Okay, delightful romp as always.
There are three minor things I'd have liked:
For Mama Tewkesbury to have been British intelligence or something and that's why she was in Malta, investigating the stolen gold and that's how she met her late husband. She would have agreed with him that it, at the very least, stay out of imperial hands even if they couldn't contrive a way to bring it home.
I understand they wanted even a 'soft' lady to be resilient and capable, but it still would have been cute.
It also might have given us a scene where she and her future daughter in law talk about names and the importance thereof and not giving up a personal identity just to be a Lady.
I /loved/ the ceremony being flipped on it's head, genderwise. I realized that Enola had walked the aisle, but Mama Tewkesbury gave away her son and then I realized that they were flipping the gendered words in the ceremony too 🥰🥰🥰 I might have tacked on that he was taking her name and becoming Earnest Augustus Holmes (bc Tebbity-Gore is /appalling/ 😂), but that's a minor quibble. Their moments together (flashback and en medias res) were /beautiful/; he's known from the beginning that she was a singularly extraordinary woman and he embraced the hell out of that. The way they played and just /lived/ life together was so great.
I appreciated Watson's part in this, he was funny and wise and a good anchoring character; these films have always done a decent job speaking to All The Things (women, people of color, imperialism, etc), but his talk with Tewkesbury was aces.
I really /need/ Cavill's and Patel's Sherlock Holmes spinoff now and them being cute together.
Speaking of which, Watson's quip and his diary and then Enola mentioning that she had deciphered Sherlock's diary, and them being all weird about tea, and Sherlock being all pensive and moody about the upcoming nuptials...AND YOU'RE TELLING ME THEY'RE NOT /GAY/?? /Bullshit/. Definitely the reason they decided to release on July 1st instead of during Pride 😤
Eudoria and Edith are DEFINITELY girlfriends, tho 😂
And I love that Enola's side of the aisle had her important people and that it included Edith 🥰
The wrap up walk and talk actually being a perp walk was *chef's kiss*.
And like 😭 I've never disagreed with this Moriarty 😅 I kept doing finger tappy's when she was talking. If only she chose a less violent means to an end 😭 And like, they've never had the main characters really disagree with her position, just her methods 😅 I really need an EH4 redemption arc for her. Possibly to have to do with Earnest and Watson (and Enola and Sherlock and Eudoria and Edith) returning the gold to Khost and becoming inverse Indiana Jones and repatriating things 🤗.
I adore that they added a character (Mikiel Mizzi of the Partito Anti-Riformista) to be the simultaneous comic relief and straight man. A lot of scripts would have shoved that on to Watson. This lets the doc be the wise uncle figure and the hot-head revolutionary young man to be as unintentionally funny as it's possible to make him.
It was so /good/ 😭😭😭 The fourth wall breaks were a bit over the top in this installment, but not horrible.
Time to watch all three back to back now lol
