For those mourning the loss of The White Lotus, we come bearing good news for you: Another binge-worthy series has made its debut on Disney+ and it's already amassing hordes of eagle-eyed watchers after its premiere.
The Stolen Girl, which launched on the streaming service on April 16, is a five-part series that tells the story of Lucia, a young girl who's abducted by a friend's mother (Holliday Grainger) after her own mother Elisa (Denise Gough) allows her to sleepover at her friend's house. As the name suggests, all is not entirely as it seems.
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It might be a parent's nightmare, but to make matters worse The Stolen Girl is also based on a true story, per Newsweek. The five-episode series was written by Catherine Moulton and adapted from the bestselling novel Playdate by Alex Dahl, who also served as an executive producer on the show.
Whether you've already watched it or are considering watching it, these are all of the answers you may have to The Stolen Girl, answered.
Was Nina really Lucia's mother?
It seems as various intervals during the series that Nina (Grainger) may be Lucia's birth mother, suggesting that the child was actually taken from Nina by Elisa and Fred. Nina has baby photos of Lucia, which show her distinguishable birthmark, for example.
By the end of the series, however, it becomes clear that Nina has been photoshopping images of her own daughter, who had died years before. She was editing Lucia's birthmark onto images of her own baby to make it seem as though Lucia really was her daughter all along.
Who did Nina kill?
In the third episode of The Stolen Girl, we meet people trafficker Milan Matkovic, the man Nina hires to help her abduct Lucia and get her out of the country, who visits her house looking for money. It transpires that Milan was told by Nina that he was helping her to take back her own child, not to abduct somebody else's.
After Nina refuses to give him the money, he decides to steal it from her. She protests, but he tackles her to the ground, chokes her and takes the money anyway — not before she musters the strength to plunge a sewing needle into his neck though, killing him. She then cleans up the blood and buries his body.
Why did Nina take Lucia?
By the end of The Stolen Girl, it becomes clear that Nina took Lucia because her own daughter, Josie's sister Rosie, had been killed by none other than Elisa. Elisa had been having an affair with a man named Marcus, who was one of her clients, when she fell pregnant with their baby, meaning that her son George was actually Marcus'.
Before George was born, Elisa had been to visit her family with Marcus, as her father was dying. While the pair were there, Elisa and her father had an argument before it was revealed that he'd sexually abused her as a child. Her mother had known about this, and protected him. Before the pair left her parent's house, Elisa pushed her father down the stairs in a bout of rage, ultimately killing him.
This story then coincided with Nina's. After furiously fleeing her parent's house with Marcus, Elisa crashed into Nina's car, which she was in along with her husband Nicholas and their two children, Josie and Rose. Nicholas and Rose were killed on-impact, yet Marcus urged Elisa to carry on driving, which he did. Marcus then took responsibility for the crash and went to prison, leaving Elisa free to have George and return to Fred and Lucia.
What happened to Elisa, Nina and Lucia at the end?
At the end of The Stolen Girl, Elisa manages to catch up with Nina and gets Lucia back with the help of journalist Selma (Ambika Mod), but not before admitting her crimes to her.
When back in the UK, Elisa is then arrested for her crimes of killing Nicholas and Rose in the car crash and perverting the course of justice, and sentenced to six years' imprisonment (a lower-than-usual punishment, after the court took into account the intense distress Elisa had been in at the time of the crash). Elisa also comes clean to Fred about George's parentage, but the future of their relationship remains unclear at the end of the series.
In the final episode of The Stolen Girl, Nina had also gone on the run (again) with Josie and had yet to be found.
The Stolen Girl is available to stream on Disney+ now.
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Naomi May is a seasoned culture journalist and editor with over ten years’ worth of experience in shaping stories and building digital communities. After graduating with a First Class Honours from City University's prestigious Journalism course, Naomi joined the Evening Standard, where she worked across both the newspaper and website. She is now the Digital Editor at ELLE Magazine and has written features for the likes of The Guardian, Vogue, Vice and Refinery29, among many others. Naomi is also the host of the ELLE Collective book club.
