So I’m a little late to the game and I just recently finished reading “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Part 1 and 2” by J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany, and Jack Thorne. Honestly, I blame most of that on the fact that I literally could only read a handful of pages at a time before needing to put the book down and walking away from it. I have a lot of thoughts on this script, most of them are not very cohesive and I know this review is going to be all over the place, but I did want to summarize my thoughts on this play and let you guys know what I thought.
I do warn you that this blog is going to contain A TON of spoilers. I am literally going to spoil everything from start to finish, so if you haven’t read the play yet, you should not read this blog. I warned you.
So, without further ado, here’s my jumbled mess of thoughts on “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.”
Finally a positive representation of Slytherin house
I am going to start out with the positive thing. One of the very few positive things that I can probably say about this script. In the very beginning we find out that Harry’s youngest son Albus Severus is sorted into Slytherin House. This isn’t too much of a shock since at the very end of Book 7 we find him struggling over the fact that he does not want to be sorted into Slytherin. So let’s be fair, if we’re going to create conflict right off in a story that revolves around Harry Potter’s son, what else are we going to have happen than him be sorted where he doesn’t want to?
But this is one of the only things in the story that works. Albus befriends Draco Malfoy’s son Scorpius and the two quickly become best friends. Scorpius is the exact opposite of what his father was when he was in school, and as a result we actually end up with two good wizards in Slytherin House. These are two boys who have only good intentions and actually represent all the good qualities of Slytherin House: ambition, cunningness, and even eventually pride, although it takes them awhile to get there.
As a Slytherin myself it is a relief to finally have a written example in the Harry Potter universe that not all Slytherins are bad guys. For years I have had to suffer through people telling me I couldn’t possibly be a Slytherin and then give me a handful of reasons as to why. The truth has always been that not all Slytherins become bad wizards and now we finally have proof from the creator of the universe herself.
That being said, do any of the characters actually act like themselves?
One of the biggest complaints towards this script that I have heard from almost everyone who reads it is that no one acts like themselves. And I would have to say I totally agree with that. Ron seems far too dim and is represented as a jokester. Neither of which qualities he represented as a teenager. Harry is an insufferable douche bag, much like we would have found James to be, but very unlike Harry himself. In this script Harry is very self centered and a terrible father. I would have never expected this from him at all.
We even see an alternate reality version of Snape who does not act at all like Snape would ever act and it takes away from a serious form of realism here compared to the original 7 novels.
Overall, it is very hard to see the same characters from the original novels in this script, and it’s almost easier to assume that these are not the same characters at all and that this is not the same world at all, a point I will get to later on in my review. But either way, these characters just don’t seem like themselves at all and it makes reading very difficult.
It’s also hard to read because the writing is insufferable and the story line makes no sense
I had to put this book down every few pages because either the story line was so far out there and didn’t make sense, the characters were acting so out of character that it didn’t make sense, or because the one liners were just so insane that I couldn’t handle it. It was such a distracting reading experience that it was actually kind of painful and I would either get angry from how ridiculous it was or I would laugh because it was so hard to take seriously.
I can name a few of the examples that stuck out for me in this situation.
For starters, when Scorpius is first introduced to us, it is quickly learned that it is suspected he is actually the son of Voldemort. Rosie points out that this cannot be possible, not because the fact that it would be hard to rationalize that sort of time traveling, not because there is no way Voldemort would want an heir, but because Scorpius has a nose. That’s the determining factor in whether or not Scorpius is the son of Lord Voldemort according to his peers. And not to mention the fact that Draco is so concerned that people actually think this when in fact it is actually the most ridiculous rumor out there.
And then the scene when Albus and Scorpius try to sneak off the Hogwarts Express and the Trolly Lady attacks them with pumpkin pasties that are in fact, actually bombs. Not only does this scene not read out well, and I cannot even imagine how that scene ACTS out on stage, but the entire idea around it is so fantastical that it doesn’t even fit in the world of Harry Potter. It’s just too far out there. How did she get on top of the train? How did she know they were there? Why are the treats bombs? What is going on here? It makes no sense!
In fact, a lot of scenes read out to be too fantastical to actually be able to be played out on stage. I was confused more than I was not on how the descriptions between dialogues are actually able to be played out on the stage. They aren’t very descriptive as far as stage directions go and they really don’t do a good job at describing what really is happening.
