The recent Wizards of Waverly Place reunion was missing Jake T. Austin, and he’s already ready to make up for his absence.
“Wow! Am looking forward to getting together with my wizards family,” Austin, 29, wrote via Instagram Story on Saturday, January 27, reposting David DeLuise and David Henrie’s upload.
In a Friday, January 26, Instagram pic, DeLuise, 52, and Henrie, 34, were all smiles as they posed with Selena Gomez and Maria Canals-Barrera.
Wizards of Waverly Place originally aired on Disney Channel between 2007 and 2012, following three Russo siblings balancing magic training with normal teen lives in New York City. Henrie, Gomez, 31, and Austin played Justin, Alex and Max Russo, respectively. DeLuise and Canals-Barrera, 57, played parents Jerry and Theresa Russo, respectively, who ran a sub station that had a magical lair in the freezer.
News broke earlier this month that Henrie and Gomez were producing a spinoff — following the next generation of Russo wizards-in-training — for Disney. The new show, which currently has a pilot order, will see Henrie and Gomez reprise their roles, as well. It is not known which other OG show stars will return.
The new show will follow a now-adult Justin after he’s given up his magical powers. While he’s focused on his family, he meets a young wizard named Billie (Janice LeAnn Brown) in need of a mentor. As Justin helps Billie, he returns to the world of magic.
While it is not known what Alex or Max have been up to, the cast has been speculating for years.
“I think a great place to start the [potential new] show would be the opposite version of that, so you have somewhere to go throughout the series. So, if you started the show where the family’s divided, and not united,” Henrie previously told Access in August 2020, guessing Alex would be “the Meryl Streep of the wizard world” and a major fashionista and Max would be a sandwich shop mogul.
Most of the Wizards cast stayed close, except for Gomez. She previously called losing touch with her costars to be the “biggest mistake” of her life so far.
“I slowly became, like, kind of shamed,” Gomez recalled during a July 2023 episode of the “Wizards of Waverly Pod” recap podcast. “I felt ashamed of the decisions that I made. I didn’t want you guys to see me in the state that was I in. Because A: you would have told me the truth, which terrifies me. And B: I didn’t want to let you down.”
In the years since leaving the Disney Channel, Gomez publicly struggled with her mental health and was diagnosed with both bipolar disorder and Lupus. She also went through a series of well-known breakups, including several with ex Justin Bieber. (Gomez is currently dating music producer Benny Blanco.)
