This study explores the diachronic use of the hedge well in six Disney princess films across three eras: the classic era, the mid-modern era and the modern era, using a mixed method approach of both a quantitative and qualitative analysis. By identifying and categorizing the pragmatic marker well as either a delay or a mitigation hedge the study explores its multifaceted functions drawing on frameworks by Lakoff (1975), Brown & Levinson (1987, as cited in Holmes, 2013) and Holmes (2013). Furthermore, the study uses critical discourse analysis (CDA) supported by Fairclough (1992), to examine how well serves as a mitigation hedge in full turns and exchanges and how it contributes to the portrayal of femininity from a sociolinguistic point of view. The results highlight how even subtle language choices of small lexical items, such as hedges, can reflect evolving, yet uneven, portrayals of gender ideologies in scripted media, such as Disney films.