Hogwarts Legacy becomes all the more notable, then, for being a look into what Harry Potter becomes without Rowling. Moreover, she very clearly wants to be the shepherd of her story, even as she makes it a politically-charged property. The only issue is that once you dig into the lore of the series, it’s clear that it's inextricable from Rowling and her politics.

Warner Brothers, which owns the “Wizarding World” franchise comprising Rowling’s setting and characters, clearly wants to position Harry Potter as a kind of franchisable setting, a la Marvel movies or the Star Wars expanded universe. These are, at root, properties for children, who are presumably only vaguely aware of Rowling or her political beliefs. Rowling’s behavior hasn’t completely soiled the Potter legacy, given that there is a new Fantastic Beasts movie on the way, and that Sony dedicated an entire showcase to the upcoming Hogwarts Legacy. Her arguments are typical for transphobes, especially in England: While she proclaims to be protecting women and lesbians, she sidles up to prominent homophobic activists on Twitter. She has gone as far as legally threatening people who speak ill of her on Twitter. Since about 2020, Rowling has become infamous for her outspoken views on trans people. Hogwarts Legacy will enter a world that has a different tolerance for Rowling’s wizards than either of those previous two properties did, though. The Cursed Child, a play set in Rowling’s Potter universe, won multiple Tony awards including Best Play, and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them grossed $814 million worldwide, and was the eighth highest-grossing film of 2016. It’s true there is a massive passive audience for the Potter series, and that even after the final book was published in 2007, Rowling’s fictional world became an indelible part of popular culture. Yet, as a person that grew up at the height of the books’ popularity, I cannot think of anything I want less than more Harry Potter. Harry Potter is as much part of the fabric of popular culture as superheroes or Disney films. They did not discuss Harry Potter’s creator, J. In last week's PlayStation presentation about Hogwarts Legacy, the upcoming Harry Potter open-world role-playing game, members of the development team Avalanche Software talked about using magic, caring for magical creatures, flying on broomsticks, and finding secrets hidden throughout the castle.

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