For example every single time the time turner is used “Time stops. And then it turns over, thinks a bit, and begins spooling backwards, slowly at first….and then it speeds up.” Okay, so whimsical it is, but this exact description is used every time the time turned is used (probably a dozen times alone), and to be fair I don’t even know what it means let alone do I know how to picture it to happen on stage. And this sort of thing happens a lot. It’s like the writers tried to bring the whimsy of Harry Potter out but missed the mark when it came to actually making sense and painting a real picture. I just could not make the scenes play out in my head.
And then there are the horrible one liners and the really basic and boring dialogue between characters. A lot of times the dialogue seems too fast paced and back and forth and it’s hard to keep up with it when you’re reading it, let alone how you would be able to catch up when you were watching it play out on stage. The pacing is just so off in a lot of the scenes in this play.
Overall, between the plot, which we will get more into, and the writing itself, this story has really missed its point and it left me highly disappointed.
Speaking of bad plot, it makes no sense for Delphi to exist
Now let’s get to the one thing that really bothers me: Delphi.
Throughout this entire story Delphi was one of those characters I just did not understand. Who was she? Why was she even there? And was I even supposed to care about her? She seemed to pop up in the most random of places with no explanation. How did she get to Hogwarts in that one scene? That shouldn’t have even been possible. Why was she so obsessed with young teenagers who were some twenty years younger than her? And why did Albus and Scorpius go along with it? Did their parents not teach them not to talk to strangers let alone time travel with them? The entire Delphi thing never seemed right to me, but I didn’t expect her to become the antagonist in the end.
And despite all the conditioning towards expecting someone to be the child of Voldemort, the idea seemed so radical that I never actually expected someone in the story to end up being the heir of Voldemort let alone for it to be Delphi. Because here’s the thing: it just isn’t a thing that could happen.
Sure, there was plenty of opportunity for Bellatrix to become pregnant after she escaped from Azkaban and before she died, and we certainly can’t deny that that is something that SHE would have probably wanted. But come on guys, does anyone actually think that Voldemort wanted an heir? Does anyone actually believe that he would seek out spreading his genetics? After all, the man went out of his way to kill his entire family and now you’re trying to tell me he wanted to make a family of his own? I don’t think so. And besides that, the man was pretty certain he was invincible. That was the entire point of the Horcruxes wasn’t it? To make sure that if he died he could come back again? So why would he need an heir to carry out his legacy? He didn’t. End of story. Voldemort having a kid is completely out of character for him and it just doesn’t make sense.
And even if in some accidental case, Voldemort did have a child and did let it get carried to term, the rest doesn’t make sense. Why does no one know about Delphi? If she was born in Malfoy Manor, why do none of the Malfoys recognize that she exists? Why doesn’t Draco know that she exists? Surely he had to have known that his aunt was pregnant, that’s a hard thing to hide, even if your kid is at boarding school, he comes home for breaks. And then why did they give her away to a complete unknown of a family? What was the point of all of that? Were they simply trying to save her from being taken away by the wizard cops (yeah, that’s a technical term for the magical police enforcement)? Still, plenty of people would know who she was and where her origins were from, especially Draco. To me, it just doesn’t add up. To me, Delphi just should not exist.
In my honest opinion, this is really just someone’s fan fiction. After all, plenty of people ship Bella and Voldemort, so I am sure plenty of people find this perfectly acceptable, but I just cannot buy into it.
Speaking of things I cannot buy,Cedric’s importance cannot be that substantial
The biggest surprise in this story for me was how the entire balance of the world rested on the shoulders of one of the most minor characters in the entire Harry Potter franchise: Cedric Diggory, the spare himself.
I never expected, and I actually found it rather ridiculous, that this story would revolve so much around the fate of Cedric. Whether he lived, whether he died, and whether he won the Tri Wizard Tournament all changed the entire future, and really that just didn’t make sense, and honestly in the end it all seemed very pointless as well, considering they all went back to Godric’s Hallow in the end and Cedric really had nothing to do with it.
First of all, somehow Cedric losing the battle against the dragon determined whether or not Albus was sorted into Slytherin or Gryffindor which makes 100% no sense at all. After all, you get sorted by your personality and Cedric literally had no stock in who Albus Potter was. It makes a little bit of sense that Ron and Hermione didn’t get together because of the menace of the past, but it also doesn’t explain why Hermione became such a prick towards Harry’s child in school. Most of that alternative reality made little sense.
