As it turns out, Abby Lee Miller was the one that proved to be replaceable.
Because after sisters Brooke Hyland and Paige Hyland took their Dance Moms bows, leaving the Lifetime series following a particularly vicious 2013 fight between the acerbic dance teacher and the girls' mom Kelly Hyland, Brooke had no interest in an encore.
The now-26-year-old acknowledged that the swift exit was bittersweet. "I started dancing when I was 2 and I had no idea that was going to be my last performance," Brooke told E! News in an exclusive interview. "So I look back and I'm kind of sad. But I never danced again. And I can confidently say that I don't really miss it, which is weird."
But at 15, "from watching the show, you could tell that I really wasn't there," explained Brooke, who also enjoyed a brief stint as a cheerleader during her four-season run. "I wanted to be doing other things. So I finally got to, which I was happy about."
Her little sister similarly didn't feel an Abby-shaped void in her life.
"I think it's crazy that that's the last time I danced," Paige, 23, acknowledged. But at least, she noted, "I went out with a bang."
Because the season four episode featured the duet Paige and close pal Chloé Lukasiak "never shut up about," joked Brooke. As Paige explained, she and Chloé "begged for years," to be allowed to share the stage. "I remember writing a note to Abby, like, 'Please let me dance with her.' And because I wanted it so bad, she was like, 'Absolutely not.'"
So they'll always have their swan song.
And sitting down for the series' May 1 reunion special, alongside Chloé, JoJo Siwa, Kendall Vertes and Kalani Hilliker, also allowed the sisters to get their mom's perspective on the years-old showdown. Kelly, also a former pupil at Abby's Pittsburgh-area studio, admitted during the episode that she'd been harboring guilt that she'd ruined her daughter's dance careers with the fight that ended in hair-pulling and feigned finger-chomping.
"I feel like that's not something we ever really discussed with our mom," explained Paige. "So to see her get so emotional and knowing that she had those feelings, I feel like that's something we all needed to go through. Because obviously we don't want her feeling guilty. We are the ones who wanted to sign up for the show. And she was just being a supportive mother. So I think having those feelings come out was definitely very therapeutic for all of our family."
Echoed Brooke, "I didn't know she was feeling that way. I was like, 'Mom, no!'"
Just the experience of recounting everything they'd been through proved healing as well. For Paige, it was reflecting on all of the insults Abby sent her way.
"I think I was used to it because growing up I had to deal with it from such a young age, which is sad that I just let it go in one ear and out the other," she noted. "But as I've gotten older and I see clips, I'm like, that is not normal."
As the slimmest of silver linings, though, it's given her skin thick enough to handle any Internet troll that may try to intrude on her career as a model and influencer.
"It definitely made me stronger," Paige agreed. "As I've gotten older you can say whatever you want to me now and I will not cry. Because I cried enough in the past."
Brooke, who helms the Bite-Sized Foodie blog and hosts international trips for some of her 4 million Instagram followers, similarly has few tears left for her pillow.
"I feel like being on the show and dancing for Abby, I learned so much outside of dance," she said. "I'm just a lot stronger now. Because of what we went through."
Of course, they're not the only Dance Mom stars to emerge from the show with teflon underneath their tutus. Keep reading to check out how the cast is living off the dance floor.