Petty guardian bollox about the new Harry Potter series...

James absolutely started the rivalry by interrupting Snape's private conversation to be rude about Slytherin - but Snape was already showing signs of believing in blood supremacy (telling Petunia he wasn't talking to her because she was a muggle, dropping a tree branch on her, having an internal struggle when Lily asked if it mattered that she was muggleborn, and telling her not to be upset that Petunia hated her because she was only a muggle). Sirius describes him as and oddball who came to school knowing more curses than most seventh years. He was always very drawn to the Dark Arts. They never laugh at him for being poor (and it's unfair to say they do). They do laugh at his greasy hair (but he still has that as an adult, so is just unfortunate as opposed to a sign of neglect, in fact we don't know he is being neglected - he bears signs of poverty but that doesn't mean his mother is not doing her best). Yes they are obnoxious (and Sirius admits it) but overall it is their opposing views which lead them to target him.

Snape comes from a poor family, and we know his father was abusive towards his mother. But within the wizarding world he is not marginalised, even as a child. He is a half blood, his mother had a good wizarding name. These are the things that matter among those who discriminate in his world. He doesn't come from the easiest background, but he is nothing like Remus. And while he is a victim of the domestic abuse going on his home (even if only by witnessing it) his decision to seek power by pursuing the dark arts and joining Lord Voldemort is all his. The older they get, the more obvious his path into darkness becomes. James and Sirius don't know about his home life and probably don't care much about the state of his finances. They do know he calls muggleborns "mudblood", sneaks around trying to get them expelled and tried to expose Remus as a werewolf. That's what they don't like about him.

While they are not actively fighting the war at school, it is already going on and Snape has chosen his side. Only hours after James dangles him upside down Lily says to him "you can't wait to get out there and join You Know Who" she refers to his friends as "Death Eaters". Mulciber has already used Dark Magic on Mary and Snape has defended it as "just a laugh". Absolutely their world was at war and James and Snape were on different sides of it and knew it.

SWM is an important point of growth for Harry. Up until now he has idealised his father, seen him as a shining hero of goodness. Now he sees his father in a moment of cruelty that appals him and it tilts his whole world on its axis. Learning to come to terms with the fact that James wasn't perfect, that all idols have their flaws, is a huge part of Harry growing up.

Yes, when SWM happens - if it is shown in the detail it is given in the book - it will make James look bad. It is supposed to. But over the next couple of books/ seasons - as we learn that Levicorpus is Snape's spell and people used it on each other all the time that year, that Snape was best friends/ in love with a muggleborn but still wanted to become a Death Eater, and that the incident with James is not his worst memory because he got hung upside down but because it is the cause of the destruction of his friendship with Lily - the whole thing will get put into a wider context. The scene will get visited again, within that context ... and its just a bit of hexing (I recently wrote that scene for my fanfic, the spells they use are no worse than anything Harry would do to Draco while Snape attempts to use Sectumsempra on James).

Will this one tiny scene all the way in the fifth season look worse because Snape is black? Yeah OK, probably. But is that a reason for all this handwringing? No. It's one scene. Does it mean they should actively make this one tiny scene less "problematic" by making one of the marauders a POC? No. If the best person for the job is a POC, that's great, but otherwise the scene can stand as it is, as can Snape's and their well documented rivalry and dislike of each other.

Viewers can simultaneously accept that within our world what we are seeing (in this one, little scene) looks like it has racist undertones and that within the wizarding world it doesn't. Viewers of Buffy watched a woman get punched in the face all the time, often by her love interest. We accepted it because it was fantasy. Saying "this makes James look racist" is reactionary and ignoring the fact that this isn't set in our world and that the discrimination in the wizarding world is along totally different lines. These viewers will always exist, but then they will always find something to react negatively against while ignoring context.

