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Irene Adler is a fictional character in the Sherlock Holmes stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A former opera singer and actress, she was featured in the short story "A Scandal in Bohemia", published in July 1891. Adler is one of the most notable female characters in the Sherlock Holmes series, despite appearing in only one story. While not technically a criminal and bearing no malice towards Holmes, she outsmarts him and evades his traps. Sherlock Holmes refers to her afterwards respectfully as "the Woman"."A Scandal in Bohemia" by Arthur Conan Doyle. Published 25 June 1891 in the July issue of The Strand Magazine.
Despite her brief appearance in the canon, Adler persists in many adaptations of Sherlock Holmes. While in the original, Watson notes Holmes has no romantic interest in Adler or in women in general, pointing out the detective only exhibits a platonic admiration for her wit and cunning, some derivative works reinterpret Adler as a romantic interest for Holmes or as a former lover who later engages in crime. (2011), Warner Bros. Pictures. Retrospectively, the original story is viewed as a more progressive and feminist interpretation of Adler. From the television shows Sherlock and Elementary to the film Sherlock Holmes, each portrayal depicts several notable qualities Adler possesses, such as her independence, adaptability, and intelligence; but a common issue pointed out with each portrayal is the attempts to mesh these qualities with seduction and manipulation.
According to Doyle's "A Scandal in Bohemia", Adler was born in New Jersey in 1858. She had a career in opera as a contralto or soprano, performing at La Scala in Milan, Italy, and a term as prima donna in the Imperial Opera of Warsaw, Poland. In Poland, she became the lover of Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von Ormstein, Grand Duke of Cassel-Felstein and King of Bohemia. The King describes her as "a well-known adventuress" (a term widely used at the time in ambiguous association with "courtesan") who has "the face of the most beautiful of women and the mind of the most resolute of men."
Five years after their secret romance, it has been arranged for the King to marry Clotilde Lothman von Saxe-Meiningen, a young Scandinavian princess. However, he fears her conservative family would call off the wedding if any evidence of his former liaison with Adler were ever revealed to them. He fears she may attempt to blackmail him with a photograph of the two.
The events of the story unfolds when the King seeks out Holmes' skills to retrieve the photograph from Adler after multiple attempts have proved fruitless. In pursuit of information about Adler, Holmes witnesses her marry Godfrey Norton in secret. Despite this, Sherlock still tries to retrieve the photograph. However, Adler, aware of his plan, flees the country before they can catch her. Holmes has been outwitted.
His perspective on the investigation changes when Holmes realizes that he has been on the wrong side of the affair all along. In a handwritten letter addressed to him, Adler reveals that she has hidden the photograph simply for the purpose of protecting herself against the monarch's wrath. She writes, "As to the photograph, your client may rest in peace. I love and am loved by a better man than he. The King may do what he will without hindrance from one whom he has cruelly wronged."
Holmes, who "used to make merry over the cleverness of women," requests a photograph of Adler in lieu of an emerald ring from the King and leaves, "without observing the hand which the King had stretched out to him." He keeps her photograph locked up as a reminder of his respect for her intellectual prowess.
Another possibility is the actor Lillie Langtry, the lover of Edward, the Prince of Wales. Writing in 1957, Julian Wolff, a member of the literary society The Baker Street Irregulars, comments that it was well known that Langtry was born in Jersey (she was called the "Jersey Lily") and Adler is born in New Jersey. Langtry had later had several other aristocratic lovers, and her relationships had been speculated upon in the public press in the years before Doyle's story was published.
Another suggestion is the dancer , the alleged lover and later wife of Archduke Johann Salvator of Austria.
Due to her intelligence Adler earns Holmes's unbounded admiration, but he is not romantically attracted to her. When the King of Bohemia says, "Would she not have made an admirable queen? Is it not a pity she was not on my level?" Holmes dryly replies that Adler is indeed on a much different level from the King. The beginning of "A Scandal in Bohemia" describes the high regard in which Holmes held Adler:
Analysis of "A Scandal in Bohemia" has also focused on how Adler diverges from Victorian social standards for women. She is unmarried at the beginning of the story, in opposition to "the importance that the middle classes placed on the family unit" at the time. Adler further defies gender norms by cross-dressing, donning male clothes with great comfort as demonstrated by her reference to them as her "walking-clothes". Several authors have argued that Adler's nonconformity is what leads to her victory over Holmes, as he makes deductions based on societal norms that she does not adhere to. Holmes underestimates her ability to detect his ulterior motives when he enters her home, then the detective is unable to recognize the cross-dressing Adler, and so does not know she is aware of his plot. This gives her time to abscond with the all-important photograph, triumphing over Holmes.
