General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Ratu Ratu Queens: The Series

Ratu Ratu Queens: The Series is a 2025 Indonesian drama series released on Netflix, following four Indonesian immigrant women who leave their homes and build new lives together in Queens, New York¹. It is a prequel to the 2021 Netflix film Ali & Ratu Ratu Queens, showing how the four women at the center of that film first met and became a chosen family². The series premiered globally on September 12, 2025, with six episodes²^•¹.

Key fact	Detail
Format	Indonesian drama series, 6 episodes, rated TV-MA on Netflix¹
Premiere	September 12, 2025, globally on Netflix²
Relation to film	Prequel to Ali & Ratu Ratu Queens (2021), set about ten years before the film's events²^•³
Main cast	Nirina Zubir (Party), Tika Panggabean (Ance), Happy Salma (Chinta), Asri Welas (Biyah)⁴
Key crew	Director Lucky Kuswandi; writer Andri Cung; producer and showrunner Muhammad Zaidy; production company Palari Films⁵^•²
Setting	Queens, New York, in 2013, among the Indonesian diaspora³
Audience score	7.2/10 on IMDb from 224 user ratings⁶

Spoilers

Premise and characters

The series follows Party, Ance, Chinta, and Biyah, four Indonesian women with different personalities who have each independently moved to New York. In the first episode, they unexpectedly meet one another just as their lives start falling apart, and over the season they form a tenuous household in a shared apartment¹.

Each woman carries a distinct set of pressures. Party (Nirina Zubir) works without legal status while trying to hold on to her apartment and earn a promotion; Ance (Tika Panggabean), raising her child alone, deals with that only daughter growing into adolescence; Chinta (Happy Salma) is abruptly confronted with her husband's demand for a divorce; and Biyah (Asri Welas) will take on any job to get by, even performing in costume as a hot dog or as the Statue of Liberty². Later episodes follow Party through debt and immigration trouble, a health scare for Ance's friend circle to solve, and a betrayal that tests the group's bond before the finale, "Finding Home"¹.

The four lead roles are played by the same actresses who played the characters in the 2021 film: Nirina Zubir as Party, Tika Panggabean as Ance, Happy Salma as Chinta, and Asri Welas as Biyah⁴. The supporting cast includes Yoshi Sudarso as Bisma and Luna Allegra Kurtz as Eva, Ance's daughter⁴^•⁵.

Production history

The series came first. Producer Muhammad Zaidy said at a September 2025 press conference that the idea of a series about four Indonesian diaspora women in the United States arose in 2015, before the film existed; the story of the four women was designed from the start for a serial format⁷. Zaidy, who had lived in Queens alongside Indonesian immigrant women, drew the characters from real people he knew there, adapted for the screen⁷^•⁸.

The project reached screens first as a feature. Ali & Ratu Ratu Queens, directed by Lucky Kuswandi and written by Gina S. Noer, was released globally on Netflix on June 17, 2021, telling the story of a 19-year-old Jakartan, Ali, who travels to New York in search of his long-lost mother and finds a substitute family in the four women⁹. The film's warm portrayal of the four women drew calls for a spin-off centered on them¹⁰.

The prequel series was produced by Palari Films with Zaidy as showrunner, Kuswandi as director, and Andri Cung as screenwriter; Meiske Taurisia is also credited as producer²^•⁵. Gina S. Noer and Muhammad Zaidy are credited on IMDb as creators of the characters⁴. Nirina Zubir said in September 2024 that shooting had wrapped, and that in the series she plays the character roughly fifteen years younger than in the film's timeline¹¹.

Themes and reception

The series is set in 2013, a decade before the film's events, and reconstructs early-2010s New York through period styling in clothing, accessories, and apartment interiors³^•¹². Reviewers highlighted its balance of comedy and drama: the Indonesian review site IDN Times described it as capturing the reality of migrant life honestly, including the difficulty of maintaining a facade of wellbeing in front of family back home¹². Magdalene framed its central theme as chosen family and collective care, with four women battered by circumstance finding and healing each other in a city usually celebrated as a symbol of dreams³. Common Sense Media judged that performances that initially feel cartoonish deepen as the women bond, and noted that the series can be enjoyed without having seen the film¹³.

An academic study using Teun A. van Dijk's critical discourse analysis framework read the series as a critique of the romanticization of life abroad. It identified three dominant discourses: a deconstruction of the American Dream, contrasting the image of America as a land of opportunity with economic hardship, undocumented status, and identity crisis; diaspora vulnerability, shaped by legal uncertainty, loss of primary support, and moral pressure from family in Indonesia; and the social context of real Indonesian diaspora communities in the United States¹⁴.

On IMDb, the series holds a 7.2/10 rating weighted from 224 user votes, with Indonesia and the United States the countries contributing the most ratings⁶. Netflix lists the series with a TV-MA maturity rating¹, while Common Sense Media lists it as TV-14 and recommends it for ages 13 and up¹³.

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026