Selena Gomez Returns to Waverly Place: “Where It All Began”

There’s magic in the air, and it might have something to do with Selena Gomez. The multihyphenate recently paid tribute to the place that started it all by sharing a photo to Instagram on Oct. 30 of herself staring up at the street sign for Waverly Place in New York City. She captioned the nostalgic post, “Where it all began.” (Gomez famously got her start on the Disney Channel series “Wizards of Waverly Place.”)

Fans were quick to comment on the bittersweet nature of the snapshot, reminiscing on all the childhood memories the photo brought back for them. “Alex Russo raised me,” one user wrote, referring to Gomez’s character on the show, while another simply stated, “I wasn’t ready for this.”

It’s been 15 years since “Wizards of Waverly Place” premiered in 2007, and while much has changed since then, for Gomez, it’s still a series she holds close to her heart. In a June episode of Entertainment Weekly’s podcast “The Awardist,” Gomez said her experience on the show continues to inspire her current work, including Hulu’s “Only Murders in the Building,” the whodunit she stars in alongside Steve Martin and Martin Short. “I feel like Mabel is an older version of Alex in a way,” Gomez said in reference to her character.

“I adored being on that show so much. I felt like I did learn a lot,” Gomez added. “We actually had great writers — we had two writers that were on ‘Friends’ — and we had an incredible director that we used for most of our seasons. We got really lucky. I still look back at that and laugh at certain things just because I thought it was so fun, and we tried.” If her recent visit to Waverly Place is any indication, it appears Gomez is still feeling just as grateful.