Selena Gomez Returning To ‘Wizards Beyond Waverly Place' As Season 2 Guest Star
Selena Gomez will return to guest star in Season 2 of the Disney Channel sequel series, the star announced on social media Friday.
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'Just feels right…' she wrote in her post, which features her sitting on the iconic set holding a wand.
Gomez is an executive producer on Wizards Beyond Waverly Place and she made a few guest appearances in the first season, introducing her brother Justin Russo (David Henrie) and his family to Billie (Janice LeAnn Brown), a wayward wizard-in-training who needs his help safeguarding the future of the Wizard World.
The only problem? Justin has chosen to lead a normal, mortal life with his family, Giada, Roman and Milo. Billie's arrival makes Justin realize he'll need to dust off his magical skills and get to mentoring.
The first episode of Wizards Beyond Waverly Place became Disney Channel's most-watched series premiere ever on Disney+ with 3.2M global views in the first 12 days.
In addition to Henrie, Wizards Beyond Waverly Place stars Janice LeAnn Brown (as Billie), Alkaio Thiele (as Roman Russo), Max Matenko (as Milo Russo), Taylor Cora (as Winter) and Mimi Gianopulos (as Giada Russo).
Jed Elinoff and Scott Thomas serve as writers and executive producers, along with executive producers Gary Marsh, Jonas Agin, Selena Gomez and Henrie. Wizards of Waverly Place was created by Todd Greenwald.
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In the wake of cancellation, there was in fact a 'Save The Acolyte' movement from the fans who fought valiantly against the hate campaigns and just wanted more. If anything, they were more mad at Disney than anyone, and believed they caved to those groups and shelved the show. Is that the case? I mean, I don't think Disney was deaf to all this, but if this was a cheap show putting up big numbers, I don't think any of it would have mattered. Instead, Disney allowed a colossally bloated budget to feed into a show that needed its first season to find its legs. It was set up to fail. Again, that could have been true with Andor, the no-name characters, the massive cost, the low viewership, but the show had a two season deal and, more importantly, was the single best Star Wars content ever produced short of (I would argue) two of the three OT movies. The Acolyte, even if you liked it, wasn't anywhere close to that, clearly. Disney seems paralyzed with Star Wars right now. The only movie that we are 100% seeing soon is The Mandalorian and Grogu, the show spin-off and possible finale. Ahsoka will get a second season three years(!) after the first. Andor is over. The Acolyte is dead and I think most people forgot or didn't realize Skeleton Crew existed (which is a shame). It feels like Disney is not going to take any creative risks for the foreseeable future. Hopefully that changes with Dawn of the Jedi, an upcoming movie that will take place 25,000 years in the past, but I will believe that will make it to the finish line when I'm sitting in theaters. Fool me eight times, and all that. The Acolyte was a strange, short chapter in Star Wars history. I think it's worth watching once. I think it's a shame we won't get to see where it was trying to go. I think the hate it got was so wildly out of proportion it's hard to take anyone who participated in that seriously again. But I think it was always going to die like this with that kind of budget and an impossible viewership demand to match Disney's idiotic expectations. Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