In two novels by John Lescroart published in 1986 and 1987, it is stated that Adler and Holmes had a son, Auguste Lupa, and it is implied that he later changes his name to Nero Wolfe.
A series of mystery novels written by Carole Nelson Douglas (1990–2004) features Adler as the protagonist and sleuth, chronicling her life shortly before (in the novel Good Night, Mr. Holmes) and after her notable encounter with Sherlock Holmes in "A Scandal in Bohemia", in which the series features Holmes as a supporting character. The series continues with Adler’s other adventures in numerous locations around the world, showcasing her cunning and brilliance. Compared with later adaptations, Douglas’s mysteries have been praised for not “relying on Adler’s sexuality or appearance.” Douglas provides Adler with a back story as a child vaudeville performer who was trained as an opera singer before going to work as a Pinkerton detective. In the books, Douglas strongly implies that Irene's mother was Lola Montez and her father possibly Ludwig I of Bavaria. The series includes Godfrey Norton as Irene's supportive barrister husband; Penelope "Nell" Huxleigh, a vicar's daughter and former governess who is Irene's best friend and biographer; and Nell's love interest Quentin Stanhope. Historical characters such as Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, Alva Vanderbilt and Consuelo Vanderbilt, and journalist Nellie Bly, among others, also make appearances.
The young adult Italian series , by under the pen name Irene Adler, is a twenty two book saga about the adventures a young Adler has with a young Sherlock Holmes and Arsène Lupin, the first four volumes were translated to English and the others to multiple languages including Spanish, French and Portuguese.
Adler appears as an opera singer in the 1993 pastiche The Canary Trainer, where she encounters Holmes during his three-year 'death' while he is working as a violinist in the Paris Opera House, and asks him to help her protect her friend and unofficial protégé, Christine Daaé, from the 'Opera Ghost'.
In the 2009 novel The Language of Bees by Laurie R. King, it is stated Adler is deceased when the book takes place and once had an affair with Sherlock Holmes. The story reveals she gave birth to a son, Damian Adler, an artist now known as The Addler.
A duology series of young adult titles by author Claire M. Andrews about Adler's beginnings was published in August 2025. The first novel, A Beautiful and Terrible Murder, explores Adler's education and family history while she solves a series of murders at Oxford University alongside Sherlock.9780316575355 ISBN 9780316575355
She is portrayed by Rachel McAdams in the 2009 film Sherlock Holmes. In that film, she is a femme fatale. A skilled professional thief, as well as a divorcée, Adler is no longer married to Godfrey Norton, and needs Holmes' help for the case. She and Holmes are depicted as having a deep and mutual infatuation, even while she is employed by Professor Moriarty.
McAdams reprised the role in the 2011 sequel in which Moriarty, deeming her position compromised by her love for Holmes, poisons and (apparently) kills her. Moriarty taunts Holmes about murdering Adler, and Holmes swears revenge, leading to their climactic battle at Reichenbach Falls.
Sarah Badel portrayed Adler in the 7 November 1990 BBC Radio 4 broadcast of "A Scandal in Bohemia" opposite Clive Merrison's Holmes. Ellen McLain played Adler in the Imagination Theatre radio dramatisation of "A Scandal in Bohemia", which aired on 17 June 2012.
In the 1984 Granada Television series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes starring Jeremy Brett, the first episode is "A Scandal in Bohemia", in which Adler is played by Gayle Hunnicutt.
In "A Scandal in Belgravia", the first episode of the 2012 second series of the BBC Sherlock, Adler was portrayed by Lara Pulver opposite Benedict Cumberbatch as Holmes. She is initially sought to recover incriminating photos she possesses of a liaison between her and a female member of the Royal Family, along with various other incriminating documents kept in a password-protected phone.