It isn't the end of the world if viewers feel uncomfortable watching the scene (heck, they are supposed to). But intelligent viewers will be able to understand that they are feeling personal discomfort that is not relevant to the story they are watching (as Buffy viewers ignored all the times Spike hit her in the face - though admittedly the attempted rape is still controversial nearly 25 years later). When they finally get there, we can all go to town on discussing whether they did it well or not, whether they managed it (or has it gone down like the attempted rape in Buffy) but, unless the have James saying the N word, in world it still won't make him a racist and it will only be disingenuous people who try to pretend it does.

Yes, gender and race swapping isn't always a straightforward process, and can change a story significantly. But in the first few HP books there is nothing that is significantly changed by Snape being black. It is only an issue in that one scene in ootp. So what? Having James Potter look marginally worse than he already does in that scene, when you see it for the first time devoid of context, is a small price to pay for having the best person in the role of Snape, and a black man playing a prominent role in a culturally significant show - and the knock on effect that will have for actors of colour being given more nuanced roles, getting to be anti-heroes and villains (whose villainy is not linked to their race) and three dimensional characters who just happen to be POC because it has been shown it can be done over on HP, and the world didn't end and the viewers dealt with it.

Some of JK Rowling's HP ideas after the books were written are rather questionable and probably best they don't make it into any live action remake.

Dumbledore being canonically gay I can let slide (although I think she made this up after the books were written and didn't think of this while writing them), but there's no way Hermione is canonically black (Jo said she might be after the casting for the stage play because her race wasn't specified but it's clear the default is white English, any character who isn't no matter how minor always had their race mentioned in book. It's also remarkable if black Hermione went 7 years at an >99% white school with no one ever mentioning it).

And worst of all this idea. Yes that's right- it's official canon the magical HP characters don't need to use the bathroom like us and can just mess their robes "wherever they stood" and say poopius disappearious to "vanish the evidence". I hope this stays out of the remake.

"Hogwarts didn't always have bathrooms. Before adopting Muggle plumbing methods in the eighteenth century, witches and wizards simply relieved themselves wherever they stood, and vanished the evidence."
[WizardingWorld an official account]

https://x.com/wizardingworld/status/1081242428105998336?

www.vice.com/en/article/yes-harry-potter-wizards-pooped-their-pants-pottermore/

i think the casting of a black actor as Snape is an interesting way to try and remove the parallel of muggle vs magic with white vs non-white, i'm not sure if it will work but lets give it a chance yeah? The decision wont have been made without a directors vision, it must be "going somewhere". The casting of an excellent actor gives me hope in this respect, he is awesome

Anyone who is boycotting the series because of their own ethical decisions wont be swayed by these decisions, but they ARE allowed to criticise and comment. That isn't petty bollox, its legit free speech. take a breath and get over it.

Agreed, and I don't really like the recent trend of shaming book readers for wanting to see characters that match the vision in their heads. I agree Harry Potter is an iconic character. Changing that would be like giving us a beardless Dumbledore, or a family of non-ginger Weasleys.

I'm not closed off to the occasional unexpected casting though. His Dark Materials made some swerves that really worked. Ruth Wilson as Marisa Coulter was inspired, and worked with the casting of Dafne Keen as Lyra. I didn't mind that they weren't blonde, as they were in the books. Will was another great bit of casting, and Lin Manuel Miranda was nothing like my mental image of Lee Scoresby, but was great in the role.

It all depends.

I don't care what race which character is as long as they rock the part they've given. I'm very much looking forward to this.

I remember when the part of Hermione was given to Noma Dumezweni for the Cursed Child. The furore! Noma did a great job, and I believe is set a tradition on the show.

Luke Holland obviously can't separate the art from the artist in his head, though in my view there's very little JKR has said that I disagree with. I am an art history enthusiast, and so I know that artists like Eric Gill and Paul Gauguin were perverts, but they produced a lot of stuff that is considered now to be wotld-class. I can separate the two. Luke Holland struggles and tbh I don't know why. I mean, if we're going all out after JKR, then why not Neil Gaiman, brilliant creator of worlds and fantasy, but who is apparently also a horrible human being (allegedly)?. Neil has gone quiet and people have left him alone but Joanne's still fair game? I wonder why that is?

