For years, Wizards of Waverly Place was one of the biggest shows on the Disney Channel, and Selena Gomez, who starred as Alex Russo, was one of the network’s biggest stars.
Now, the show’s head writer has revealed that he wished Gomez’s character could’ve had a female love interest on the show.
On the new podcast Wizards of Waverly Pod, head writer and executive producer Peter Murrieta had an easy answer for a storyline he wished he would’ve gotten to do: he wanted to make Alex Russo bisexual.
“Easy, easy, easy, easy,” Murrieta said when asked what plot he wished he would have explored. “I wished we could have played more with what was quite obvious to a lot of us was the relationship between Stevie and Alex. But we weren’t able to in that time…it was pretty clear to all of us what that relationship was. That would’ve been fun.”
Stevie was a fellow student Alex met in the third season of the show. She was played by a young Hayley Kiyoko and the two met in detention. Unfortunately, she was written off after just four episodes.
In her time on the show, Alex and Stevie bonded quickly over both being wizards and having a lot of other things in common, and of course, Kiyoko’s queerness shone through even in her younger days.
In one episode, titled “Third Wheel,” Alex’s best friend Harper even becomes jealous of the close bond between the two.
“If we were just a few years down the line, we maybe could have played with that,” Jennifer Stone, who co-hosts the podcast and played Harper on the show, replied.
“At the time, it wasn’t a thing,” Murrieta said about Disney allowing gay characters. “But we got as close as we could. I mean it was pretty close. It was pretty much right there.”
Ep 8: Showrunner & Writer Peter Murrieta Reveals the True Ending to Wizards of Waverly Place youtu.be
At least we’ll always have fanfiction.