11 Harry Potter spin-off series we want to see (or not)

We’ve been hearing a lot about a potential Harry Potter spin-off series on the way. There are a LOT of directions this could go. For example:

We’ve heard a lot lately about a rumored Harry Potter TV show coming to HBO Max. Executives have denied the reports, but with platforms of all kinds rushing to air as many big-time franchise series as they can, it’s not hard to imagine Harry Potter coming to TV in some form.

If you ask me, it sounds like HBO Max and Warner Bros. are testing the waters regarding a possible Harry Potter series before officially embarking on such an expensive and daring project. That’s prudent, especially given how much controversy has been swirling around author J.K. Rowling lately. Many fans have been applying Roland Barthes’ philosophical concept of the “Death of the Author” to Harry Potter in order to separate Rowling from the story she wrote, both because of her transphobic views and because her latest Potter-related projects have been lackluster. Potterheads are generally in agreement that Harry Potter and the Cursed Child — a play set years after the end of the original Harry Potter books — was an AU fanfiction that shouldn’t have seen the light of day, and that the Fantastic Beasts movies have been iffy at best, give or take charming protagonist Newt Scamander.

Now fans are split: do we want another series that could further damage the Potterverse? And even if HBO Max were able to keep J.K. Rowling out of it to avoid a PR nightmare, should we support it? Or should we embrace a new series so long as it’s good?

Let’s say a Potter series is greenlit. Here are some possible ideas about what the show(s) could be about.

1. The Marauders

The Marauders, the creators of the Marauder’s Map, are James Potter, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew, with adjunct member Lily Evans. When these characters were Harry’s age, they were friends at Hogwarts, and are beloved by many Harry Potter superfans. A series about them would be an easy sell.

While J.K. Rowling didn’t give too many details about this quartet, fans have embraced them; there are thousands of fanfictions exploring their adventures, some of them longer than the original Harry Potter books themselves. It feels like almost everything we know about the Marauders we have made up ourselves. For example, did you know that it’s never once said in the books that they called themselves the Marauders? That’s a fan-made detail, one adopted as canon by even Rowling herself.

On the one hand, many fans would love to see the Marauders and Lily on screen. On the other hand, how could we trust any Hollywood production to capture even a part of what dedicated fans have built online (for free) over the past two decades? Personally, I want Rowling nowhere near these characters, and I trust no Hollywood showrunner with the delicate slow burn that is the James-Lily romance or the intricacies of the relationships between the four boys and with Lily.

The Harry Potter movies featured these characters only briefly in ghost form and in flashbacks, and they still managed to get everything wrong, from age (James and Lily died at 21, but were played by actors well into their 40s) to physical appearance. (Lily’s fabled emerald green eyes? James’s unruly raven hair? No? Anyone?)

I’m afraid any Hollywood-produced show about the Marauders would turn into a boring love triangle series where the poor wronged Severus is deprived of the love of his life Lily by the popular jock James, completely stripping Lily of her agency. Then there’s the matter of the fandom almost universally agreeing on Wolfstar, the romantic relationship that implies both Remus and Sirius are at least bisexual. Somehow we can’t see dear old Joanne Rowling standing for this, especially given her reluctance to depict queer characters either in the books or on the screen.

So no, unless fanfiction.net user Jewels5 serves as showrunner, I refuse to hope for a Marauders show. Let them thrive forever in fanon rather than be ruined by new canon.