Season 11 of The Masked Singer ended with a bang — and a celebrity reveal for the ages.
After a heated battle between Goldfish and Gumball, Goldfish came out on top and subsequently revealed herself to be none other than Vanessa Hudgens.
“It’s honestly the most incredible thing ever,” Hudgens, 35, said of her experience on the show. “I’ve just been so excited to take my mask off and stare at [judge] Rita Ora and say, ‘This is why I can’t hang out with you. Because I can’t lie!’”
Hudgens held back tears as she reflected on everything the competition has given her.
“I never knew that this would give me the freedom to purely just do something that I love and it’s been so long I’ve been able to do that and I really do love it so much,” she said. “It fills my soul, truly.”
Before jumping into her final song — a cover of Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know” — Hudgens gave a shout-out to her biggest fan. “Mom, I love you, thank you so much for always pushing me and taking me to my dance classes and singing lessons,” she said. “I finally won for my singing,”
Hudgens prevailed over Gumball, who was unmasked as Friday Night Lights alum Scott Porter. The duo previously starred together in the movie Bandslam, where Hudgens beats out Porter, 44, in a music competition. “It’s history repeating itself!” he told the crowd while laughing.
Hudgens has been a frequent guess on the show since its premiere in 2019. While she kept the panelists stumped for much of season 11, her fans have suspected all along that the former Disney star was behind the mask.
“When I first started out, I made a splash overnight. But all that success made me feel like I was living in a fishbowl, with everyone’s eyes and expectations on me,” Goldfish said during the season premiere. “I had big decisions to make. I could play it safe, or dive into deeper, darker, edgier waters.”
Scholars of Hudgens’ career interpreted the “edgier waters” to be a reference to the 2012 film Spring Breakers, in which she starred as a hard-partying college girl who travels to Florida on spring break with her friends, played by Ashley Benson, Selena Gomez and Rachel Korine.
During Transformers Night, Goldfish hinted that her love life had been discussed in the public eye. “Dating in Hollywood is hard, and this goldfish wasn’t always lucky,” she said. “Imagine trying to move on when you literally see your exes everywhere. And even having your run-ins turned into TikToks.”
As Hudgens fans may recall, the High School Musical star famously ran into ex-boyfriend Austin Butler at an Oscars afterparty in 2023. In a viral clip of the moment, Hudgens walked by Butler, 32, without making eye contact as onlookers screamed his name.
The biggest clue to Goldfish’s identity came on Queen Night. “I had just gotten a dream role, but the night before my debut, I received the worst news I could have ever imagined. I lost my No. 1 supporter,” she recalled. “Nothing could have prepared me for that. I felt like I couldn’t move. But then I remembered, there was no one in the world that enjoyed watching me perform more.”
This seemed like a clear reference to the January 2016 death of Hudgens’ father, Greg. He died of cancer the day before she was set to star as Rizzo in Fox’s Grease: Live. Hudgens announced the news hours before the show, dedicating her performance to his memory.
“I am so sad to say that last night my daddy, Greg passed away from stage 4 cancer,” she tweeted at the time. “Thank you to everyone who kept him in your prayers. Tonight, I do the show in his honor.”
