A Cheetah Girls Reunion Is Coming To Disney Channel... Sort Of

Even if it’s been years since you last tuned in to Disney Channel, there’s a pretty big reason to change that soon — because The Cheetah Girls’ Raven-Symoné and Adrienne Bailon Houghton will be reuniting on screen in 2022. Though viewers loved the pair’s friendship as Galleria and Chanel (aka Bubbles and Chuchie) in the network’s first-ever movie musical, the quasi-Cheetah Girls reunion doesn’t actually have anything to do with the original made-for-TV film. Rather, Symoné and Houghton will be appearing on the That’s So Raven spinoff, Raven’s Home, when the show returns for Season 5 in 2022, per TVLine.

You definitely knew that Symoné was the star of her self-titled series — but did you remember that Houghton also played a small role on it? She was That’s So Raven’s cool-girl bully Alana during the Cheetah Girls era. Now, with Raven moving back home to San Francisco in Season 5 of the spinoff, she will be not-so-pleasantly surprised to find Alana serving as the principal of the girls’ alma mater, Bayside High.

“We did the first Cheetah Girls movie when I was 19, and now I’m 38, so we’ve stayed friends for almost 20 years,” Houghton told TVLine. “We laugh at the fact that we were playing the high school students… and now we’re playing the parents. It’s so bizarre!”

Houghton has been vocal about her desire to return to the role, and recently told her The Real co-hosts that she “would absolutely come back.” Apparently, that manifesting worked — because the reunion is really happening now. “How genius of the writers of this show to create that dynamic where the school bully becomes the principal,” Houghton said.

This isn’t the first time Symoné and Houghton have reunited in public — last year, they appeared together at the Los Angeles Women’s March. However, getting all four Cheetah Girls together might be less likely. Even though Symoné and former co-star Kiely Williams seemed to overcome past drama during an Instagram Live last year, Williams wasn’t super receptive to patching things up with Houghton — though Symoné seemed keen on making it happen. “If only to be on one carpet together once,” she said. “If only to say that. That’ll be fun for us, not just everybody else.”

Houghton has previously dismissed the idea of a Cheetah Girls reboot, but she did tell TVLine she’s “so excited about this new generation experiencing the Cheetah Girls on TikTok and Disney+.” Among that generation? Kim Kardashian’s daughter North West. (For a bit of a Keeping Up throwback, Houghton previously dated Rob Kardashian.) “[Kim] told me that North is obsessed with the Cheetah Girls and wants to introduce us,” she said. “In the back of my mind, I’m like, ‘She’s going to wonder why I’m so much older!’”

Houghton said she doesn’t want to ruin “the memory of something so great,” but would “always be down” if the situation was right. “Maybe Bubbles and Chuchie are grown with kids of their own and they start the next generation of Cheetah Girls.”