Miley Cyrus is back on Disney Channel Hannah Montana celebrates twenty years since its airing with a special
In the end, they all come back. For the twentieth anniversary of its first airing on March 24, 2006, it’s Miley Cyrus’s turn, who with her Hannaversary celebrates the time passed since the TV series that made her a global star and radically changed her life. Hannah Montana was the springboard for the career of an artist whose cult and personality quickly emerged on a liminal boundary, where reality and fiction immediately blurred, coexisting in both the private and professional life of the singer from Franklin, Tennessee.
Miley Cyrus’s rebellion and growth
If anyone thinks that the pop star in the past tried to kill her TV alter ego, they are wrong. It’s true that many of the behaviors Miley Cyrus took on may have given the opposite impression, from music videos where she licked hammers to controversial performances, such as those at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2013. The singer’s rebellion phase can be seen as her way of distancing herself from the protected, sometimes even controlling, environment of young stars in the now-defunct Disney Channel shows and films. But Miley herself admits that there was never an intention to suppress the part of her that owes everything to Hannah Montana; it was simply a matter of growing up and changing, even making some mistakes (like a less-than-successful performance, again at the MTV Video Music Awards) that helped her understand what she could and wanted to do with the success she had achieved.
Confusion between character and real person
The level of identification between the character (or rather, characters) was so close that it caused audience confusion: who was the Miley on screen and who was the real one, and whether Hannah Montana existed only in imagination or was the real star. It was clear that fans would never want to abandon the image of their favorite pop star. It was therefore predictable for the actress and singer to show herself beyond the power of her wig.
Physical transformation and personal assertion
The first form of revolution for a young adult (because Miley Cyrus was not even twenty when she finished the Hannah Montana seasons and movies) was to completely change her image, which was predictable. So goodbye bangs and hello short hair: the post-2011 look distanced her from the copper curls of the small-screen Miley, saying goodbye to her adolescence of manners and etiquette to show the world she had grown up.
Today’s Miley from Wrecking Ball is undoubtedly an icon – and for many, she was even back then. But it’s impossible to forget the uproar her physical and professional transformation caused, even sparking resentment among some. As can be expected, this metamorphosis represented an act of personal assertion, existing outside the glass bubble of Disney Channel. A rebellion mirrored in many of Miley Cyrus’s colleagues, who, like her, took different paths before reconciling with the towering icons of their past.
Disney stars returning and reconciling
This was done by Selena Gomez, who in 2012 appeared in Harmony Korine’s all-bikini, pink ski-mask gem Spring Breakers after leaving the success of Wizards of Waverly Place, to which she returned in 2024 for four episodes as her character Alex Russo. The film also featured Vanessa Hudgens, who twenty years ago starred in High School Musical, a project so pervasive that in 2019 it inspired a series from which emerged one of today’s new pop stars, Olivia Rodrigo.
The cases of Demi Lovato and Hilary Duff
It also happened with Demi Lovato, who despite admitting she found some choices and her acting in the two Camp Rock films embarrassing, in 2025 announced the production of a third chapter in which she would not appear as an actress, unlike the Jonas Brothers, but would still serve as executive producer. She also returned after years of struggling with addiction and self-destructive behaviors, never hidden and documented in the YouTube docuseries Demi Lovato: Dancing with the Devil.
A similar path occurred with Hilary Duff, though differently. Determined to reprise Lizzie McGuire in an adult version in 2020, the actress is now reluctant to discuss a possible revival after her vision for the character was rejected by Hulu. Yet, despite the show’s cancellation, she confirmed her attachment to the protagonist of the two-season series (over thirty episodes each) in music, performing the timeless Lizzie McGuire – From Teen to Popstar song What Dreams Are Made Of during her The Lucky Me Tour that started last year.
Nostalgia, growth, and emotional returns
That these major reconciliations happen many years later is understandable and goes beyond nostalgia. In these cases, we are talking about real lives that grew up in show business, inevitably needing to leave the nest at some point. A golden cage, often causing pain and primary disorders for some young stars, from which they sought to step away to heal wounds and make room for the good that followed.
It therefore seems emotionally natural to see so many Disney Channel stars embrace the past again. It’s part of what we, as consumers – especially Millennials – feed on, and that’s what the 20th Hannaversary represents. It’s like being those teenagers who left home and now, as adults, enjoy occasionally coming back. It’s about us, our tastes, and our lives, and it seems only natural that it can happen with former Disney Channel stars too.
