This High School Musical Theory Is A Complete Game Changer

For all those Disney Channel kids who grew up on High School Musical, prepare to have your minds blown. According to Teen Vogue, there's a recent theory out there which makes the case that the High School Musical franchise is actually just a high school musical. Confused? Let me explain.

We all remember singing along as Troy Bolton, Gabriella Montez, and the rest of the Wildcats put all their feelings into song, whether it was about high school ending or falling in love with someone from a different social clique. What if High School Musical 1, 2, and 3, though, were simply part of one long musical the kids of East High had been staging for years?

This theory started, where else, Reddit with a user named Rockaface, who had put some serious thought into the HSM series and what it all means. "Everything in the 3 movies is only a musical," the Redditor wrote. "This explains the perfectly choreographed dance sequences when they randomly sing songs, the ending scene, and the very fictitious story."

It's true, it is an extremely farfetched story if you think of it in real life terms, but for a musical, it's pretty standard. It's also plausible if you take a closer look at the final moments of High School Musical 3, which you know Rockaface did. "We see the main cast walking towards the camera until they stand on a stage," they wrote of the final graduation scene. "Curtains fall behind them as they bow to the audience, and the series ends as more curtains close."

So yes, it does end like a Broadway musical with the cast getting to take their final bow in a show that last three years of their high school lives. Now Rockaface knows that "the saying of goodbyes can be dismissed as a gesture towards fans," but they think it "hints to the true story of the movie series." That none of this was actually for real, it was all for show. A musical that the high schoolers created and apparently, were very invested in. So much so that @Rockaface believes the reason the songs in High School Musical were so juvenile was because they were written by teenagers.

The title, though, could be the real giveaway. It's possible we missed its double meaning the first time around. "The name of the series, however, is my most concrete point in this theory," Rockaface wrote on Reddit. "It's even partially canon that the movies never happened, and were only a, well, high school musical."

This kind of changes everything, right? Now we'll have to wait for High School Musical 4 to see how they address this theory. Just don't hold your breath waiting for an appearance from Ashley Tisdale since she's not returning to East High anytime soon.