The Indonesian comedy-drama Ratu Ratu Queens: The Series has premiered globally on the Netflix streaming platform. The six-episode limited series centers on the lives of four Indonesian women who immigrate to Queens, New York, each with a distinct personality and motivation for starting a new life abroad. The narrative explores their initial struggles and the eventual formation of a powerful friendship in a foreign land.
A New Chapter in an Established Universe
This series serves as a direct prequel to the successful 2021 Indonesian film Ali & Ratu Ratu Queens. The production sees the return of the original creative leadership, including director Lucky Kuswandi and producer Muhammad Zaidy of Palari Films, who also acts as showrunner for the series. Set eight years before the events depicted in the film, the series executes a significant narrative shift. While the film presented a coming-of-age story focused on the male protagonist, Ali, and his search for his mother, the series deliberately moves the four women who were his supporting cast to the center of the story. This structural reorientation elevates the characters from their role as a collective maternal support system into individual protagonists with their own distinct agencies and backstories. The decision to develop the series was driven by significant audience interest in these characters following the film’s release, representing a strategic expansion of the narrative world that retroactively provides depth to the film’s concept of a “chosen family”.
Ensemble Focus and Character Dynamics
A crucial element of the series’ continuity is the return of the principal cast to reprise their roles. Nirina Zubir portrays Party, Asri Welas is Biyah, Tika Panggabean plays Ance, and Happy Salma returns as Chinta. The series deconstructs the unified front these characters presented in the film to explore the individual conflicts that defined their early experiences in the United States. The narrative assigns each woman a specific, high-stakes personal challenge, transforming them from archetypes into fully realized characters. Party’s arc involves navigating her precarious legal status while working as a cleaning service employee with aspirations of opening her own restaurant. Ance, a single parent contending with the death of her husband, faces the complexities of raising her teenage daughter in a new cultural environment. Chinta, a dreamer and massage therapist who believes in astrology, has her story focus on the personal reinvention required after she faces an unexpected divorce. Biyah’s journey continues to explore the economic hustle required for survival, building on her established film persona as a resilient paparazzi photographer with a proud Javanese accent. The series’ central dramatic thrust is to chronicle how these women, through their separate trials, eventually forge the powerful solidarity that defines them as the “Queens”.
Thematic Resonance and Cultural Specificity
The series examines universal themes of friendship, cultural adaptation, social pressure, and the search for identity, all filtered through the specific lens of the Indonesian diaspora experience. The narrative uses the immigrant condition as a catalyst, stripping the characters of their familiar social structures and forcing them to confront crises of identity in a heightened, isolating context. Their individual struggles with professional ambition, single motherhood, and post-divorce independence become emblematic of broader explorations of modern womanhood. The formation of a “chosen family” emerges as a central theme, presented not as a given but as a constructed sanctuary built out of necessity and mutual support in response to displacement and hardship. The story is grounded in the socio-economic realities of immigrant life in New York, avoiding idealized depictions in favor of a more authentic portrayal of the community and its financial challenges.
Auteur-Driven Vision and Technical Execution
The retention of the core creative team from the original film ensures a high degree of aesthetic and tonal consistency. Director Lucky Kuswandi’s established sensibility for blending heartfelt drama with nuanced comedy is evident throughout the series. Known for using film as a medium for social commentary and posing questions rather than statements, Kuswandi’s direction shapes the series as an exploration of complex relationships and cultural norms. With Muhammad Zaidy as showrunner and Palari Films co-producing, the series is positioned as an auteur-driven extension of a singular artistic vision rather than a derivative work.
The screenplay is penned by Andri Cung, a writer and former photographer whose preference for capturing realism over artifice informs the narrative’s grounded tone. To maintain visual and atmospheric authenticity, principal photography was conducted on location in Queens, New York, the same setting as the film. The cinematography, continuing the work of Batara Goempar from the film, captures the borough from the perspective of its immigrant inhabitants, deliberately avoiding picturesque, postcard-like visuals in favor of a more genuine representation. The sound design further enhances this authenticity, combining traditional and contemporary music to guide emotion and utilizing contextual language and code-switching to reflect how the characters would naturally speak.
Global Distribution and Concluding Remarks
Ratu Ratu Queens: The Series is receiving a simultaneous global release, positioning it as a significant Indonesian production on the international streaming landscape. By synthesizing comedic and dramatic elements, the series presents an accessible yet meaningful narrative that explores the challenges and triumphs of the immigrant experience. Ultimately, the story champions the core values of female fortitude, resilience, and the profound power of solidarity to create a sense of home in a foreign land. The series premiered on the streaming service on September 12, 2025.
Where to Watch “Ratu Ratu Queens: The Series”
