Disney has confirmed an issue impacting its Disney+ service that led to missing episodes for a number of popular series on its service, including those from its Disney, Pixar, and Marvel properties.
These include “Hannah Montana,” “Ducktales,” Once Upon A Time,” “X-Men And The Wolverine,” “Ultimate Spider-Man,” “Agent Carter,” “Big City Greens,” “The Proud Family,” “Austin & Ally,” “Big Hero 6,” “The Wizards of Waverly Place,” “Good Luck Charlie,” “Bizaardvark,” “Lab Rats Elite Force,” “Marvel Rising,” “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse,” “The Owl House,” among many others.
When TechCrunch alerted the company on the issue, a spokesperson said they were working to address the problem:
We are actively working to resolve the issue impacting access to a subset of series episodes for some Disney+ subscribers. We are sorry for the experience and appreciate everyone’s patience.
The issues were first reported by the Disney+-focused site, What’s On Disney Plus, based on user complaints arising in their Facebook group.
TechCrunch can also confirm that my personal account is missing the first episode of “Hannah Montana,” as well as “Ducktales.”
Image Credits: Disney+
Users noticed some Disney+ shows were more full than others while some had a huge chunk of episodes that had seemingly disappeared into the void.
“Agent Carter” stood out the most, with only a mere four episodes from season one available on the service. Meanwhile, season three of “Austin & Ally” had only two episodes.
Image Credits: Disney+
According to What’s On Disney Plus, these missing episodes are still showing up in Disney+ in other countries such as the U.K., so they’ve not been completely removed.
Some Facebook group members suspected that this is a tech issue (which is what we would have guessed originally), while others had gone more onto the conspiracy side of things. Some were jumping to conclusions, without evidence, by suggesting that Disney was planning to move the shows with missing episodes over to Hulu or that topics discussed in these episodes were controversial. One member suggested the possibility that this was Disney’s attempt to prevent people from pirating the entire series and selling them.
While these were interesting and certainly far-fetched theories, we now know that the streaming service just has a glitch, and the team aims to fix it soon enough.
Disney+ subscribers have noticed missing episodes before. On March 28, the Australian animated series “Bluey” had two missing episodes as well as 20 shorts that weren’t streaming on the service.
Plus, users have previously noticed that episode one of “The Little Mermaid” was missing, despite being available to watch on Google Play and YouTube. “TaleSpin” also lacked two episodes, which was strange since a total of 63 episodes are already on the service. The web series “Just Roll With It” was reportedly missing its Bloopers episode. Episodes disappeared from “Lego Star Wars: The Yoda Chronicles,” and “The Replacements” was missing an entire season. “The Simpsons,” “Andi Mack,” “The Muppets,” along with others, were also missing episodes.
“DuckTales” had another episode missing, which is titled “Sphinx for the Memories.” Deja View suggested that the portrayal of Egyptians was offensive, and therefore had to be taken down. But that was never confirmed.
In addition, “The Shake It Up” episode titled “Party it Up” was missing from Disney+. There has been no reason confirmed behind this decision, and it could easily be a mistake. However, it’s important to note that actress Demi Lovato, who starred in “Sonny With a Chance,” criticized the episode for using an insensitive eating disorder joke.
Also, “Darkwing Duck” has an episode called “Hot Spells,” which is apparently missing in the U.S., yet available in Thailand and Malaysia. TechCrunch recently covered Disney+ taking down Charlie Sheen-led “Hot Shots” from the U.S. service as it was mistakingly added.
At the time of launch, Disney+ was missing a ton of titles because they were held up with other streaming contracts. For instance, Netflix had Disney’s “Tarzan,” “Ralph Breaks the Internet,” “Christopher Robin,” “Mary Poppins Returns,” and “Coco,” which have since, for the most part, returned to their rightful home.
It’s unclear when the episodes will return to the service, but Disney says they are working to resolve the issue.