Madison Reyes
Julie Molina
Julie and the Phantoms
“She'll change their afterlife.”
2020
Canceled • 1 Season • 9 Episodes
Overview
Teenage Julie finds her passion for music and life while helping the Phantoms -- a trio of ghostly guys -- become the band they were never able to be.
Seasons
- Status
- Canceled
- Seasons
- 1 season
- Episodes
- 9 episodes
- First aired
- Sep 10, 2020
Cast
6 people
Reviews
5 min readThe Ghosts in the Machine
I’ve always had a soft spot for stories where the dead refuse to stay buried—not in a horror-movie way, but in the quiet, insistent way of unfinished business. Julie and the Phantoms understands that ache. It’s a show that could’ve easily slipped into the saccharine trap of its premise—a grieving teenager discovers her late mother’s abandoned recording studio and accidentally summons the spirits of a 1990s boy band—but instead, it lets the supernatural elements serve something messier and more human.
The ghosts here aren’t just plot devices; they’re echoes of lives cut short, of dreams deferred, of the way music lingers in the air long after the last note fades. That’s the trick of it, really. The show takes a high-concept setup (ghosts! a haunted nightclub! a villainous spectral impresario!) and grounds it in the small, specific grief of its teenage protagonist.
Julie Molina (Madison Reyes) isn’t just mourning her mother; she’s mourning the version of herself that existed before the loss. The first time we see her, she’s frozen in place, staring at a microphone like it’s a relic from another life. It’s a moment that could’ve been played for easy sentimentality, but Reyes sells it with a stillness that feels earned.
There’s no grand monologue about grief, just the quiet weight of a girl who’s stopped singing because the silence feels safer.
The Phantoms—Luke (Charlie Gillespie), Alex (Owen Patrick Joyner), and Reggie (Jeremy Shada)—are the kind of ghosts who make you wonder why the afterlife doesn’t have better rules. They’re stuck in limbo, visible only when they perform, and their initial attempts to communicate with Julie are equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking. (One early scene, where they try to get her attention by possessing a mannequin in a department store, is the kind of absurdity that could’ve derailed the show entirely if the cast didn’t sell it with such earnest charm.) But the real magic happens when they start making music together.
Buzz & Rumors
Public reportsJulie and the Phantoms: The Ghost Band That Wouldn't Stay Quiet
Netflix dropped it in 2020 as a teen musical comedy-drama series 
, and for a certain corner of the internet, it never really left. latestnetflix.com's view is that the pitch was pure high-concept heart: Julie (Madison Reyes) reeling after the recent death of her mother, colliding with the gone-too-soon members of the band Sunset Curve (Charlie Gillespie, Jeremy Shada, and Owen Joyner), ghosts only Julie can see who become visible to everyone when they play music together .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pKNyIMD5F8
The launch push centered its two leads. Madison Reyes and Charlie Gillespie talked to Scott Davis about what was billed as Kenny Ortega's (High School Musical, Descendants) new series for Netflix, with Owen Patrick Joyner and Jeremy Shada also named alongside Booboo Stewart, Cheyenne Jackson and Carlos Ponce . Ortega's name did a lot of heavy lifting. For musical-theater kids, that credit alone signaled pep, polish and big production numbers.
A Breakout Built on Grief and Volume
- Madison Reyes, an American actress and singer of Puerto Rican descent, is best known for her breakout role as Julie Molina in the Netflix musical comedy series Julie and the Phantoms (2020) .
- The core ghost-band trio is identified as Gillespie, Shada and Joyner opposite Reyes as Julie , with Joyner and Shada also highlighted in the early press rollout .
- The series is listed as a United States and Canada production, tagged Musique, Jeunesse, Comédie dramatique, with a 32-minute duration and a 6.8/10 rating from 192 votes .
That mix — loss on one side, loud pop-rock on the other, is why fans stuck around. Julie wasn't just getting a band. She was getting a reason to sing again, and the ghosts were getting unfinished business with a beat.
One Season, Loud Afterlife, Thin Paper Trail
Here's where gossip gets tricky. The available evidence is SERP snippets only, no full interviews, so real behind-the-scenes drama is unverified.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9Gr-p2rDVU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I222FOG6D1M
What does circulate is cancellation chatter. One video title declares Julie And The Phantoms CANCELLED By Netflix After One Season . Another promises The Real Reason Why Netflix Cancelled Julie And The Phantoms Season 2 . Neither snippet provides a confirmed reason, cast quote, or internal detail, so treat any stated "reason" as rumor/unconfirmed.
The music footprint is easier to document. The official soundtrack album accompanying the series was released digitally on September 10, 2020, by Columbia Records under license from Maisie Music Publishing , with a Season 1 soundtrack edition also listed as an OST . A Wake Up single tied to the original Netflix series is listed with a 2021 date , a sign the songs kept circulating after the show went quiet.
No invented feuds. No confirmed backstage blowups in the evidence. Just a short-lived Netflix musical with a devoted fanbase still replaying the tracks.
Entertainment rumors and trivia aggregated from public reporting. Treat speculation as unverified unless a cited source confirms it.