Was Hulu down during the 2025 Oscars?

Whenever the Oscars swing around, one of the quieter questions is whether the ceremony will go off without a hitch or not. This year’s ceremony has been chugging along pretty smoothly — complete with Conan O’Brien’s apparent new beef with the entire country of Estonia — but it might need to do a better job of vetting its distributors next time.

Indeed, at approximately 4:24 P.M. PST (per Variety), Hulu — famously billed to be streaming this year’s Oscars — suffered a widespread technical problem that left at least 34,000 users in the literal and proverbial dark.

Fifteen minutes, later, the platform’s X account tweeted “Having issues logging in? If so – we’re on it! Our team is actively investigating, and we hope to have things back up and running soon,” while also advising affected users to restart the app and keep an eye out for updates.

Having issues logging in? If so – we’re on it! Our team is actively investigating, and we hope to have things back up and running soon.

— Hulu Support (@hulu_support) March 3, 2025

At approximately 5:48 P.M. PST, the Hulu brain trust has reportedly found the problem and since corrected it. The damage, however, was already done for many.

Holding so much space for this! https://t.co/vfRR6lr8uD

— Hulu (@hulu) February 24, 2025

Indeed, the ceremony kicked off with the highly anticipated and about as inevitable reunion of Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, the two nominated leading ladies of Wicked who honored their newfound Oz roots with their already-legendary vocal chords.

Full performance of “Defying Gravity” by Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande at the #Oscars pic.twitter.com/h9flMlgiVI

— Wicked News Hub (@wickednewshub) March 3, 2025

Suffice to say there were a lot of Hulu users/Wicked fans who were none too pleased about missing their personalized highlight of the night on account of one of what might be the most poorly timed technical error in streaming history.

Hulu is down and I missed the only thing I actually wanted to see tn pic.twitter.com/T2vUFNj7TI

— k🍉 (@hrryt0pia) March 3, 2025

I am so pissed 😠 #Hulu app switched to 20/20 and wasn’t letting me watch!

— Kdrop (@Kdroppp) March 3, 2025

Luckily for them, there was still plenty of Wicked to go around, even if the night didn’t shake out quite as successfully as they hoped. Jon M. Chu’s beloved adaptation of the hit fantasy musical was up for 10 awards — picking up wins for Best Costume Design and Best Production Design, but losing out on Best Visual Effects (Dune: Part Two), Best Sound (Dune: Part Two), Best Original Score (The Brutalist), Best Actress (Mikey Madison, Anora), Best Supporting Actress (Zoe Saldaña, Emilia Pérez), Best Film Editing (Anora), Best Makeup and Hairstyling (The Substance), and Best Picture (Anora).