Should HBO's Harry Potter Mess with the OG Books' Flaws or Leave Them Alone?

We love Harry Potter. It’s a truly magical universe that stays with you from the first pages and throughout your entire life. We love the books, we love the movies, and we will hopefully love the upcoming HBO TV show… But we can’t help but wonder whether this new series would be the perfect opportunity to right some of the oldest wrongs of the Wizarding World that we’ve discussed countless times.

What Should HBO Fix in Harry Potter?

As iconic as they are, both the OG books and movies have their flaws — and not all of those are crucial enough to transport them to yet another retelling of the story.

For instance, we wouldn’t mind getting to know more characters. As far as we’re aware now, there are exactly zero good Slytherin students, and folks from Hufflepuff are pretty much useless. HBO should add compelling characters from these Houses.

Another major point to address would be us seeing the world strictly from Harry’s perspective. So far, we could only assume that adults are infuriatingly clueless and girls are either Quidditch players or gossips, for the most part. How about fixing that?

Long story short, we’d like to see Hogwarts and the Wizarding World for what they really are, not exclusively for how a misunderstood snarky teenager sees them.

What Shouldn’t HBO Even Touch in Harry Potter?

While fixing flaws sounds like a good idea overall, some things must not be changed under any circumstances, no matter how infuriating they’ve been for fans so far.

For instance, the Wizarding World lore is riddled with magical and logical inconsistencies: Time-Turners, Verituserum, Thestrals, and many more things just don’t add up in terms of the general story. But as flawed as they are, they are integral parts of this world, and changing them would be messing with the lore itself.

Major characters’ fates and personalities must also remain unchanged. Sure, many fans love Draco and Snape and hate Dumbledore; they wish Percy died instead of Fred, etc. They also wish Harry didn’t name his kids as if he was his own story’s biggest fan… However, all these terrible things, too, can’t be altered in any way.

Altogether, we’re not too opposed to HBO tweaking a few bits and pieces as long as it gets us a more vivid and realistic Wizarding World in the end — but knowing how well such “tweaking” typically goes, we’d rather they just stick to the source material.