The problem is, Snape may have grown up to be what he did. But at the time James met him, he was all the same things you describe Lupin as being. Snape comes from deprivation and neglect, and those were the things James targeted. He didn't bully Snape for his views. He bullied him for having shabby clothes and poor personal hygiene. Symptoms of a neglected childhood.

They weren't on different sides of a war in their school days. They were children. Even Harry comes away from the situation thinking his father was in the wrong, and a bully, and Harry hates Snape. If he's not cheering James on I don't think viewers will be either.

The plot point is supposed to be something of a grey area. Evidence of how there's good in bad people, and bad in good people, and what defines us is the part we choose to act on. The thing is, I just don't think a 2025 audience could look at James, behaving exactly the way he behaves in the book, and not think he's a racist. It's not fair to expect them to be blind to the implications of what they're seeing. Those undertones are going to come through louder for some than for others. It doesn't mean the audience is racist for noticing. I'm not saying everything should be made about race, but you want the audience to have some kind of radar for these things, otherwise you train them out of picking up subtext at all.

It's the same with gender-swapped characters. If two characters are men in the source material and one punches the other in an argument, you don't think anything of it. It's just a fight. But if you make the punched character a woman, it plays very differently. Everyone is going to see the puncher as a woman-beater, and think he crossed a line. If the now-female character then shrugs off that punch and forgives him, that also reads very differently. Male Character B might be a great role for a female actress, but that's not the only factor to consider. I think it's all a bit more complicated than "just cast the best actor". Sometimes there are other criteria you have to take into account.

The thing about the Harry Potter "remake" is that the original films by and large weren't very good adaptations of the books. This is part of a wider trend of kids' books than received middling quality film adaptations in the noughties and have since had rather better TV versions: Alex Rider, His Dark Materials, A Series of Unfortunate Events.

Intelligent people shouldn't confuse this with the other recent trend of successful franchises, often screen franchises originally, receiving mediocre TV spinoffs.

From a franchise point of view casting harry as mixed race, or blonde, or any other significant difference doesn't make much sense. It would be different in a smaller franchise, but every harry potter item (toys, lego, wall decals, bedding etc) whether cartoon or based on the film follow the same characterisation.

Just let him be black.

It will be a relief if the directors do just let him be black. But the recent trend of shoehorning a social justice didactic message into everything has become predictably tiresome. Hopefully they will have learnt something from all the recent flops and go back to entertaining rather than preaching at their audience.

I think that is a good suggestion.

There's no real reason why James can't be black and Harry mixed race is there?

Can the showrunners handle it sensitively enough so that - especially for US viewers - the bullying does not have racist undertones?

I'm not sure that they can. I would love to be proved wrong.

If JK is happy with Snape being black so am I .. I trust her to make it work. I do think the concern about it splits into two camps, people who are downright racist and people who think it alters the perception of Snape. But I'm sure JK is all over it.

I'm not convinced by changing characters ethnicity etc especially as it reflected ethnic mix of most of the UK around 2000. why not have a new wizarding school being set up in Wolverhampton with a twenty first century ethnic mix. Relevant stories eg muggles have more wizarding equivalents through their phones so wizards lose interest in wizarding, wizards failing to save icecaps by magic, Muslim wizards struggling at school because they are fasting. School being an old factory and problems as muggles are going to convert it into flats. Asylum seeker wizards accidentally bringing in a djinn

All really good points.

@GwenogJones I think you are right, and your post sort of echoes what I've been feeling, which is that black people are not one dimensional, token characters, they can be good guys, they can be bad guys, they can be guys who are both good and bad at the same time, not everything has to be about racism.

They'll just have to be reeeeeally careful how they do it.

It's like the butterfly effect. Casting Snape this way ripples out and changes so many other things by default.

