On January 15, 1998, Nickelodeon aired the final episode of The Secret World of Alex Mack. With 78 episodes, Alex Mack was the network’s longest-running live-action scripted series — a title it would hold for over a decade, before finally being unseated by iCarly in 2011. Additionally, Alex Mack was one of the earliest efforts by Nick to make something that could be considered a superhero story. While she never suited up to save the world, Alex got super powers after an accident, not unlike so many Marvel heroes of the 1960s, and then spent every episode trying to protect her secret identity, while using the powers to get herself and her friends out of jams.
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Debuting on October 8, 1994, The Secret World of Alex Mack centers on Alex, who lives a boring life in a McMansion in California. Her father works at a chemical plant that functionally owned the town, being the only major business. On the way home from school one day, Alex is almost hit by a truck, which is carrying an experimental chemical being developed by the plant. After being doused with the chemicals, Alex makes her way home, only to find that she now has abilities.
Alex can do limited telekinesis and shoot little bits of electricity, as well as transforming her body into a shimmery, translucent liquid, which allows her to move around undetected and escape sticky situations in a number of episodes. With the help of her best friend Ray and her genius sister, Alex hides her abilities from everyone, including their own parents, worrying that if the truth about her comes to light, the plant will want to kidnap her to perform experiments on her.
The show made star Larisa Oleynik instantly recognizable to its target demographic, and was the first time a lot of viewers encountered Jessica Alba, who appeared in several episodes of the first season as a mean girl who is dating the boy Alex has a crush on. Four episodes of the series were directed by then-newcomer Shawn Levy, who would go on to work on projects like Stranger Things and Free Guy. His next project is Deadpool 3. Other writers on the series included Even Stevens creator Matt Dearborn, The Daily Show correspondent Vance DeGeneres, Daria writer Neena Beber, and Titus creators Brian Hargrove and Jack Kenny.
In addition to 78 episodes of The Secret World of Alex Mack, the characters were featured in a series of 34 paperback books aimed at middle school readers. The first and last books in the series were direct adaptations of the first and last episodes of the show, but the other 32 books featured original stories from writers Diana G. Gallagher, Cathy East Dubowski, and others. The Secret World of Alex Mack didn’t have a ton of merchandise, at least relative to what Nickelodeon does for its successful shows now, but a few things leaked out, including a board game and a kids meal toy at Burger King.
When it first debuted, The Secret World of Alex Mack took the place of Clarissa Explains it All in the Snick lineup — a primetime, Saturday night block aimed at slightly older kids than Nickelodeon served during most of its broadcast day. Unlike Clarissa, there has never been a serious attempt to revive Alex Mack, but like most products of ’90s Nickelodeon, it maintains a fan base. There are at least two Secret World of Alex Mack-themed podcasts, and the show got a Complete Series DVD release from Mill Creek Entertainment in 2017. That marked the first time many of the episodes had been made available legally since the show stopped airing reruns, since Prime Video and iTunes only have the first two seasons for sale or rental. Prior to 2017, a DVD set of the first season had been made available in 2007, and a pair of episodes had a VHS release in 1995, which is now difficult and expensive to find. The video above is a “video extra” from that VHS release, which has never been officially released again.
The show ended on an ambiguous note — Alex finally came clean to her parents, and her father and sister worked together to create an antidote that would return her to normal. But after years with powers and coming to grips with who she was, Alex did not take the antidote immediately, and just cryptically smiled to the camera, setting off a debate among fans. Oleynik said in later interviews that she herself had never decided what her head canon was, but co-creator Thomas W. Lynch said in a 2012 interview that Alex would have decided to keep her powers.
“She never did,” Lynch said at the time. “I liked the idea that the choice would remain hers, if she took the medicine or not, if she took the cure or not. She was not going to be dictated to. That was my conscious thought in writing it … I wanted at the end — I didn’t want the world to dictate to her, I wanted her to dictate to herself what she was going to do.”
Its ending was also notable because the show was never technically cancelled. Reportedly, Nickelodeon wanted more episodes, but Oleynik declined, saying that she was burned out and wanted to finish college. She appeared in 10 Things I Hate About You and Third Rock From the Sun, both with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, in the years after, and in that same 2012 look back, expressed a willingness to at least talk with Lynch about the possibility of a reunion of some kind.