In the CBS series, Elementary, Adler is initially an unseen character in the first season, mentioned first in "Flight Risk" (2012) as a former love interest of Holmes. It is later explained that she apparently died at the hands of a serial killer Holmes was investigating known as "M", an event that fuelled Sherlock's descent into heroin addiction. In "M", Sherlock confronts M, revealed to be Sebastian Moran, and is told that Adler was not killed by Moran, but by his employer: Moriarty. In "Risk Management", it is explained that Adler was an American art restorer living in London. Holmes discovers Adler is alive, having been kept as Moriarty's prisoner in a dilapidated house. It is later revealed that Adler was a false identity assumed by Jamie Moriarty. Natalie Dormer played Adler/Moriarty in the final three episodes of the season.
In the 2013 Russian drama Sherlock Holmes, Adler takes a major role in the series and is portrayed by Lyanka Gryu.
In the 2014 Japanese puppetry television show, Sherlock Holmes, broadcast on NHK (日本放送協会, Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai, Japan Broadcasting Corporation), Adler is a school nursing of a fictional boarding school Beeton School. At first she has an affair with Headmaster Ormstein but takes up with another man Godfrey Norton who teaches art and sees through the plot of Holmes and Watson in "The Adventure of the Headmaster with Trouble" based on "A Scandal in Bohemia". She is voiced by Rie Miyazawa.
Adler appears in the original anime television series (2019–2020), voiced by Maaya Sakamoto. In the anime television series Moriarty the Patriot, Adler is voiced by Yōko Hikasa, taking on the Cross-dressing of James Bonde to work as a spy.
In the 2025 series Watson, looking at a modern-day Doctor Watson running the Holmes Clinic after Holmes's apparent death at Reichenbach, Irene Adler appears in “A Variant of Unknown Significance”, portrayed by Whoopie Van Raam. She visits the clinic claiming that she seeks medical help for her son Angus, who she claims is Sherlock’s son, but Watson deduces that Angus is just assisting the con and is neither ill or Sherlock’s son. The goal was to acquire a sample of Sherlock’s DNA to sell to Baron Adelbert Gruner (“The Adventure of the Illustrious Client”), who has moved on from “collecting” women to connecting genetic samples of particular geniuses. Realising that Adler is ill and was planning to sell the sample to Gruner in exchange for money to help set up her son for after her death, Watson offers an improved treatment plan for her illness that should at least extend Irene's life in exchange for her not selling the sample to Gruner, and volunteers to be Angus’s guardian after her death.
Adler is featured in Soviet director Igor Maslennikov's made-for-TV 5-part film series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. She appears in the fourth part, The Treasures of Agra (1983), based upon The Sign of the Four (main storyline) and A Scandal in Bohemia (flashback), in which Holmes and Watson, while waiting for the new information on his current case, remember their encounter with Adler (played by Larisa Solovyova).
In the 1984 made-for-TV film The Masks of Death, a widowed Adler, played by Anne Baxter, is a guest at Graf Udo Von Felseck (Anton Diffring)'s country house where Holmes (Peter Cushing) and Watson (John Mills) are investigating the supposed disappearance of a visiting prince. Although Holmes initially considers her a suspect, she proves her innocence and becomes an ally.
In the 1991 television film Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady, Adler (Morgan Fairchild) reunites with an ageing Holmes (Christopher Lee) when a murder happens during her performance in Vienna. Holmes and Adler, whose flirtatious relationship with Sherlock is similar to Sherlock Holmes in New York‘s portrayal, briefly refer to past confrontations, including a rather confusing case where Adler had posed as a young boy to retrieve something hidden in Holmes's safe. Adler also explains that she was married for several years (Holmes having last seen her at the wedding previous to the film), only for her husband to die of illness two years before the film's events.
Liliana Komorowska portrayed Adler as a Polish opera singer in The Hallmark Channel's 2001 made-for-TV film The Royal Scandal opposite Matt Frewer's Holmes.
In 2007's BBC Television production Sherlock Holmes and the Baker Street Irregulars, Adler (portrayed by Anna Chancellor) is the main villain of the piece and one of Sherlock Holmes' archenemies instead of a potential love interest.
