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Four years later the show has finally come to a close.

In November of 2019 Disney aired season one of High School Musical: The Musical: The Series. Four years later the show has finally come to a close. As I’ve done before, I am here to give you the rundown on the fourth and final season.

  Kicking off episode one, “High School Musical 4”, the Wildcats are back from Camp Shallow Lake and ready for the fall musical. As soon as the episode opens we see almost a reunion of classic High School Musical characters, such as Miss Darbus, Ryan Evans, Taylor McKessie, Chad Danforth and Martha Cox. But we come to find out that one of the main plot points of this season is that Disney is shooting High School Musical 4 at East High while the fall play is going on. Disney makes it a reunion special about Miss Darbus retiring and we meet a few new characters, Mack and Dani. Miss Jenn very quickly reveals that for the fall musical they will be doing High School Musical 3: Senior Year. For characters like Ricky and Kourtney this is a very surreal experience,while for Carlos and Gina it’s a reminder that the Wildcats are growing up. 

  Due to filming of the fourth movie, and the opportunity for students to be in the film, the drama department is running short on filling the cast. Ricky hears about this and won’t let it stand so he calls in a favor and surely enough Jet and Maddox are here to save the day. Gina and Ricky are together, as of last season, and are determined to be Troy and Gabriellea and that’s what happens. The cast list comes out, and to no one’s surprise, Ricky is Troy and Gina is his leading lady. Emmy transfers from homeschooling just to be in the musical and she gets cast as Taylor. Kourtney and Carlos are the Evans twins, Ashlyn is Kelsi, Jet is playing Chad and just like last season Maddox is working behind the scenes. 

  While the cast is shooting an important scene for the movie Quinn, the director, learns very quickly that despite her online personality Dani cannot act. However, she learns that Gina can so she gets offered the role of Bailey, the main character in High School Musical 4. This is an incredible opportunity, however Gina is having a hard time balancing the movie schedule, the musical, school and her relationship with Ricky. 

  There’s so many parallels to season one a few of them are that in season one they had to the musical in the gym and the same occurs in season four. Another really big one that fans are raving about is that in season one the cast sings the song “Born To Be Brave” and the same song ends up being the closer for this season. 

   Something that was a bit sad was that Nini didn’t make any appearances this season. It makes sense though because Olivia Rodrigo is off working on her sophomore album, Guts. Though this season I think Kourtney could’ve really used her best friend. Almost the entire season Kourtney is focused on college and getting into at least one Ivy League. She gets into Princeton and Lewis, but instead of going with Princeton like everyone thought, she commits to Lewis. 

  Speaking of college, EJ of course makes an appearance. This is his first year of college and, just like his father and grandfather, he attends Duke. He appears when Ricky needs some guidance on what to do for college. This leads to Ricky hugging a pillow and looking very distraught in EJ’s dorm. This happens to occur every season. Ricky visiting EJ leads to him asking Miss Jenn for a letter of recommendation and with her help Richard Bowen gets into Salt Lake City College. However, his grades tanked, he has a GPA of 1.8, so he has to work on that before graduating.

  As I said previously, the characters Mack and Dani are new to the show. The two are a couple, but seem to be only posing as one for publicity purposes. Growing up Mack was the star of 6 season show, Mark and Spark, a comedy about a boy and his talking dog. Which might be a reference to Disney’s 2012-2015 comedy, Dog With A Blog. At the end of the season Mack reveals that Mark and Spark will be coming back for a reboot. And now onto Dani: she is an influencer who is known for singing and her TikToks. As the season progresses you see Mack constantly trying to get with Gina and Dani trying to get with Ricky, however Ricky and Gina are so infatuated with each other that it doesn’t work. Also, in every scene we see Ricky being a bit jealous of Mack and a little disgusted by Dani.

  One of the biggest plot twists was finding out that Seb cheated on Carlos and Big Red cheated on Ashlyn with each other. This leads to a fight between Seb and Carlos, though they end up working it out, and it leads to Ashlyn and Big Red breaking up. Although while I was watching I knew that it was coming due to the fact that Ashlyn has very clear feelings for Maddox. That leads me into my next point; the return of siblings Maddox and Jet no-last-name. Jet gets super close to Ricky and they become best friends. As Big Red doesn’t come back for the season it’s said that he’s taking a semester abroad. Jet also seems to have his eye on Kourtney. Jet’s older sister also seems to have caught feelings for someone, Ashlyn, and the feelings seem to be very mutual. Maddox and Ashlyn are very flirty with each other the entire season, they almost kiss on Halloween, but they finally get together in the last episode. Since Maddox is my favorite character, I was quite happy to see Madlyn finally come together. 

  I cannot talk about this show without discussing the songs. Starting off the audition song this season was “Now or Never”, the opening song in the third High School Musical. Speaking of there’s quite a few songs from that movie featured in the season, a few were: “I Want It All”, “The Boys Are Back”, “Can I Have This Dance”, and of course “High School Musical”. Onto the original tracks there had to be a Rina duet and it was entitled “Maybe This Time”. Ricky also, finally, had a duet with EJ called “Speak Out”. This wouldn’t be High School Musical: The Musical: The Series if Joshua Bassett didn’t get to write a song for the season. This song is called “Love You Forever”, is played by Ricky and his silly little acoustic guitar, and was written to tell Gina he loves her. I’ve also been looping it for about a month. Moving on from Ricky Bowen we have little Miss Emmy. She is a freshman and the youngest person on the show however her voice is so powerful and in episode six she belts out “Dreams Don’t Die”. While Kourtney is trying to make a decision on college she ends up in a church and ends up singing the chilling song, “Jump”. And of course I have mention my favorite song from the soundtrack. This song is featured in episode four, the Halloween episode, and is sung by Ashlyn and Maddox. The song is called “Call It What You Want”, and for those of you who listen to Taylor Swift I hope you share my excitement.  

  This show aired when I was 13 years old and my only thought when I heard about it was, “Why are they making another spinoff? It’s going to be so bad.” I am now 17 and can safely say that this is one of my favorite shows. While I was growing up and going through some very fundamental years I felt like I watched these characters grow with me. Mr Mazzara and Miss Jen said this in the last episode and I believe that it’s the perfect way to end this article: “It’s never smart to count on tomorrow when all you got is… you know (tonight).”