My Thoughts E X A C T L Y

My thoughts e x a c t l y

The Harry Potter who cast an unforgivable curse to defend Minerva McGonagall is is not the same Harry Potter in the Cursed Child. 

“You don’t have any children.”

That sentence is a character assassination of one of the most iconic characters of literature. 

Harry Potter respected and loved McGonagall. He would never in a million years say something bad to or about her. He knew that she loved every student who passed through her doors.

Red hair… and a hand-me-down robe. You must be a Weasley

All Was Well (Before “Cursed Child”)

Honestly, the most basic problem with Cursed Child, even as a concept, is that it takes a shit on pretty much everything that we learn in the epilogue.

In the epilogue, Albus and Rose are clearly very close; Albus is anxious to even go to Hogwarts without her. In Cursed Child, Rose is a stuck-up little snot who won’t talk to him for years just because they got sorted into different Houses and he won’t shun a boy whom she doesn’t like. 

In the epilogue, Albus and Harry have a good relationship, as seen by the quiet father-son moment that they have before Albus boards the train. In Cursed Child, we find out that that moment was apparently a fluke, because their relationship is actually strained and dysfunctional. (Also, for some reason Albus hates his parents’ nickname for him.)

In the epilogue, Albus really, really doesn’t want to be put in Slytherin, and yes, I get that this is the same Slytherin-bashing that we’ve gotten the whole series, but the point is, Harry assures Albus both that the Hat will take his wishes into account and that it doesn’t really matter anyway. In Cursed Child, it turns out that no, the Hat doesn’t care a jot what Albus wants, and being in Slytherin exacerbates all sorts of problems that Albus has both with Hogwarts and his father.

I know that stories need conflict, and I’m not saying that Harry and Albus can’t ever fight or that everything has to be totally perfect. And I know a lot of people find the epilogue shmaltzy, but I actually really liked it because, after all that darkness, it gave the series a happy ending. But in Cursed Child, we need to retcon every bit of happiness away to justify a stupid story that rehashes all of that old darkness. You can argue that, hey, all of these problems get sorted out by the end of the play…but if that’s the case, why did we need the play to begin with? These problems were already sorted out nine years ago when the epilogue first came out!

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child fucks up a lot of canon facts, but it’s just as bad with the ending’s tone. The epilogue literally ends with “All was well,” only for this play to come along and say, “Well, except everything, apparently.” 

Happy September 1st everyone :)

- me, after reading harry potter and the cursed child

I L o v e d that book /so/ much

books read in 2016: i’ll give you the sun by jandy nelson

“When people fall in love, they burst into flames.”