Kristin Cavallari says the appeal of the new Laguna Beach reunion is simple: seeing the cast 22 years later. The special, The Reunion: Laguna Beach, streams Friday on the Roku Channel and brings the original group back to their Southern California beach town nearly 20 years after the MTV series helped turn them into names people still remember.
Cavallari said the draw for viewers is the distance between who those teenagers were in 2004 and who they are now. “It’s nostalgic,” she said. “But it’s also really sweet because everyone collectively is doing really well. People will be happy to see how everyone turned out.” Lauren Conrad, Cavallari and Stephen Colletti are among the original cast members returning for the special.
The series first broke out with a very specific kind of television magic: attractive high schoolers, a beachfront setting and a camera trained on the social drama of Laguna Beach, Calif. The first episode centered on Conrad and Lo Bosworth’s black-and-white party at a beachfront hotel, where Cavallari arrived in a white dress while the other girls wore black. Colletti left early, and Conrad was visibly upset by how brief his appearance was.
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That early episode was only the start. During spring break in Cabo, Colletti saw Cavallari dancing on a bartop and later apologized after berating her. In Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, during Conrad’s 19th birthday celebration, the show captured flirtatious moments between Conrad and Colletti before ending with him putting a Do Not Disturb tag on their hotel room door. The series also replayed smaller details that stuck with fans, including Conrad and Bosworth repeating Cavallari’s pronunciation of Stephen as “Steph-ennn” and Cavallari later saying, “My car is dunzo!” after her car broke down in the middle of the Pacific Coast Highway.
The reunion lands with the same built-in advantage the original show had: nostalgia, but with the added payoff of seeing what became of people viewers watched grow up. That is also the part Cavallari says will matter most on Friday, when the cast’s return becomes public again. The question is not whether the old moments still travel; it is whether the people behind them can now make the whole story feel complete.