In the television series House, James Wilson tells a story about Adler, a patient with whom Gregory House was obsessed and fell in love, in the 2008 episode "Joy to the World".
In "The 10 Li'l Grifters Job" (2011), the season 4 episode 2 of Leverage, the character Sophie portrays Adler at the Murder Mystery Masquerade.
In the season five episode of The Flash entitled "Goldfaced" (2019), detective Sherloque Wells meets Renee Adler (portrayed by Kimberly Williams-Paisley), the Earth-1 doppelgänger of his five ex-wives. She is later shown to be a metahuman with possible telekinesis powers; upon seeing this, Sherloque vows to protect her from the serial killer Cicada. During the episode, Sherloque also has an encounter with four of his ex-wives, all of whom are variants of Adler. Now that they know which Earth he is on, they demand their back alimony payments be met within a month, or they will have a multiverse-traveling bounty hunter come and collect the payments for them.
There is a claim that Adler is a feminist/proto-feminist character. Some argue that, Adler “serves as a feminist symbol within a literary series that predominantly praises masculine behavior” and shows that “even in 1891, strong feminist characters existed.” Due to Adler’s unique position of being a woman who outsmarted Holmes, many claim that she is a feminist character and therefore should be adapted as such.
On the contrary, some claim that, despite Adler’s outsmarting of Holmes, she should not be regarded as a feminist character. Although Adler is uncharacteristically independent, at the end of “A Scandal in Bohemia,” Holmes still comes to “acquire” her in the form of a photo, following the anti-feminist view of women as objects. There also is an argument that Adler still abides by female gender roles, seeking just to get married and be subservient to her husband. One notable proponent of this idea is Steven Moffat, creator of A Scandal in Belgravia who claims:
"In the original, Irene Adler's victory over Sherlock Holmes was to move house and run away with her husband. That's not a feminist victory."As such, modern reinventions of Adler almost always attempt a "post-feminist metamorphosis" by providing her autonomy over her body where she can maneuver her sexuality to exert control over the male-centered narrative. Through a liberal feminist lens, Adler's sexualized role names and confronts the power of men to the male audience in order to defy the patriarchal structure.
However, this deviation from the source material has become heavily criticized as problematic in nature. By "sex-ing" up her character, postmodern adaptations "failed to re-appropriate Adler from its Victorian original by falling back on dominant masculine discourses." Critics attribute this deviation to the "sensationist urge" to make modern Victorian adaptations more "sexy and sexual" by "introducing nudity and sexually risqué narrative elements."
Regarding the scene where she dresses in front of Holmes, kisses him passionately and drugs him before leaving him handcuffed to the bed, it is observed by Rhonda L. H. Taylor that,
Some critics defended Adler's portrayal in her initial scenes, pointing to moments when she physically overpowers Sherlock with a BDSM or when Sherlock fails to deduce anything from her naked body. In an interview to the The Guardian, Steven Moffat, co-creator of the series defends this portrayal of Adler, stating, "in the original, Irene Adler's victory over Sherlock Holmes was to move house and run away with her husband. That's not a feminist victory."
However, to most critics, the misogyny behind the character was shown in the final scenes. Adler's power becomes temporary as she is revealed to be a confederate in Jim Moriarty's schemes. As she remarks in the episode's final moments, "I had a bit of help. I had all this stuff, and never knew what to do with it. Thank God for Jim." Later, Sherlock claims victory over her by deducing her emotions with his cold rationality and Moriarty's protection is lost and control over her is reinstated to Sherlock, once again encasing the autonomy of Adler within masculine boundaries. Critics point out that "Irene fears bodily injury. Her phone, the sensitive information stored within it, both protects and endangers Irene's body... its loss exposing her to physical harm" and that between Sherlock, Moriarty or Mycroft Holmes, all three men have more power and resources to force Adler to be compliant in order to survive.
Critics also claim that her overall role in the episode reinforces the prostitution paradigm, that all women are sexual property of men. Rather than belonging to one man, Adler functions as "public property" and her only real use is her sexual function, following the trend of women's role in the Sherlock series as "conduits for male power...as the object of sexual dominance, they are necessary to release that power. But they do not acquire power themselves; it is, instead, passed on to Holmes."
