'Hannah Montana's Final Season Was Drastically Changed By Disney

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Hannah Montana’s big farewell was supposed to be very different. Writer Douglas Danger Lieblein has revealed the initial plans for the Disney Channel show’s fourth and final season, which had to be changed at the very last minute due to an unexpected demand concerning merchandising. And knowing the original plans for Season 4 after all these years will have you mourning what could have been.

Lieblein opened up about why Season 4 was so tricky for the writing team during the March 31 episode of his Best of Both Our Worlds podcast. “First of all, we didn’t think we were coming back. It was a surprise fourth year, and we had so much to do,” the writer revealed, pointing out that the final season had only been picked up for 13 episodes, less than half the count of all previous seasons.

Because of the shortened time, Lieblein explained that the writers wanted to kick t...