‘Lizzie McGuire’ Writer Reveals Plot Details of Scrapped Reboot Series

Lizzie McGuire fans are getting a glimpse at what could have been, had Disney+ not scrapped the reboot of the beloved Disney Channel series. After the series was announced to not be moving forward at the streamer in December 2022, Jonathan Hurwitz, a writer on the series, opened up on TikTok about what Lizzie (Hilary Duff) would have been up to in the reboot that wasn’t. 

“We wrote and shot the first two episodes,” he said of the reboot of Lizzie McGuire, which originally aired from 2001 to 2004 on Disney Channel. “Basically, it starts in New York. Lizzie has been working and living there as an interior designer and she’s dating this very, very handsome chef.” Lizzie quickly realizes her boyfriend has been cheating on her with her best friend, and at the end of the pilot, she goes home to California to the house she grew up in during the original show. “She’s in her childhood bedroom where little animated Lizzie has been waiting for her,” Hurwitz revealed.

The writer also revealed fans would learn quickly what happened with Lizzie and her best friend Gordo (Adam Lamberg) after they shared a kiss at the end of The Lizzie McGuire Movie in 2003. Fans were left hanging as to whether or not Lizzie and Gordo were “end game,” as the theatrical release was the final project in the franchise to air. 

Hurwitz said that in the reboot, “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 to a woman and she’s pregnant and they’re really happy. So no, in this version, Lizzie and Gordo wouldn’t have ended up together.”

That doesn’t mean Lizzie wouldn’t have any romantic prospects from the past, as episode two ends with her getting a text from her longtime teenage crush Ethan Craft (Clayton Snyder) “and little animated Lizzie faints.” The writer also said that what happened next in episode three, which was not filmed, was probably part of the reason Disney had an issue with the revival.

“Lizzie wakes up in Ethan’s bed in his water polo T-shirt and animated Lizzie pops up and she has this little checklist – like a to-do list – and Ethan is on the list,” he revealed. “And she checks it off and I think she says something like, ‘Well, check that box.’ Dramatic pause, ‘Twice!’” Responding to a comment from a follower asking if there were certain aspects of the storyline Disney wasn’t “comfortable” with, he claimed, “That moment was probably one of them.”

Duff previously shared details of the reboot’s premise with Cosmopolitan in 2002, revealing, “My character was moving back home with her parents because she caught her soon-to-be fiancé cheating on her. 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-?’”