Millie Bobby Brown returns for Enola Holmes 3, but the threequel is ultimately described as an often thoughtful, yet lesser, entry in what was supposed to be a growing Netflix mystery franchise. The bigger story is less about Enola Holmes specifically and more about the pattern Netflix keeps running into: getting viewers is easier than converting that attention into a durable, cultural, long-term film franchise.

The review frames Netflix’s central problem in blunt terms. For all the streamer’s ever-increasing size and dominance, Netflix has “continued to struggle” with what old-school Hollywood has always treated as the bread and butter: building original movie franchises that reliably produce sequels with real staying power. The argument is not subtle. Streaming can trigger fast viewing, but turning a big-budget bet into an ongoing cultural event requires more than low-stakes home clicks and a brief weekend of conversation.

Netflix has had plenty of large bets. The review points to “big numbers” that met their moment, naming Red Notice and The Grey Man as examples, but it says a lack of real long-term interest meant sequels did not successfully follow. In other words, the initial spike worked, but the durable demand did not. And when Netflix goes even bigger, the same issue can show up in cost and outcomes. The review also cites Netflix’s most expensive film ever, Chris Pratt vehicle The Electric State, noting it “sank with both audiences and critics,” which reinforces the risk profile when a platform tries to scale theatrical-style magnitude without guaranteeing franchise gravity.

This is why the review elevates KPop Demon Hunters, calling it last year’s “genuine all-consuming juggernaut” and describing the success as an “important win.” That film matters to the franchise conversation because it suggests Netflix can produce the kind of obsessive, ongoing interest that anchors sequels. The caveat from the source is telling: it notes the film technically started its life at Sony. Even then, the message is that Netflix’s internal system for manufacturing franchise-like endurance has not been consistently reliable, and that success may sometimes arrive through talent and properties that originated outside Netflix’s core pipeline.

There is also a meta-layer here about how franchises are born. The review describes a sequel coming, but adds that the whole thing “always felt like something a little accidental” about how the first Enola Holmes film became a pop culture phenomenon. That phrasing matters for executives, because it implies Netflix is often reacting after the fact. Instead of building with a pre-planned franchise machine, the platform sometimes discovers a winning formula after release, then attempts to scale it into a continuing series once audience attention already exists.

Second-order implications follow quickly from that. If a studio-style franchise is the goal, boards and executives have to answer hard questions about which part of the system is doing the work: talent selection, marketing strategy, release timing, content genre fit, or audience habit formation. The source does not provide new metrics, but it does provide a decision-friendly checklist of outcomes: big initial viewership is not enough, sequels are not guaranteed, and even “most expensive” does not ensure either audience approval or critical alignment. In platform economics, where content spend competes with other programming and subscriber acquisition, a failure to lock in sequels can transform a content strategy from a compounding asset into a series of one-off bets.

There is also a distribution and regulatory context baked into why this is harder for streaming brands than for traditional studios, even if the source does not spell out regulation. Netflix primarily operates under national and regional media frameworks that still reward recurring, scheduled, high-visibility events. When a streamer’s catalog leans heavily into formats like dating shows and true crime and into third-party thrillers and romcoms, it may build habitual viewing in some categories but struggle to establish the same “owned universe” effect that studios produce. That does not mean streaming cannot do it. It means the operational muscle is different, and Netflix appears to be testing and retesting that muscle.

For peers in similar roles, the takeaway is strategic: the headline moment for Enola Holmes 3 is a creative and audience-level outcome, but the industry lesson is about franchise conversion. Netflix can create large attention spikes, it can even hit genuine juggernaut status, but this review suggests the platform has not yet cracked the consistent mechanism that turns a hit into a long-run series that audiences want to return to across multiple installments. If you run content strategy at a streamer, the risk is spending like a studio while learning like a platform. The reward, when it works, is obvious. The review implies Netflix has tasted that reward before, and it is still searching for the repeatable system.