Sherlock or Mycroft: Who Is The Smartest of The Two Holmes Brothers?
The good old sibling rivalry of who is the best does not go unnoticed even in the Holmes family.
Having a genius in the family is fortunate enough. But the Holmes family has two of them. And so the question arises, who is the brightest? Who has proven to be the most intelligent in every area of life? That's a great subject for discussion.
The BBC show Sherlock became a smash hit when it premiered in 2010. The show gave its fans extraordinary characters.
But of course, the main focus was always on the Holmes brothers Sherlock and Mycroft, as they were both portrayed as geniuses, but in different ways.
In the BBC Sherlock universe, Benedict Cumberbatch 's character goes deep into criminal investigation while his older brother offers his intelligence to British Secret Services and the government.
Both are portrayed as extremely bright people, each in their own field.
In the show, Sherlock claims that his brother is actually the smartest of the two, but he is also the laziest. Mycroft, for his part, was sure for a long time that his brother was an idiot.
But that was before they met the other children. After that, they realized the power of their own intelligence.
So the question still stands: who is the smartest? The answer is: it depends. If we are talking about the BBC series, then it's true to say that Sherlock is in fact smarter.
He outsmarts and tricks Mycroft many times throughout the show. For example, remember the time he drugged Mycroft and stole his laptop in season 3, episode 3?
Meanwhile, Mycroft is only occasionally able to gain advantage over Sherlock, and usually because of his position in the government.
Mycroft also asked Sherlock to work on several government cases in seasons 1 and 2, which also proves that the younger brother is smarter.
In fact, Mycroft has more resources than Sherlock, so he could solve these cases himself if he were the one with the bigger brain.
But even if Sherlock is depicted as a smarter one in the BBC series, in Conan Doyle's original stories, Mycroft is actually the one who outwits his younger brother.
He was a specialist in "omniscience" for the UK government, advising on various matters and providing solutions without ever actually getting his hands dirty.
So there is no real answer to our question. They are both quite intelligent, just in different ways, and each is dominant in different universes.