We're less than two months away from the premiere of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, a brand-new HBO show that premieres on Christmas Day that is sure to take the world by storm. I’m almost positive we’ll see an influx of new, young fans over the next year as they try to figure out their Hogwarts house.
There was a lot of hesitation about the new series based on J.K. Rowling's best-selling book series, especially considering how beloved and recent the eight Harry Potter movies are. There's been a lot of talk about how the series can reveal different parts of Harry Potter's story that the movies couldn't. One aspect that's been overlooked is how the new series has a major advantage over the films, and it’s actually not the extra time the series will have to tell this story. Let me explain.
The Harry Potter movies take a ton of shortcuts with this story
I know when the news about a new Harry Potter series dropped, people were instantly up in arms. And I know. I get it. I really do. I was like you. “Why do we need another adaptation of these novels? The movies were great, and we just got okay spinoff films (and later kind of problematic ones). We don’t need to keep pushing this world.”
But the thing is, the Harry Potter movies aren’t perfect. They are great, sure, and very entertaining. But they miss a lot of the novels' nuances and cut many good plotlines because of time constraints. They also skip several characters because filmmakers didn’t deem them necessary for the plot.
One big example is Peeves, who fans really wanted to see in the movies, so much so that he was cast in the new show. Another is Charlie Weasley, who wasn't even featured in the movies to save time.
The bigger issue is that, because of the films, many characters were portrayed in ways that changed who they are at their core. Ron didn’t feel like Ron anymore. Hermione was literally just a know-it-all before she got a lot of Ron’s moments from the books. Harry was great, but much of the sass and personality we see in the books just wasn’t there.
This show has the gift of hindsight. Years later, the creators can look back and see what really works and what doesn’t, what they can add and what they can take away, and how they can make this adaptation worth the time and effort.
If the show is done this way, where they are purposefully trying to see what worked in the film versus what didn’t, then it can learn a lot. With that, I think this show could bring back some serious magic to the franchise by delivering an adaptation that shows the characters as they’re truly meant to be.
The movies were the initial attempt, but this show feels like the final draft. I really hope that the creators look at the movies from a different perspective to make that happen. Hindsight is 20/20, after all.
The extra time with these characters will be great
Now, I’m not saying the extra time Harry Potter will have in this new series isn’t fantastic, because trust me, it is. I can hardly believe I’ll get eight hours of content in this world in a couple of months.
Really, that opens up the world to so much possibility. That means we’ll be able to dig deeper into new characters from the books and show the complexities of others that weren’t there before.
Fans will get to see new book scenes and storylines that were cut from the films for time or learn new spells that only appear in the novels. The added time brings a lot of benefits, and hopefully, over this supposed “ten-year” plan, we’ll see a lot more of it.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone premieres on Dec. 25, 2026, on HBO. Stay tuned for more
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