Netflix Invented Sherlock Holmes’s Sister—and Turned Her Into Millie Bobby Brown’s Next Big Franchise

Netflix took one look at Sherlock Holmes and basically asked: what if the world’s most famous detective had a younger sister who could carry her own saga? That spark turned into 'Enola Holmes,' a Millie Bobby Brown‑fronted run that has quickly become its own thing, confident enough to sit right next to the Holmes name without flinching.

What Netflix actually changed

Here’s the twist: Enola is not from Arthur Conan Doyle. She was never part of the original canon. Netflix built out the Holmes family by grafting on an invented little sister and, in the process, rewired a roughly 120‑year‑old literary legacy for a Gen Z crowd. It is a pretty clean example of how streamers treat classic characters these days — not as glass‑cased relics, but as adaptable IP they can reshape, recast, and rebrand for the streaming era.

Where Enola came from

The sister idea started with Nancy Springer’s YA novels (2006-2010), which imagined Sherlock and Mycroft as the older brothers of a sharp, independent teenage girl raised — and very deliberately trained — by a mother who wanted nothing to do with Victorian convention. Netflix bought the film rights and turned Springer’s premise into a sleek, modern‑feeling period mystery machine, anchored by Millie Bobby Brown in the title role.