BOSTON — Magic was happening in the TD Garden, and halfway through Alysa Liu’s final skate of an improbable return to the sport, a sold-out crowd began clapping, nervously at first and then with elation as she sailed through jump after jump. And when she was done, it was clear she had won the women’s title at the World Figure Skating Championships, and then the arena got really loud.

No American woman had won worlds since 2006, a year after Liu was born. Suddenly, with a total score of 222.97, she had done something she never could have imagined when she walked away from skating following the 2022 Olympics only to return on a whim last year.

“Just what the hell,” she said when the results were official.

She dethroned Japan’s Kaori Sakamoto who had won the past three worlds but finished second here. Japan’s Mone Chiba was third.

For almost two decades, America has been searching for its next great female skating star, and with less than a year before the Milan-Cortina Olympics, it finally has a promising group of three women who possess the ability to win a medal in Italy — or continue a 22-year streak of Olympic disappointment.

First came Amber Glenn, the two-time U.S. champion who has skated her best these past few months at 25 years old but remains plagued by inconsistency. Her skate Friday was both brilliant and frustrating. She mostly sailed through a complex combination but fell short on one of two double axels. She stumbled while landing her signature triple axel and didn’t fully rotate a triple flip.

She seemed surprised when her score of 138.00 appeared on the scoreboard, her mistakes overcome slightly by her challenging program. And yet, when combined with another disappointing ninth-place finish in Wednesday’s short program, she could manage only a fifth-place finish here — her best at worlds but a reminder of potential still not reached.

Then came Isabeau Levito, last year’s silver medalist at worlds who has had a season filled with injuries. She immediately fell on a triple flip-triple toe loop combination but otherwise skated a clean program, rising from the ice at the end of her routine and mouthing the word “Why?” as if asking how she could have stumbled at just the wrong time.

She, though, was stunned to see her overall score of 209.84. Her mouth flew open, and her eyes got wide as it became clear she might win a medal. And yet she, too, fell just short in fourth place.

But nothing was a bigger surprise than Liu, who went into this year hoping to get herself back into skating shape, with hopes of maybe making a run at next year’s Olympics. Winning a medal here was the last thing that seemed possible.

On Friday, there was no better symbol of America’s once-mighty dominance of women’s skating than the sight of Tenley Albright, the United States’ first Olympic female gold medalist, sitting in the front row of the arena stands, just behind a well of photographers. Her gold at the 1956 Winter Games started a run of six golds in 13 Olympics.

But an American woman hasn’t won an Olympic skating competition since Sarah Hughes took gold at the 2002 Salt Lake City Games and hasn’t taken an Olympic medal since Sasha Cohen’s silver in 2006. The U.S. showing at worlds has been equally as bleak, with just three medals since 2006, none of them gold.

The International Olympic Committee’s suspension of Russia has given an opportunity to the United States just as the most promising group of American skaters has arrived. While the International Skating Union, which oversees global figure skating, will allow one independent neutral Russian skater in each category at next year’s Games, the U.S. skaters won’t have to compete against a whole Russian team. There are chances for medals that haven’t existed in recent Olympics.

Earlier on Thursday, the U.S. ice dance team of Madison Chock and Evan Bates took the rhythm dance short program with a near-flawless program that earned them a score of 90.18, putting them a little more than three points ahead of their top rivals, Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier. Chock and Bates have won the past two world championships, beating Gilles and Poirier at last year’s worlds in Montreal, where both teams train.

Their win in the short came a day after defending men’s champion Ilia Malinin dazzled in his short program with a score of 110.41, putting him in the lead going into Saturday’s free skate. Malinin has recently been skating an audacious free program in which he attempts all seven quadruple jumps, though he has yet to land them all in one performance. He has not indicated whether he will do the seven-quad routine Saturday night.