One Scrapped Lizzie McGuire Reboot Storyline Was Likely Too Explicit For Disney

Remember that "Lizzie McGuire" reboot that ended up getting shelved in early 2020? One of its writers just revealed some of its major plotlines.

In the first of four TikToks, writer Jonathan Hurwitz revealed some of the things that would have happened on this grown-up take on the classic Disney Channel show. As the series begins, Lizzie — still played by original star Hilary Duff — is living in New York City only to watch her entire life implode when she finds out her boyfriend is sleeping with her best friend. When she moves back to California to live with her family, the signature animated Lizzie, who serves as a narrator of sorts during the series, rejoins the action.

As Hurwitz revealed, Lizzie would reunite with her childhood best friend and love interest David "Gordo" Gordon (Adam Lamberg), only to find that he's engaged with a baby on the way ... so she would instead end up hooking up with her teenage crush Ethan Craft (Clayton Snyder).

"Episode 3 wasn't filmed, but there was a script for it," Hurwitz said in the video. "Lizzie wakes up in Ethan's bed, in his water polo T-shirt. Animated Lizzie pops up and she has this little checklist, like a to-do list, and Ethan is on the list and she checks it off."

"I think she says something like, 'I checked that box — dramatic pause — twice,'" Hurwitz continued. "So if I had to guess, I saw another comment about certain storylines [about] why Disney wasn't comfortable with it, my guess was... that moment was probably one of them."

Back in 2020, star Hilary Duff was pretty open that she was completely disappointed by Disney's outright rejection of the "Lizzie McGuire" reboot. As she pointed out on social media, the series wasn't designed for young children. It was meant for fans who grew up with the original show and were, as adults, mature enough to handle a plotline where Lizzie slept with her high school crush. Even so, Duff spoke out about the intention to run the series on Disney+ and suggested the studio move it to Hulu, its more adult-oriented streaming service.

"I'd be doing a disservice to everyone by limiting the realities of a 30 year old's journey to live under the ceiling of a PG rating," Duff wrote on Instagram. "It's important to me that just as her experiences as a preteen/teenager navigating life were authentic, her next chapters are equally as real and relatable. It would be a dream if Disney would let us move the show to Hulu, if they were interested, and I could bring this beloved character to life again."

Unfortunately, this didn't pan out. So what is Hilary Duff doing instead of the "Lizzie McGuire" reboot?

Instead of reviving her classic show, Hilary Duff joined a totally different reboot — the Hulu original series "How I Met Your Father," spun off of the hit CBS sitcom "How I Met Your Mother." Duff played the hopeless romantic leading woman Sophie, whose older counterpart (played by "Sex and the City" alum Kim Cattrall) tells her son the story of how she met his dad. This time, the son's identity is completely obscured, and we only see Cattrall's older Sophie on one end of a video chat. Unfortunately, audiences will never learn who fathered Sophie's son. In September 2023, Hulu canceled the show after Season 2 ended on a cliffhanger.

Before "How I Met Your Father," Duff starred alongside Sutton Foster, Nico Tortorella, Debi Mazar, Molly Bernard, and many more on Darren Star's popular series "Younger," where she plays young publishing professional Kelsey Peters. While working at Empirical Press in New York, Kelsey encounters Liza Miller (Foster), a 40-year-old mother pretending to still be in her twenties to get a job in her old field, and the two become friends — even as Liza's secret threatens to jeopardize her career and her relationships. The series ran from 2015 to 2021 and spanned seven seasons.

"Younger" and "How I Met Your Father" are both streaming on Hulu, and the original, scandal-free "Lizzie McGuire" is available on Disney+.