David DeLuise, David Henrie, Selena Gomez and Maria Canals-Barrera. Courtesy of Maria Canals-Barrera/Instagram
What’s that, a hat? No, it’s a Wizards of Waverly Place cast reunion!
“The Russos ❤️🪄coming back,” David DeLuise and David Henrie, who played father and son on Wizards of Waverly Place, captioned a joint Instagram post on Friday, January 26.
DeLuise, 52, and Henrie, 34, were all smiles as they posed alongside former costars Selena Gomez and Maria Canals-Barrera.
Wizards of Waverly Place — which launched Gomez, now 31, to fame — originally aired on Disney Channel between 2007 and 2012. Henrie, Gomez and Jake T. Austin played the three Russo siblings, who were secretly wizards-in-training while balancing normal teen lives in New York City. News broke earlier this month that Henrie and Gomez, who played the eldest Russo siblings Justin and Alex, would reprise their roles in a new TV pilot.
Selena Gomez scored her breakout role playing teenage wizard Alex Russo on Disney Channel’s Wizards of Waverly Place. The series, which ran for four seasons from 2007 to 2012, followed Alex and her brothers, Justin and Max, played by David Henrie and Jake T. Austin, as they learned the ins and outs of the wizard […]
“You guys are gonna LOVE the new Wizards show!” Wizards mom Canals-Barrera, 57, gushed via Instagram on Friday.
Several former Wizards guest stars commented on the sweet reunion pics.
“This makes me soooo happy,” Bailee Madison, who briefly played a gender-swapped version of Austin’s Max on the final season, wrote via Instagram comment.
Josh Sussman, for his part, added, “The best TV family! ❤️❤️❤️.”
Henrie and Gomez announced on January 18 that they were producing a spinoff of Wizards of Waverly Place that will revolve around a grown-up Justin (Henrie) and his family. Justin, who ended the OG series finale as a full-wizard and the headmaster of wizarding school WizTech, has since given up his powers. In the pilot, he will return to the world of magic when he meets a young wizard named Billie (Janice LeAnn Brown) in need of a mentor. It is not yet known what Alex (Gomez) has been up to in the new series.
Gomez and her former TV family have frequently stayed in touch since the show wrapped. She and Henrie have even been perfecting their reboot pitch for years.
“Nothing has happened yet, but there’s a lot of talk [of a revival],” Henrie told Access in August 2020. “We all talk about it for fun. Everyone would be down, but it’s just a matter of time, I think. We’ve talked about it: Gregg [Sulkin], Selena, me, Jake. I think, what we said [about] what made the show special was that we were a family and that the family stuff together was like a family unit.”
David Henrie, Maria Canals-Barrera, Jake T. Austin, David DeLuise and Selena Gomez. WireImage
He continued at the time: “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 further speculated that Gomez’s Alex would be a major fashionista, like “the Meryl Streep of the wizard world,” while Austin’s Max would own a chain of sub shops. (While Max lost the wizard competition in the OG series finale, Jerry gave him the keys to the family’s sandwich restaurant.)