WARNING: The following contains spoilers for High School Musical: The Musical: The Series Season 2, Episode 1, “New Year’s Eve,” streaming now on Disney+.

High School Musical: The Musical: The Series Season 2 picks up just days after the first season’s finale. School has just let out, and everyone is excited for winter break. Their fall theater production of High School Musical was a great success because, if nothing else, it brought the cast together like a family. Now, it’s the holiday season -- a time to celebrate with their newfound theater family, but for Ricky, “New Years Eve” sets a rough coming semester. He is happy now, but Nini has been keeping a secret from him that is going to rock his world.

Ricky and Nini were the best of childhood friends, and by the time high school rolled around, they were in a relationship. One day before Season 1, Nini wrote him a song saying that she loved him, but Ricky froze and couldn’t say it back. In fact, with Nini going to an out-of-town theater camp, Ricky suggested that they take a pause in their relationship. The problem arose when, on the first day of school, Nini showed up with a new boyfriend she had met at camp.

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HSM: TM: TS Ricky and Nini

That’s why Ricky joined the theater department in the first place. He was jealous of Nini’s new boyfriend, E.J. Ricky surprised everyone, including himself, when he was given the lead. To E.J.’s dismay, he was going to play Troy Bolton alongside Nini’s Gabriella. Throughout their theater production, there was a lot of drama, some backstabbing and a lot confusion, but by the end of the season, Ricky and Nini were a solid couple again. Ricky was ecstatic that they were back together, telling her that he loves her repeatedly and vowing to never let her go again.

Season 1 also brought some unexpected news for Ricky’s personal life. His mother was leaving his father and moving to Chicago for good. The news hit him hard, and he struggled with his new reality. He felt alone and abandoned, especially when his mother showed up to their High School Musical production with her new boyfriend. As Season 2 begins, he is still trying to work through everything. It’s now the holidays, which means things are difficult again because it’s his first Christmas without his whole family together.

The struggle is palpable when Nini gives him a skateboard for Christmas, and he tells her that a skateboard was the first gift that he could remember his mother giving him as a child. Through all of this, he has had Nini with him. He tells her, “This… Us… it’s like the one thing I can always count on.” He is really looking forward to doing the spring musical with her, but it looks like that isn’t going to happen because Nini is about to leave too.

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HSM: TM: TS Ricky and Nini 3

At one point in the episode, Ricky says that “good relationships are all about good communication,” but Nini is not being totally up front with him. After their fall musical, Nini was accepted to the Youth Actors’ Conservatory in Denver, and she has enrolled there for the Spring semester. She doesn’t even find a good time to tell him the news. Instead, she waits until they are at their New Year’s Eve party with all of their friends to spring the news on Ricky, which is how the episode ends.

With Nini leaving and his mother already gone, Ricky is in for a rough semester. He will be forced to cope with his parents’ divorce without his girlfriend and have to deal with another loved one walking out of his life. There is also the question of whether he will still want to do the Spring musical at all, since the only reason he was doing it was to be with Nini. Regardless, it looks like Season 2 of High School Musical: The Musical: The Series will be a difficult time for Ricky.

High School Musical: The Musical: The Series starts Olivia Rodrigo, Joshua Bassett, Kate Reinders, Matt Cornett, Sofia Wylie, Larry Saperstein, Julia Lester, Dara Reneé, Frankie A. Rodriguez, Mark St. Cyr, Joe Serafini, Derek Hough, Roman Banks, Olivia Rose Keegan, Andrew Barth Feldman and Asher Angel. New episodes premiere Fridays on Disney+.

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