Originally appeared on E! Online
Getting the tea on the canceled "Lizzie McGuire" reboot? Now, this is what dreams are made of.
Three years after Hilary Duff confirmed the revival was no longer happening, writer Jonathan Hurwitz revealed what the show would have looked like.
While viewers in the early aughts last saw Lizzie in her teenage years, the new show would have focused on her life as an adult. And the first episode would have shown that things weren't exactly turning out as she had planned.
"Basically, it starts in New York," Hurwitz said in a recent TikTok video. "Lizzie's been working and living there as an interior designer, and she's dating this very, very handsome chef. And she ends up finding that he's been cheating on her with her best friend."
After learning of the infidelity—with Hurwitz later clarifying Lizzie's childhood BFF Miranda (Lalaine) was not the friend involved—Duff's character decides to leave NYC.
Get Tri-state area news delivered to your inbox. Sign up for NBC New York's News Headlines newsletter.
"She, at the end of the pilot, goes home to California—to the home we all saw in the original show," Hurwitz continued, "and she's in her childhood bedroom where little animated Lizzie has been waiting for her."
Entertainment News
Disney Channel Stars Then and Now
And Lizzie's animated self isn't the only blast from the past she comes across. Hurwitz said she also reconnects with Gordo, who was played by Adam Lamberg on the original Disney Channel series and spinoff movie. But if you were still shipping the BFFs together, well, the writer has some news for you.
"You would have got an answer to that in episode two," Hurwitz explained. "Lizzie meets up with Gordo, who she's just kind of been in touch with via text over the years, occasionally. And they meet up, and Gordo reveals that he is engaged, engaged to a woman, and she's pregnant and they're really happy. So no, in this version, Lizzie and Gordo would not have ended up together."
Although, Lizzie does get together with her childhood crush Ethan Kraft (Clayton Snyder)—with Hurwitz noting Ethan sends Lizzie a text at the end of episode two and "little animated Lizzie faints."
While he said episode three was never filmed, he shared the details as to what happens next.
"Lizzie wakes up in Ethan's bed in his water polo T-shirt," Hurwitz added. "And 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. And I think she says something like, 'Well, checked that box.' Dramatic pause. 'Twice.'"
However, he clarified the series wouldn't have shown them having sex.
"Just Lizzie waking up in Ethan's shirt," he noted in another video, "and then Ethan comes in with freshly made coffee and they have this cute little catch-up. And then Ethan says he heard from Gordo that Lizzie was in town and that's why he reached out. And he wants to hang again, but she says she can't because she's flying home to New York."
The "Lizzie McGuire" revival was first announced in 2019, with plans for it to stream on Disney+. Months later in 2020, the original show's creator Terri Minsky left the reboot—with a Disney spokesperson saying they needed "to move in a different creative direction."
As for Duff, she pleaded for the series to move to Hulu as she felt it was "doing a disservice to everyone by limiting the realities of a 30-year-old's journey to live under the ceiling of a PG rating." By the end of the year, the actress revealed the revival was no longer happening.
"I want any reboot of Lizzie to be honest and authentic to who Lizzie would have be today. It's what the character deserves," she wrote in an Instagram statement at the time. "We can all take a moment to mourn the amazing woman she would have been and the adventures we would have taken with her."