I really don't think making your marginalised werewolf character black is a good shout - he's poor and shabby and cast out because of what he is, treated with mistrust everywhere and filled with self loathing and shame. If people think James et al bullying a wannabe death eater at a time when Voldemort is killing muggleborns makes them look racist because the death eater happens to be black, then the same logic applies to the whole wizarding world being racist to Lupin and the way he has internalised being a werewolf becomes about his internalised racism. If anything, it detracts from his actual problem, while making everyone else look like the National Front.

Book Snape is a cunt. Harry doesn't like him because he is a horrible bully towards him - and that's OK, whatever colour Snape is. By the time we get to Snape's Worst memory we will have had five years of watching Snape be a cunt to the kids and will know he used to be a Death Eater. I think James is actually fine to use Snape's own spell to dangle him upside down within the context of a war on which they are on different sides (and James is on the good side).

I dont think Paapa Essiedu was a cynical, diversity hire. By all accounts he is a great actor, and Snape is an amazing role for him to take on and the opportunity of his career. I would hate to see any other cynical diversity casting to try and offset Snape now being black.

Just let him be black.

If the best person to audition for Sirius / Remus/ Peter is black/ Indian/ Chinese, so be it - give them the role. But they shouldn't be specifically looking to tokenise one of them just so that viewers feel more comfortable with them being shitty towards Snape.

They weren't racist in the book. They won't say or do anything racist in the TV show. Snape was a blood supremacist and they hated him. They were kids who treated him badly. It's up to viewers not to handwring and pretend it's something that it's not because they cast a black man as Snape.

The problem with Lupin was that he was a follower who didn't like that James and Sirius bullied Snape the way they did, but went along with it because he had his own secret to hide, which would have seen him ostracised from his peers if they discovered it.

If you have Black Snape and Black Lupin, and white bullies Sirius and James, that too creates a really unfortunate, unintended visual. James is still a racist, but now he's the I Can't Be Racist, I've Got A Black Friend, kind of racist

I'm not opposed to race-swapping characters, unless it fundamentally alters the audience perception of the story. Then I do think you can't do blind casting.

Some of the backlash to this casting is just racism. Some it arises from a kneejerk feeling that "Black Snape = DEI" and means the series will go the way of the new Doctor Who. But most of the criticism I've seen from fans of the series - the kind of people who don't just bash everything, they genuinely love all things Potter - seems to be coming from a place of concern.

This changes the story. It makes characters who were supposed to be classist into racists instead. James will look racist for sure, and many readers will be left wondering if Harry is too, when he has an instant distrust of Snape. Casting someone handsome as Snape also makes the audience more inclined to side with him, which we already saw with Alan Rickman. It's harder to hate him for bullying children, and live with Harry in that "is he a baddie or not?" headspace, if he's got a pretty face and the audience is already predisposed to check their biases.

Yes, good point.

So Lupin is really the only good candidate for a black Marauder.

And actually it could work really well with the whole werewolf thing. (Visually, in terms of the transformation, I mean.)

Argh, I forgot about the tree part.

I think if they've got any sense they'll find a different way for the Marauders to bully him which doesn't have such unfortunate imagery.

Sirius Black can’t be black because then Bellatrix, Narcissa and a whole history of Black family members (who are mostly Voldemort supporters) will be black, and that’s probably worse for optics.

Lupin could be black.

That's a pretty glaring omission! Doctor Who has been running for longer than Star Wars and Harry Potter, and the franchise is in worse shape than either of them. Some of the Star Wars spin-offs have crashed and burned horrendously, but a few others enjoyed a modicum of success. Doctor Who has been on a ratings slide for years. RTD was supposed to save the series, but it's hitting historic lows week on week now. It's all but guaranteed Disney will can it.

The Fantastic Beasts movies may have wavered, but Hogwarts Legacy was a runaway success, despite an attempted boycott, and if it wasn't for the furore over the casting of Snape, I think the HBO series would be getting a lot more positive buzz than it is.

JKR's haters be like, "OMG can you believe she created a token black character and literally called him Sirius Black because she couldn't be bothered to think of a non stereotypical name for him, she's so effing racist I can't even!"

A Black Sirius Black. Now that would have been funny. 😅