There was a time when Miley Cyrus lived two lives. One belonged to a Tennessee kid with sharp instincts and a sharper voice. The other wore a platinum wig and ruled the after-school hours on Disney Channel as Hannah Montana. Now, two decades later, Cyrus is walking back through that door.
Disney announced this week that the Hannah Montana 20th Anniversary Special will premiere March 24 on Disney+, marking twenty years since the show first aired and quietly detonated into a global obsession. The special will be filmed before a live audience and feature Cyrus in conversation with Alex Cooper, offering a rare, direct look at the creation of the character that made her both famous and, for a while, unavoidable.
The format is stripped down but deliberate. Cyrus revisits the original sets — the Stewart family living room, the closet where fantasy became identity — and reflects on the machinery behind the myth. There’s archival footage, unseen material from the Disney vault, and the kind of perspective that only comes after distance, reinvention, and survival. This isn’t nostalgia for its own sake. It’s cultural accounting.
When Hannah Montana debuted in 2006, it didn’t just dominate kids’ television — it rewired it. The show blurred the boundary between fiction and pop stardom, turning Cyrus into something new: a character who could sell records in both worlds. The numbers still hang in the air — dozens of platinum and gold releases, two feature films, and a franchise that has quietly accumulated more than half a billion streaming hours.
Cyrus, now officially recognized as a Disney Legend, acknowledged the permanence of the role. Hannah Montana, she said, “will always be a part of who I am,” describing the anniversary as a way to recognize the fans who stayed with her through every version of herself — the ingénue, the provocateur, the songwriter who outlasted the machine that built her.
For Disney, the special is both tribute and strategy. As Ayo Davis, president of Disney Branded Television, framed it, the show’s legacy still resonates because it gave its audience permission — permission to be louder, stranger, more themselves. In corporate language, it’s a love letter. In practical terms, it’s proof that the blonde wig still casts a long shadow.
Production comes from HopeTown Entertainment and Unwell Productions, with Cyrus and her inner circle maintaining creative control. Cooper, whose interviewing style thrives on emotional excavation, serves as host — a signal that this will lean toward confession rather than spectacle.
Ahead of the premiere, Disney+ has already assembled the full Hannah Montana catalog into a dedicated collection, including all four seasons and the concert film that captured Cyrus at the precise moment she stopped being a character and started becoming herself.
Twenty years on, the mythology remains intact. The wig may be gone, but the girl who wore it never really left.
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Last modified: February 18, 2026
