Watson Season 2 Review
Watson is a medical drama television series with detective elements created by Craig Sweeny. A 13-episode Season 1 premiered on 26 January 2025, followed by a 20-episode Season 2, which started streaming on 13 October 2025 and concluded on 3 May 2026.
Season 2 of Watson continues the story after the end of the main villain, Dr Moriarty in Season 1. Dr Watson continues running his “Holmes Clinic” in Pittsburgh, treating patients with medical maladies whose medical conditions are rarely what they first appear to be.
The Good
Watson is a medical drama series stitched into Sherlockian mythology bring a fresh perspective on Watson, who in pop-culture is usually in the shadows, while Sherlock Holmes gets all the recognition for being the world’s greatest detective.
The series unfolds as a “case-of-the-week” drama presenting puzzling medical cases whose resolution requires a blend of diagnostic and investigative skills that usually not without moral dilemmas.
Morris Chestnut as Doctor John Watson remains the series’ strongest asset. His performance blends empathy with razor-sharp intellect, the kind of doctor-detective you want to believe in you, even the diagnosis and the script are looking rather convoluted. Watson’s character undergoes a layered complexity, navigating the betrayal from the previous season and the lingering implications of Holmes faking his death.
Watson’s team also get fleshed out, Dr. Ingrid Derian getting therapy for her anti-social personality disorder. The Crofts twins played Peter Mark Kendall undergo their character growth, while Dr. Sasha Lubbock gets some character development that tests her usually sunny disposition.
Ritchie Coster as Shinwell Johnson worms his way into a favourite character on his redemption path, training to be a nurse and there’s a cute romantic storyline on the cards for the former criminal.
The Bad
Its not a groundbreaking series, although it has some interesting twists, it maintains a safe neutral ground that feels like a blend between Elementrary and House. The episodes are rather formulaic; a medical emergency, diagnosis, then eventually a treatment plan, and all is well.
The previous season had left a Holmes-shaped void, and they tried to fill it by bringing Holmes back. Apparently, he faked his death, so he is back but not really, as he is mostly off-screen doing side-quests that are never explained and prefers that no one just know he is alive just yet, thus it’s like he is never there and they wanted to orbit around Sherlock Holmes lore, instead of establishing their own identity.
The season kinda undoes its most promising aspect of giving Watson his own agency. Instead, it reinforces the notion that Watson cannot exist narratively without Holmes, a rather odd contradiction for a show that bears his name.
The Ugly
The show still struggles with its identity, trying to step away from under Sherlock Holmes’s shadow; is it a Sherlock Holmes spin-off, a psychological thriller or a medical drama, and by the time it finally achieved balance and found a rhythm, it had lost ratings and viewership.
It has not been renewed for another season.
The show’s cancellation was announced in March while it still had 5 episodes to go and the last 5 episodes ironically, were some of the most gripping this season. If they had started with this storyline, instead of 15 episodes later, perhaps could have saved the rating… and now it has ended, leaving unresolved story-arcs in a convoluted finale.
Final Thoughts
Season 2 of Watson had flashes of brilliance with plans to explore an ambitious third season but the show’s cancellation leaves things in limbo. I hope some other network picks it up and continues, we need closure!
Fun Fact I had never realised until I started watching season 2 that the characters of identical twins Drs Stephens Croft and Adam Croft are played by one actor, Peter Mark Kendall.
Have you watched Watson? Would you start watching a series if you know it got cancelled?
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