It’s Been 15 Years Since ‘The Hills’ Ended 6 Seasons of Drama With a Shocking Reality Check (Exclusive)

This July has Us asking a very important question: Where were you when the series finale of The Hills aired?

The Moment

There were plenty of occasions over the years that had fans of the MTV hit grabbing their BlackBerry to debrief with their friends over BBM: Lauren Conrad not going to Paris or the infamous “you know what you did fight” between LC and Heidi Montag in the halls of Les Deux. But the reality show’s July 13, 2010, series ender was a WTF peak: After a farewell between Kristin Cavallari and Brody Jenner, cameras pulled back to reveal a set on the Paramount lot, where a backdrop of the Hollywood sign was being rolled away behind Jenner. Wait, it was all staged?

Who Was Involved

When OG heroine Conrad exited the Laguna Beach spinoff mid-season 5, her former high school nemesis Cavallari took over. (Spencer Pratt and Montag left shortly before the finale.) Also returning for the farewell sixth season: OG Audrina Patridge, Lo Bosworth (Conrad’s high school BFF) and Stephanie Pratt (sister of divisive Spencer).

Upon revisiting the finale in 2025, it was a shock to see how dull it was — plot lines included Stephanie visiting her latest fling at motocross practice, Bosworth spending about 30 seconds debating her decision to move in with then-boyfriend Scott despite not having an engagement ring and Patridge buying a beach house.

Creator Adam DiVello masterminded the “genius” twist, Cavallari, 38, tells Us. “[I remember thinking] this is going to make you be like, ‘Wait, what just happened? It was one of the most amazing jaw dropping moments,” Cavallari says. “I thought it was absolutely brilliant.”

Why We Remember It

Before that mic drop, flashbacks set to an acoustic (and tear-jerking!) rendition of Natasha Bedingfield’s earworm theme, “Unwritten,” had Us mourning our favorite show — only to question whether we’d been duped since 2006!

“It’s cool they took a chance and did something unexpected,” Conrad, 39, tells Us. “This wasn’t a scripted series, so it’s hard to tie everyone’s lives up nicely with a bow. We were all young and just going to go on living the next day.”

Patridge, 40, comments to Us: “There was, and still is, so much controversy about whether the show was real or fake. Even for us, the lines between real emotions and story lines created by producers got pretty blurry at times. That moment really played into that mystery.”

Cavallari adds that she took the moment as an acknowledgment of the conversation around the show. “[It wasn’t] The Hills saying everything was fake, which I know a lot of people [thought],” she says. “I took it more as a little nod to the audience — like we know what you’ve been saying and we’re still not going to confirm or deny.”

Key Details

This wasn’t the only way to go! DiVello had handed in an alternate ending, too, and was surprised by the network’s choice. All was revealed in a 2013 reairing: After the goodbye, cameras followed Jenner home — where Conrad was waiting for him!

“I just really felt like it needed something extra, like one more beat, and I felt like it needed Lauren. I remember going back to MTV and even reaching out to Lauren and just saying, ‘Is there any way we can make that happen?’ It kind of seamlessly fit with adding Brody at the end,” DiVello told Entertainment Weekly in 2013. “There was a point at that time [in the series] Brody kept saying he had a girlfriend. At the time, it was Avril Lavigne. We didn’t wanna mention it and she didn’t wanna mention it, so we never said who the girl was. Kristin was very much like, ‘I hope you’re happy with your girlfriend.’ So the tongue-in-cheek thing there is that he comes home and Lauren is the one sitting on the couch. Lauren is the one who got the guy in the end.”

Patridge notes, “At the end of the day, the heart of the show was still real, even if some of the situations were shaped or manipulated to help move the story along.”

The Aftermath

Conrad tells Us that she recalls fans being “a little divided on the ending” that aired. “It was clearly a nod to the question of ‘is it real?’ that had always followed the show. They waited until the final moment of the show to literally break the fourth wall,” she says.

Patridge shares a similar sentiment. “There was always a lot of speculation, but after that final scene aired, fans were definitely surprised — and a little caught off guard,” she tells Us. “So many people were like, ‘Wait … was the whole thing fake?’ It sparked a ton of questions and curiosity. I think it made people rethink everything they had watched.”

She also believes that the finale helped cement the show’s place in pop culture history. “It made The Hills more than just a reality show — it turned it into a cultural conversation,” Patridge says. “That twist blurred the lines between real and fake in a way that still has people talking. It gave the show a lasting legacy and kept it relevant along with people connecting to us long after it ended.”

MTV attempted a revival — sans Conrad and Cavallari — in 2019. Despite initial excitement, The Hills: New Beginnings was canceled after two seasons.

A New Perspective

To this day, Conrad and Cavallari have very different takes on fact vs. fiction. While Cavallari calculates “70 percent fake,” Conrad says The Hills “captured a lot of very real moments for me,” with only logistics getting in the way of authenticity. “Things need to be reshot, restaged and edited. Cameras weren’t with us 24/7, so if they missed something important, we understood we would be reliving it in the near future.”

Patridge recalls how the lines were blurred for her over the years.

“One was the scene where Lauren and I had a heart-to-heart about me moving out. That moment was real, sad and honestly heartbreaking,” she says. “We would’ve handled it differently off-camera, but we had to wait until everything was set up so we could capture it ‘in the moment.’”

Patridge’s endless on-again, off-again relationship with Justin Bobby also went from real to fake by the end of the series.

“I was dating someone off the show but had to keep pretending I wanted Justin. Kristin and I had to get into a fight over him, which I really didn’t want to do because I felt like it made me look a certain way,” she says. “But Kristin and I talked privately — we were both ready to leave that party scene but couldn’t until we got in the fight — so we just put on our game faces, filmed the scene, and then got to go back to our real lives. That kind of thing happened more than people realize.”

Where Are They Now?

Cavallari, a divorced mom of three, continues being unfiltered on her “Let’s Be Honest” podcast, which recently acted as the backdrop of a new E! reality show. Montag and Spencer share two sons and a passion for TikTok. TV personality Patridge, who has a daughter, dates country singer Michael Ray. And married mother of two Conrad is the designer of LC Lauren Conrad and Little Co. for Kohl’s. With her lessons in setting friendship boundaries (pour one out for Jen Bunney!) and wearing a chunky headband (or styling your side bangs with a braid), though, LC walked so influencers today could run.