Making its Disney+ premiere on April 16, 2025, The Stolen Woman guarantees to be probably the most intriguing new thriller miniseries on TV. Based mostly on the 2020 novel Playdate by Alex Dahl, the story considerations Elisa Blix (Denise Gough), an English mom whose world is thrown right into a chaotic tailspin when her adolescent daughter out of the blue vanishes from an harmless playdate. As Elisa desperately searches Europe for her lacking little one, a dogged manhunt spans from England to France.
The Stolen Woman boasts a stellar forged and contains 5 easy-to-binge episodes. Along with guiding viewers on how and the place to look at the thriller thriller sequence, it is value analyzing the supply materials, the expertise concerned, important reception, and why followers ought to unpack the central thriller this Springtime.

The Stolen Woman
- Launch Date
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April 16, 2025
- Community
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Disney+
- Writers
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Catherine Moulton
‘The Stolen Woman’s Launch Schedule
Starting at 10 PM ET on April 16, 2025, all 5 episodes of The Stolen Woman might be accessible worldwide on Disney+. U.S. viewers can watch every episode on Hulu the next day. In the meantime, for many who don’t want to binge the entire season without delay or wouldn’t have a Disney/Hulu subscription, Freeform will air new weekly episodes each Wednesday at 10 PM ET.
Episode |
Disney+ Launch Date |
Freeform Launch Date |
1 |
Apr. 16, 10 PM ET |
Apr. 16, 10 PM ET |
2 |
Apr. 16, 10 PM ET |
Apr. 23, 10 PM ET |
3 |
Apr. 16, 10 PM ET |
Apr. 30, 10 PM ET |
4 |
Apr. 16, 10 PM ET |
Could 7, 10 PM ET |
5 |
Apr. 16, 10 PM ET |
Could 14, 10 PM ET |
What To Anticipate from ‘The Stolen Woman’
Based mostly on Alex Dahl’s bestselling e book, Playdate, The Stolen Woman‘s plot thickens when Elisa Blix agrees to let her nine-year-old daughter, Lucia (Beatrice Cohen), sleep over at her new greatest good friend, Josephine “Josie” Thibault’s (Robyn Betteridge) home in a fancy English manor. When Elisa returns to choose Lucia up the following day, she is mortified to study that her daughter is lacking and that the English manor is a trip rental home owned by another person. Elisa turns to Josie’s mom, Rebecca (Holliday Grainger), for solutions, who has hidden secrets and techniques of her personal.
As soon as she realizes Lucia has been kidnapped, Elisa, her husband Fred (Jim Sturgess), and her mom Maria (Lisa Bowerman) take part in a global search throughout Europe. But, the extra they unravel the thriller, the extra Elisa and Fred are criminally implicated in their very own daughter’s disappearance, forcing them to legally clear their names, discover Lucia, and make sure the kidnapper is delivered to justice.
Alongside the way in which, Fred and Elisa encounter Detective Inspector Shona Sinclair (Bronagh Waugh), Detective Sergeant Lizzie Walker (Layo-Christina Akinlude), clairvoyant investigative journalist Selma Desai (Ambika Mod), Selma’s boss and senior information editor, Kaleb Negasi (Michael Workeye), and different key characters who search for Lucia and lift a suspicious eye towards her dad and mom to make sure their innocence.
The present’s compelling hook revolves round whether or not Lucia’s dad and mom should have their little one taken from them and whether or not Lucia advantages. As Fred and Elisa struggle for his or her innocence, their relationship with Lucia comes beneath suspicion, with the twists and turns elevating the query: Is Lucia higher off along with her captor or safer at house?
Why ‘The Stolen Woman’ Is the Finest New TV Thriller
The Stolen Woman guarantees to be probably the most gripping new TV thriller because of the why, not the who. Whereas most thriller exhibits revolve round who’s chargeable for the inciting crime, The Stolen Woman states who’s culpable for Lucia’s abduction proper from the leap. Subsequently, the sequence is much less about who’s responsible and extra about why the wrongdoer broke the legislation. Discover the parsed language in Disney’s synopsis:
“As an pressing manhunt unfolds throughout Europe, Elisa and her husband Fred discover themselves the item of police and public scrutiny. Elisa’s good household begins to unravel beneath the strain, and long-buried secrets and techniques come to gentle.”
“Rebecca took Lucia for a motive. And as viewers study extra concerning the tangled lives of those girls, the query of whether or not Rebecca was justified in kidnapping the little lady arises – and if she is perhaps higher off staying hidden.”
With viewers advised who took Lucia from the beginning, The Stolen Woman bucks conventional thriller conventions and flips them on their ear. By means of flashbacks, the nonlinear story turns into extra about Rebecca’s deep-seated motives and tethered previous to the Blix household and fewer about figuring out the kidnapper ultimately.
Themes of secret household abuse, surrogacy, abduction versus adoption, and sophistication divides start to percolate round Lucia’s kidnapping, providing viewers greater than a easy abduction thriller. That is the place the present separates from the morass of formulaic TV mysteries, the place the “who” in “whodunit” typically takes priority over the why.
All 5 episodes of The Stolen Woman can be found on Disney+ starting April 16 at 10 PM ET. Episodes will air the following day on Hulu, and Freeform will launch new episodes each Wednesday at 10 PM ET.