’Wizards Beyond Waverly Place’ Season 3 Ending, Explained
Wizards Beyond Waverly Place’s (2024) final season always had a steep hill to climb. The second season ended with massive reveals and an even bigger cliffhanger. Billie (Janice LeAnn Brown), the most powerful wizard in the world, is Alex Russo’s (Selena Gomez) daughter. To protect Billie from having her powers corrupted by the revenge-driven Lord Morsus/Nicodemus Penwulf (Tobias Jelinek), Alex risks her life by jumping through a portal to the world of dark magic. She takes Nicodemus with her, sealing the rift and keeping her family safe.
Oh, did I mention that Nicodemus is also Billie’s paternal grandfather, who is angry that his son, Alex’s husband, and Billie’s father, Damien Penwulf (Brandon Michael Hall), betrayed him? So, all these familial connections have to be explored after all this time. More importantly, Wizards Beyond Waverly Place has to introduce Damien, who has only been mentioned before Season 3. Even more pressing for Wizards of Waverly Place (2007) fans, the sequel series has to reveal Alex’s fate. All of this has to be wrapped up in a super-truncated four-episode season. It’s a true challenge that Wizards Beyond Waverly Place understandably struggles with, especially as it leaves one very obvious cliffhanger for the Wizards of Waverly Place franchise.
What Is Alex Russo’s Fate in ‘Wizards Beyond Waverly Place’?
The simple and most important way to answer this question is to confirm that Alex Russo is alive and reunited with her family by the end of Wizards Beyond Waverly Place Season 3. The unfortunate truth is that the same cannot be said about the other people in Alex’s life. She spends a bit of the season in an alternate dimension that feels a lot like a different kind of Wizards of Waverly Place spinoff series. Alex and Harper (Jennifer Stone) are roommates. Harper jokes with Justin (David Henrie) about dating a redhead. Oh, and Mason (Gregg Sulkin) is going to propose to Alex—because in this universe, the wizard and werewolf are still a couple.
As it turns out, Mason is not proposing because, in a truly strange and unnecessary choice for Wizards Beyond Waverly Place, Mason reveals that he’s dead. So, Mason, who watches over Alex, is there to help Alex realize that she needs to fight to get back to her real life with Damien and Billie. As someone who grew up with Wizards of Waverly Place and watched all the highs and (many) lows of Alex and Mason’s relationship in real-time, I can’t understand this decision.
Either way, Alex wakes up in that world of dark magic where she’s eventually reunited with Justin and Nicodemus. Before that, though, Justin helps Billie rescue Damien from the high-security wizards' prison Wizcatraz. For some reason, Damien put himself there to protect Billie. I wonder if it would have been more effective to have Damien be on the run from his father, perhaps pulling focus from Alex and Billie that way. Maybe that’s something that would have required episodes and time that Wizards Beyond Waverly Place clearly didn’t have. Either way, Damien eventually opens the rift that Alex and Justin use to get home to their families.
Does ‘Wizards Beyond Waverly Place’ Have a Cliffhanger?
At first, it seems that Wizards Beyond Waverly Place has tied up all of its obvious loose ends. Then, Nicodemus makes a surprise return, in which he refuses to give up on his evil plans. Billie tries to appeal to her family that Nicodemus is also a part of it—and maybe that means Nicodemus is worth saving. Unfortuantely, her gesture falls a bit flat since Wizards Beyond Waverly Place doesn’t have the time to show any spark of Nicodemus’s humanity or care for Damien or anyone else in the family. So, when Nicodemus tries to tear the family apart, their love and magic create a force field so strong that Nicodemus disappears into thin air.
After 10 years apart, Alex, Damien, and Billie can be a family in the Wizard World. Justin, his wife Giada (Mimi Gianopulos), and their two sons, Milo (Max Matenko) and Roman (Alkaio Thiele), will stay in Staten Island. Their heartfelt goodbyes are short-lived as the family—or at least part of it, since Jerry (David DeLuise) and Max (Jake T. Austin) are missing—reunite at the Waverly Sub Station. Then, there’s a quick comment from Justin about which one of them will win the Family Wizard Competition. With this truncated run, Wizards Beyond Waverly Place never got to see Billie, Milo, and Roman compete to be the family wizard. It’s a huge cliffhanger considering the original series, and there’s no real certainty that it’ll ever be resolved.
After all, in a behind-the-scenes featurette about Wizards Beyond Waverly Place, Selena Gomez says, “This is it.” The executive producer and star made her directorial debut in the series premiere. After debuting as Alex Russo in 2007, Gomez says, “It’s really surreal to say that I’m done playing this character.” Meanwhile, Wizards Beyond Waverly Place executive producer and star David Henrie is teasing a possible movie in the franchise’s future. As someone who grew up with the original show, it’s practically impossible to imagine a future of the Wizards of Waverly Place franchise without Gomez as Alex Russo.
