Lizzie McGuire remains one of the Disney Channel’s biggest hits, which made the news of a planned Disney+ revival exciting for a generation of fans. Even after the Lizzie McGuire revival was teased in the streaming service’s sizzle reel of original programming, the project ultimately fell through. Both Lizzie McGuire series creator Terri Minsky and star Hilary Duff were believed to have departed due to creative differences, after Disney did not agree with some of the mature subject matter in the series. Now, we have a new idea of what the plot of the Lizzie McGuire revival would have entailed, thanks to a new series of TikToks from one of the series’ writers, Jonathan Hurwitz.
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According to Hurwitz, the first two episodes of Lizzie McGuire were written and shot, with the pilot showing Lizzie as an interior designer in New York. After Lizzie’s chef boyfriend cheats on her with her best friend, Lizzie moves back home to California, where she reunites with her animated mascot. Episode 2 would have shown a reunion between Lizzie and her childhood-friend-turned-love-interest Gordo (Adam Lamberg), which ends with her learning that he is happily engaged and expecting a baby. The episode would have ended with Lizzie getting a text from her childhood crush, Ethan Craft (Clayton Snyder), with the opening of Episode 3 insinuating that they slept together.
“Episode 3 wasn’t filmed, but there was a script for it,” Hurwitz revealed. “Lizzie wakes up in Ethan’s bed, in his water polo t-shirt. Animated Lizzie pops up and she has this little checklist, like a to-do list, and Ethan is on the list and she checks it off. I think she says something like, ‘I checked that box –dramatic pause– twice.’ So if I had to guess, I saw another comment about certain storylines [about] why Disney wasn’t comfortable with it, my guess was… that moment was probably one of them.”
What Would the Lizzie McGuire Revival Have Been About?
As Duff has revealed in interviews over the past few years, the new iteration of Lizzie McGuire was set to authentically depict Lizzie in her 30s. Several of Duff’s previous co-stars were set to return in the series, including Lamberg, Jake Thomas, Hallie Todd, and Robert Carradine.
“My character was moving back home with her parents because she caught her soon-to-be fiancé cheating on her,” Duff explained, “and she was falling flat on her face at the moment and being like, ‘I need to pivot because everything that I thought was wasn’t, and I’m turning 30. What the f-ck?’”
Will the Lizzie McGuire Revival Ever Be Released?
Duff has also addressed the possibility of her “leaking” the revival episodes, and revealed that although the thought has crossed her mind, she still regards the project to not be “dead” or “alive.”
“I like the way you think,” Duff revealed. “I would be lying if I didn’t say I didn’t have those thoughts a few times. But I wouldn’t, because in my 34 years I’ve realized that everything does happen for a reason. There’s a time and a place for everything. It just wasn’t her moment. I’m constantly asked about it still. All it does is breathe life into the fact that people still want it, and that’s really sweet. It’s not dead, and it’s not alive.”
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