Wizards of Waverly Place star units return for last season of Disney Channel present’s spinoff
Wizards of Waverly Place original star Jennifer Stone is making her long-awaited return to the world of magic in the third and final season of the reboot, coming this summer.
Stone, 33 — who played Harper, the non-magical friend of protagonist Alex Russo (Selena Gomez), throughout Disney Channel’s beloved four-season sitcom — is set to reprise her role in the forthcoming season of Wizards Beyond Waverly Place.
The news was announced Friday on social media. “Guess who’s back?” the network wrote, alongside two images of Stone on set with Gomez. “Don’t miss Jennifer Stone and Selena Gomez in the final season of Wizards Beyond Waverly Place, premiering this summer on Disney+ and Disney Channel.”
An exact date for the show’s return has not yet been announced.
The sequel to the late 2000s comedy debuted in 2022. It follows Alex’s eldest brother Justin (David Henrie) as he embraces mortality to live with his family. When Alex introduces him to Billie, a wizard-in-training, who needs Justin’s mentorship, a new challenge arises.
In addition to Gomez and Henrie, the revival has welcomed back David DeLuise and Maria Canals-Barrera, as the parents of Alex, Justin and their younger brother Max, who was portrayed by Jake T. Austin in the original. Austin has not appeared in the spinoff, and it was revealed in the premiere episode that his character was off running a successful sandwich shop franchise he had taken over for his dad.
Stone’s upcoming guest appearance will mark her first on-screen role since the 2019 romcom Santa Girl. The actor has been acting since she was six, making her screen debut in the 2003 family comedy Secondhand Lions. However, she took a hiatus from acting to pursue a career in nursing.
She graduated from nursing school in 2019 and began working as an emergency room nurse at Providence Saint John Medical Center in Burbank, California, according to her LinkedIn profile.
She previously opened up about her career pivot, explaining that she made the decision after she was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at 20.
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“I was like, ‘Okay, Let me pivot from majoring in psychology to majoring in something that I can further understand myself better and what’s going on with my body and also be able to help people,’” Stone told People in 2024.
“I wanted to be somebody that was like, ‘Look, I’ve been where you’ve been, and it gets better,’” she added. “The hardest phase of a diagnosis story is the not knowing what’s going on with your body, not knowing how to treat it. I think that’s the most challenging part.”
