Potterheads Rejoice! (But Maybe Not so Much)
Christina Bagni // Blog Writer
Potterheads rejoice! It’s been five years since Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 was released, and finally we get something else to satiate our wizarding-world needs: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, a play opening in London in July. Fear not, fellow Americans, those of us stuck on this side of the pond will still get the experience in book form, as the script is being published and sold on July 31st (That’s Harry’s birthday, but you already knew that, didn’t you?).
There’s a lot of hype about this, which is both expected and unwarranted. Yes, the Harry Potter Fandom is one of the largest and most passionate ever, but it’s not like we have been starving for content. Between the new Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them movie, the expanded theme park, and J.K. Rowling’s near weekly tweets about who should have been with whom and who shouldn’t have died and who was or was not sorted into Gryffindor and who is or is not gay, we’ve gotten more content than fans of a finished book series should. And now, a play about Harry being overworked and his son not wanting to live up to his father’s legacy. How exciting! How whimsical? How…necessary?
It’s strange that the first book, full of puns and childish imagination, led to such a mature play. I suppose it makes sense to aim the play at the original Harry Potter audience, who are now adults, but the real question is: why have a play at all?
That’s right folks, I don’t want any more Harry Potter. You may think I should be sent to Azkaban for such a crime, but hear me out.
Harry’s story is done. It finished neatly—and then had a clunky epilogue that a lot of people found unnecessary. This play, an extension of said unnecessary epilogue, feels to me like the last episode of How I Met Your Mother. It is taking the story too far. Sure, Harry’s sons probably would feel like a lot was expected of them, and sure, Harry probably would be overworked, but I don’t want to know that. I don’t want a Return of the King style ending to this saga; the one(s) we got were enough.
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is more exciting to me because it is a new story in the old world. A different time, with different characters, in a different country, with the same magic? Brilliant. But the same characters, after their story has already come to an end? Seems like it’s just J.K. trying to wring out all the money she can.
I can’t blame her, though. The Casual Vacancy didn’t do as well as expected, and the miniseries based on it (yes, there was a miniseries based on it) did even worse. Her mystery novels, written under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, were plain forgettable. When your tweets about a children’s book you wrote ten years ago get more attention than your more recent adult novels, it makes sense to resign yourself to keep branching off of said children’s book.
Why can’t one of the most successful authors in the history of time write successfully about anything beyond wizards and magic? Frankly, because we, her fans, won’t let her. After all, we’re the ones who didn’t read her adult books. We’re the ones who will pre-order The Cursed Child. The same audience who propelled her to fame are now limiting her creativity.
Harry Potter was and is an international phenomenon. People will read those books until the end of people, and we were lucky enough to grow up with them. I will never forget the excitement of the Barnes and Noble premiers, surrounded by hundreds of kids with lightning bolts drawn on our foreheads in Sharpie. I’ll read the books to my kids someday, I’ll still watch ABC Family’s Harry Potter Weekend every year, and yes, I’ll probably see the play when it comes to the states. But perhaps we should let J.K. write about something else, for once. After all, imagine if Harry only learned one spell? He’d never get anywhere if he just yelled “Expelliarmus!” at everything.
Oh, wait…