There’s a new mystery to solve on Netflix. Luckily, Kat Donovan is on the case!
Harlan Coben’s new Netflix show, Missing You, just premiered on Netflix on Jan. 1, 2025. When publishing this recap and review, it’s the no. 2 Netflix show behind Squid Game season 2. It seems unlikely that it’ll be more popular than Squid Game after seeing the early numbers, but it’s still well on its way to a huge premiere, just like Fool Me Once, the Harlan Coben Netflix show that premiered on New Year’s Day 2024.
Missing You episode 1, “Every Breath You Take,” begins the same way most of Coben’s show begin with a big mystery, a detective, and a new case that re-opens old wounds to solve.
In the opening scene, we see a man trying to escape something on a horse. He looks disheveled, but he’s imagining an old love. Then, he falls off the horse and knocks himself out.
Then, we meet the protagonist of the season Detective Kat Donovan, played by Rosalind Eleazar, is at a nice restaurant on a date. She goes to take a Facetime call from some fans, but she hears a commotion in the kitchen. One of the chefs has attacked another with a knife. Kat steps in and saves the day.
The following day, Kat, who heads the Missing Persons Unit, meets a new employee, Charlie (Charlie Hamblitt), who looks her up on Google and finds news stories about Kat’s past. Her father, Clint (Lenny Henry), another detective, was killed on the job years ago.
From there, they track the person they are looking for to a forest in the middle of nowhere, Rishi. They find nothing, but we, again, see the missing man walking through a field, although it sure doesn’t seem like they are trying very hard to find him.
What happens in Missing You episode 1
Mainly, the first episode of the season sets up the central mystery, finding Rishi, the missing man. There are many moving parts between Kat, the past, several cases of missing persons, and many secrets.
Kat, after her fiance, Josh (Ashley Walters), left 11 years ago, signs up for a dating app at the request of her best friend, Stacy (Jessica Plummer). One of the first people Kat recognizes from the app is Josh, her ex-fiance! He disappeared without a trace 11 years ago, and now, here he is on this dating app. What will Kat do?
Shortly after learning that Josh is alive and seemingly well, Kat learns that her father’s killer, Monte Leburne (Marc Warren), is about to die in prison within a few days. She still doesn’t know why her father was killed, and it’s been eating her up for years. Kat asks her mother, Odette (Brigid Zengeni), what to do about Josh and Monte. She says don’t talk to Monte, the killer, but she should reach out to Josh, which she does after matching with him on the app.
Later, we see Rishi walking down a rural road when a tractor shows up. It runs him down, and the driver uses a taser to incapacitate him. At the end of the episode, we see Rishi tied up in a barn.
Meanwhile, Rishi made a booking at a vacation rental nearby where his car was found. Kat and her team investigate, but they don’t find anything. Rishi had booked the cottage for a romantic weekend, but he was the only one who showed up. Very fishy, Rishi.
Kat leaves in a rush when Stacey calls. She scores an in at the prison, and Kat uses it to interrogate Monte. He taunts Kat, but the nurse, played by Samantha Spiro, shoots him up with something that gets him to start hallucinating and speak the truth. Monte reveals that he didn’t actually kill Clint Donovan, but he was paid to take the fall.
This sends Kat into a spiral, but Stacey calls. She reveals that Josh, her fiance, visited Monte in prison the day before he left Kat. Wow. That’s the bombshell reveal of the episode!
The episode ends with Josh muting Kat on the dating app. It seems he isn’t as interested in rehashing the past as she was.
Missing You episode 1 grade: B
The Missing You premiere was definitely solid TV. We learned a lot about Kat and her past, including the death of her father and her fiance going missing around the same time that her father died. Now, we know that her fiance also visited her father’s alleged killer the day before he left her. It doesn’t add up, but it does look like something very suspect is happening. I’m not saying Josh killed Clint, but he clearly knows something.
Ultimately, these events and the missing person’s case make the story a little too confusing. Obviously, we don’t have the full story, but the pieces are woven together in a way that’s quite difficult to understand. I’m sure it will get easier as we learn more about Clint, Josh, and Rishi. I also don’t quite understand how Richard Armitage, who plays Kat’s boss, Stagger, factors into the story yet, but he’s a staple in almost all of the Harlan Coben Netflix shows, so you know he’s a part of this mystery.