In her final appearance in the episode, a hijab-clad Adler is rescued by Sherlock from the hands of a terrorist cell in Pakistan. This scene garnered widespread criticism. In the essay "Postfeminism and Screen Adaptations of Sherlock Holmes Stories: The Case of Irene Adler", Antonija Primorac observes,
By the end of the episode, the dangerously sexual female nude body of the metropolitan center is displaced into a Pakistani desert and transformed into a kneeling powerless bundle of indigo-blue wraps that set off her tear-sodden face. The luminous skin of her ‘battledress’, of the naked female body-as-weapon, is supplanted by a crestfallen figure in a hijab. In a stereotypically Victorian fashion that does not feature in Doyle's text, Adler's use of her own body as a means of power turns her into a fallen woman who has to be punished, banished to the former colonial space and saved by the hero.
| Margaret Ward | The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – "A Scandal in Bohemia" | 1954 | BBC Light Programme |
| Gudrun Ure | Sherlock Holmes – "A Scandal in Bohemia" | 1966 | BBC Light Programme |
| Marian Seldes | CBS Radio Mystery Theater – "A Scandal in Bohemia" (2026). 9780786492282, McFarland & Company. ISBN 9780786492282 | 1977 | CBS Radio |
| Sarah Badel | The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – "A Scandal in Bohemia" | 1990 | BBC Radio 4 |
| Lindsay Whisler | Moriarty | 2022 | Scripted podcast (Audible) |
| Arielle Goldman | 2023 | ||
| Chloe Zeitounian | Sherlock & Co. | 2025 | Goalhanger Podcasts |
| Inga Swenson | Baker Street | 1965 | Musical (Broadway theatre) |
| Tanya Franks | Sherlock Holmes: The Best Kept Secret | 2013 | Play by Mark Catley |
| Renee Olstead | Sherlock Holmes | 2015 | Play by Greg Kramer |
| Sarab Kamoo | Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Elusive Ear | 2018 | Plays by David MacGregor |
| Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Fallen Soufflé | 2019 | ||
| Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Ghost Machine | 2022 | ||
| Charlotte Rampling | Sherlock Holmes in New York | 1976 | Television film (American) |
| Anne Baxter | The Masks of Death | 1984 | Television film (British) |
| Morgan Fairchild | Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady | 1992 | Television film |
| Carolyn Wilkinson | The Hound of London | 1993 | Television film (Luxembourgish-Canadian) |
| Liliana Komorowska | The Royal Scandal | 2001 | Television film (Canadian) |
| Anna Chancellor | Sherlock Holmes and the Baker Street Irregulars | 2007 | Television film (British) |
| Olga Edwardes | Sherlock Holmes – "A Scandal in Bohemia" | 1951 | (British) |
| Larisa Solovyova | The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson – "The Treasures of Agra" | 1983 | (Russian) |
| Gayle Hunnicutt | The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – "A Scandal in Bohemia" | 1984 | (British) |
| Lara Pulver | Sherlock – "A Scandal in Belgravia" | 2012 | (British) |
| Sherlock – "The Sign of Three" | 2014 | (British) | |
| Natalie Dormer | Elementary | 2013–2015 | (American) |
| Lyanka Gryu | Sherlock Holmes | 2013 | (Russian) |
| Rie Miyazawa | Sherlock Holmes | 2014–2015 | (Japanese) |
| Maaya Sakamoto | 2019 | (Japanese) | |
| Yoko Hikasa | Moriarty the Patriot | 2020–2021 | TV anime series (Japanese) |
| Natalie Van Sistine | Moriarty the Patriot | 2020–2021 | TV anime series (Japanese) (English dub) |
| Whoopie Van Raam | Watson – "A Variant of Unknown Significance" | 2025 | (American) |
| Rachel McAdams | Sherlock Holmes | 2009 | (British–American) |
| 2011 | (British–American) | ||
| Belén López | Holmes & Watson. Madrid Days | 2012 | (Spanish) |
| Mary J Blige | Sherlock Gnomes | 2018 | Paramount |
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