it from Afghanistan. Then it would be given to the Crown, which would reinvest the money in the army and keep the war going. On the way to Malta, Lord Tewkesbury had a crisis of conscience, and he decided that he was not going to give up the gold to his superiors.

Of course, not everyone agreed with his idea, so he turned the situation so that the ship sank, and with it, the gold. In the end, only Lord Tewkesbury knew the gold’s location, which he kept hidden so no one could ever find it. Malta had been his home for generations, so he knew the place better than most, which made it impossible for anyone to find him. His actions didn’t change the fact that the Crown was still out of money, and they desperately needed the gold. After years of search, it became clear that their usual methods wouldn’t get them what they wanted. So, they turned towards more unconventional ones. When Moriarty was arrested, and her shocking crimes came to light, it became clear that she had the mind to crack this puzzle.

She just needed the resources to get it done. So, the army officials had her released from prison with the agreement that she would bring the gold to them. She was happy to do it, especially if it meant messing with the Holmeses, who were the ones to throw her in prison in the first place. She surmised that only someone close to the Tewkesbury family could find the gold, because they would have access to knowledge an outsider could never have. This is where Enola comes in. When Moriarty discovered she was getting married to Tewkesbury, the villain used her spy to plant the idea of having the wedding in Malta in Lady Tewkesbury’s head. Once everyone was in Malta for the wedding, Moriarty put the wheels in motion by kidnapping Sherlock and leaving a clue behind in the form of “Khost” to lure Enola into the mystery, which she ended up solving for Moriarty.

What Happens to the Gold? What Happens to Moriarty?

Enola’s search for her brother eventually leads her to the story of Khost and the gold. Through one of the late Lord Tewkesbury’s medals, she realizes that he was at Khost, just like the man whom Sherlock had followed during the pre-wedding dinner and who had been later killed by an unknown shooter. Khost, being the common denominator, led her to look into the military records, where she found out about the looting of the gold. Sampson filled in the rest of the story about how the gold was lost in the first place. The idea of a lost and hidden treasure reminded Enola of Tewkesbury telling her how his father told him there was hidden treasure in the cave by the sea. Turns out it wasn’t just a story for the father and son to play pirates. The gold was really there.

By this point, it is clear to her that this is what Moriarty is really after, and she knows every move Enola makes because she has been keeping an eye on her. This means that as soon as Enola goes to the cave to get the gold, Moriarty will know, and once the villain has what she wants, Enola’s chance of finding her brother and Lady Tewkesbury will be lost forever. So, she comes up with a plan to trap Moriarty. She decides to go to the caves alone, leaving Dr. Watson outside at a short distance to make it look like he’s covering for her. When Moriarty sees this, she will think the duo has come to the cave alone, and she will show herself. Once that happens, Tewkesbury will show up and trap her. Of course, Moriarty is not going to show up alone, so Enola asks Mizzi to bring in his rebels to help them.

The plan succeeds, and Moriarty and her men are trapped. Still, she finds a way to escape. Enola follows her, and they end up at the place where Sherlock and Tewkesbury’s mother are being held captive. Enola succeeds in freeing her future mother-in-law, who frees Sherlock while the younger Holmes fights Moriarty. In the end, Sherlock has Moriarty at gunpoint, and he seriously considers killing her then and there. He knows if she is sent to prison, she will find a way to come out and haunt her family again, and she agrees. However, Enola tells her brother that this is not the right thing to do, and he must check himself because he is letting his emotions get in the way. He realizes his sister is right, and so Moriarty is given over to the authorities, though not before Lady Tewkesbury hits her in the head with a stone.

Moriarty’s arrest exposes the entire conspiracy behind the scenes and leads to the arrests of the officials who got her out in the first place. Next, the people who were involved in looting the gold in the first place are also exposed and imprisoned. This is a great victory for the people of Malta because when Lord Tewkesbury’s ship went down, the Maltese soldiers on board were accused of mutiny and thrown in prison. Now their names have been cleared, and they have received justice. As for the gold, it is not clear what happens to it. It could be turned over to the government, but that would beat the purpose of why it was hidden in the first place. Enola and her team know that the gold will never be returned to Khost. Still, this is their only choice, because with Moriarty and her men arrested, the gold’s existence and location have already been exposed. There is nothing left to do but hand it over and hope for the best.

Do Enola and Tewksbury Get Married? Does He Renounce His Title?

Once the case is solved and Sherlock and Lady Tewkesbury are back home safe and sound, it is time to return to the matter of the wedding. When Enola didn’t show up at the altar, Tewkesbury assumed she had no intention of marrying him and had likely accepted his proposal because she had somehow been pressured into it. However, she later clarifies that it wasn’t her intention to jilt him. She had accepted his proposal because she wanted to marry him; there was never any doubt about that. It was when the wedding venue was set in Malta, and the preparations began, that things started to get overwhelming. This is when she started to have an identity crisis as she wondered how she would have to change to fit into the expectations around his status as a viscount.

Moreover, she lamented how marrying him would mean giving up the Holmes name, which she had worked so hard to earn. She had made a name for herself as a detective, and becoming a viscountess would likely mean giving that up in favor of the responsibilities that came with her title. She continued to struggle with this even on the wedding day, but eventually her love for Tewkesbury won out. She knew that no matter her doubts, she couldn’t just abandon him at the altar, which is why she rushed to the church, and she would have reached there in time for the ceremony had it not been for Dr. Watson chasing after her and telling her Sherlock had been kidnapped. After the case has been solved, things change a bit for the couple.

They are still in love and wish to marry, but the revelation of his father’s wartime actions has made Tewkesbury reconsider who he wants to be. He, too, feels that he has been limited by the responsibilities of his title, which he was so dedicated to because he idolized his father. Now, it has been made painfully clear to him that every person, no matter how good they are, is flawed, and so, instead of following someone else’s path, one must carve one’s own. This is what Tewkesbury decides to do in the end. He tells Enola he will renounce his title, which means he won’t be burdened by his father’s or his family’s past anymore. This also means that Enola doesn’t have to worry about the pressure of a huge wedding. In the end, they have an intimate ceremony where all their loved ones, including Enola’s fugitive mother, who also officiates the wedding, are present to witness the beginning of their happily ever after.

Who is Adeline Rathe? What Does the Ship Wreckage Mean?

While Enola succeeds in cracking the case of Sherlock’s disappearance, not all mysteries are entirely solved. One of the things that she comes across in her investigation is the word “wrath,” and she doesn’t understand how it connects to the case. Eventually, she learns about a woman named Adeline Rathe, who is considered so powerful that she has a direct line to the people who control Malta. She eventually finds the woman, but she turns out to be Moriarty’s spy and is killed. This is considered the end of the “wrath” line, but it turns out that Enola is yet to see the whole picture. After she and Tewkesbury get married and happily swim in the sea together, the camera pans to the depths of the ocean.

The wreckage of a ship named The Wrath of Adeline is shown, which confirms that “Adeline Rathe” is not the one Enola should have been looking for. This is likely the ship that was carrying the gold and was sunk by Lord Tewkesbury. While the gold may have been found, it is not far-fetched to believe that the true story of its sinking is yet to be unveiled. Perhaps, it wasn’t sunk intentionally. Perhaps there were more dangerous forces behind it, either after the gold or intent on killing Lord Tewkesbury. Considering this, it is likely that more secrets will surface once the excavation into the wreckage begins, which is why some powerful people had Moriarty released from prison in the first place. This loose thread means that Enola still has a lot of work to do, and she will likely return in another iteration to finish what she started.

Read More: Where Was Enola Holmes 3 Filmed?