Disney's Wizards Beyond Waverly Place: Why Max never came back
Jake T. Austin says he agreed to return in 2020 and the show went a different direction, David Henrie says they tried and it didn’t work out, and David DeLuise called the finale a missed opportunity.
Wizards Beyond Waverly Place ended this week after three seasons and 35 episodes. Max Russo was in none of them.
Jake T. Austin, who played Max across all four seasons of the original Wizards of Waverly Place, is the only series regular from that show who never appeared in the sequel. He broke his silence on August 6, two days after the four-part finale.
“How disappointed I am to have not been included in the spinoff,“ he wrote on his Instagram Story, addressing it to fans.
What Jake T. Austin said about the Wizards spinoff
Austin, 31, said he was asked back in 2020 whether he wanted to reprise the role, and that he said yes without reservation.
What happened after that, in his telling, is that the people running the show took it in a different direction and his character wasn’t part of it. He closed by saying he has nothing but love for his former castmates.
The spinoff wasn’t announced until 2024 and premiered on October 29 that year. So four years sit between the question Austin says he was asked and the show that eventually got made, which is a long time for a plan to survive intact.
The series wrote Max in without him. The premiere established that he franchised the family sandwich shop and became a millionaire, which is a graceful way to explain an empty chair.
David Henrie says the show tried to get him
David Henrie, who starred as Justin Russo and executive produced the series, gave his version to TVLine on August 7.
“We tried to get him,“ Henrie said, adding that it didn’t work out.
Those two accounts don’t line up, and nobody has squared them. Austin says he was in and the show moved on. Henrie says the show asked and couldn’t land it.
Both can be describing different moments across four years without either being untrue, which is usually what this looks like when a casting attempt dies somewhere in the middle.
David DeLuise called the ending a missed opportunity
David DeLuise, who played Russo patriarch Jerry for all four seasons of the original, guest-starred in two episodes of the sequel’s first season and was absent from the finale.
He left a comment under an Entertainment Tonight Instagram video this week: “It would not be over if the OG wizards were really there. Missed opportunity.“
It picked up more than 2,000 likes and split the replies. He’d already commented on a reunion photo weeks earlier saying he was sad not to be there.
The finale did bring people back. Selena Gomez returned as Alex and made her directorial debut on the opening episode, with Jennifer Stone, Gregg Sulkin, and Maria Canals-Barrera also appearing.
Why Dan Benson says Zeke was never coming back
There’s a third original cast member who has been clear about his own absence for two years now, and his reason is nothing like the other two.
Dan Benson played Zeke Beakerman, Justin’s best friend, across all four seasons. He left acting and became a full-time adult content creator in 2022.
Benson has said plainly that he understands why the character can’t return, and that he made the choice himself. He told TMZ he knew for a fact he wouldn’t be part of the reboot and that it was entirely on him.
Things got sharper in October 2024, when Henrie was shown a list of possible returning guest stars in a BuzzFeed segment, landed on Zeke’s name, and made a remark the room laughed at. Benson replied publicly, Henrie blocked him, and Benson has kept criticizing the show since.
He is, at minimum, the only one of the three whose exclusion has an explanation everybody involved agrees on.
The show is over either way. What’s left is three original cast members giving three different accounts of the same empty chairs, on Instagram, in the week after the last episode aired, which is roughly how these things go now.
Article compiled with the help of the Pirates & Princesses newsroom.
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Hat Tips:
TVLine (August 7, 2026), Andy Swift’s reporting including David Henrie’s response and Dan Benson’s comments on the finale
Just Jared (August 6, 2026), the full text of Jake T. Austin’s Instagram Story
E! News (August 2026), David DeLuise’s Instagram comment and the note that Disney did not respond to a request for comment
Us Weekly (October 2024 and February 2025), the timeline of Dan Benson’s career change, the BuzzFeed segment, and the blocking
TMZ (January 2025 and August 2026), Benson’s own account of why the character wasn’t coming back, and the 35-episode total