But that one made more sense than the one where Cedric lives and becomes a death eater. Because, excuse me, but A. Cedric is a Hufflepuff and there have literally never been any dark wizards to come out of Hufflepuff, it’s just seriously uncharacteristic of them. And B. Cedric isn’t the type to become a dark wizard because he was embarrassed. Cedric would more or less be the type to shake it off, laugh it off with his friends, and do something totally epic to make it up and impress everyone at school. I mean, literally all the guy would probably have to do is run his hand through his hair, take his shirt off, and flex some muscles, and all the girls would be swooning again. He would not become a death eater. So why in this alternative reality did he become a death eater and why did he kill Neville Longbottom, a wizard he had no beef with at all? No, it makes no sense.
Again, this is clearly just a poorly thought out fan fiction of someone who wanted to see a world where Voldemort was alive and at power. And yeah, it was kind of fun to imagine that world, and it was kind of fun to see Draco as the head of Magical Law Enforcement and Scorpius as a little Draco, but it wasn’t plausible in the actual storyline. I actually have a hard time believing that J.K. Rowling put her name on this work and endorsed it.
At what kind of time theory are we working under?
While we’re talking about serious plot malfunctions, let’s talk about the heart and soul of the actual plot and that would be time travel via time turner. In this entire story we’re constantly being taken back in time as Albus and Scorpius try to fix the past to keep Cedric Diggory alive, and then to try to fix their mistakes of messing with the space time continuum. This plot has been done time and time again so this story was really nothing insanely special on its own, but one thing did stick out to me. The topic of time travel seemed to be highly left without research when it came to this topic. It overall just seemed like the writers never really took time to research time travel theories and it showed in the massive confusion all the characters had about it as well.
See, there are two main theories of time travel: multiverse theory where every time you travel back in time a new world is created and that alternative reality exists at the same time the reality you left also exists. In this theory you’ll return to a world where nothing has changed in your universe, but in a different timeline, the world is different. In the continuous time theory, everything you do in the past effects your present and you are at serious risk for affecting how things are in the present and the future.
So the majority of the characters in this book act upon the assumption that continuous time theory is the time theory their universe acts upon. And that makes sense with what we learned in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Every time Hermione used a time turner, she did not create a new universe, at least I don’t think she did. So it makes sense that every time Scorpius and Albus go back in time they are affecting their presence and it makes sense that it is entirely possible for one of them to never be born. It also explains why each time they went back in time they had to go back to an entirely different point in time to fix what had occurred. Each time they made a change, it made a permanent change in their time line.
But to me it seemed like Delphi didn’t really get that. She constantly was having Albus and Scorpius go back in time to save Cedric or to kill Harry and she never seemed to be worried that any of these changes could affect her ever being born. It seems like if Cedric’s being embarrassed could change him into a death eater, it would be entirely possible for something to happen to completely void her own existence and yet she never seemed concerned about that. She also seemed way too knowledgeable about the alternative realities just based on what she was told by Scorpius and that also seemed to make little sense. To me, it seemed the entire time as if Delphi thought that the world functioned on a mulitverse theory instead of a continuous time theory. She just seemed so detached from what everyone else believed and it was frustrating and confusing all at the same time.
I just overall, think that the time travel aspect of this book wasn’t well researched and it came across as confusing and rushed the entire time. It’s been done before and it’s been done better before. So I really was unimpressed by this storyline.
Why didn’t Albus and Scorpius get together?
Another thing that disappointed me in this story was how much they flirted around the idea of Albus and Scorpius being in love with each other but how they never actually did anything about it. It was very obvious that the two were in love with each other and they made many different comments suggesting it, but in the end they both ended up talking about the girls they liked and the girls they wanted to date, and it seemed forced. It didn’t seem natural for the two of them.
I was very disappointed by this because it seems like something J.K. Rowling does often. She flirts with the idea of gay characters, but she never actually follows through. This would have been a great opportunity for her to represent two strong gay male characters in her world, but it was chosen to beat around that bush and avoid it all together.
Can we create our own Canon?
So this all brings me to my very last point in all of this: can we actually consider this play as a canon representation of the Harry Potter franchise? J.K. Rowling would probably state that this, along with everything she has ever posted on Pottermore are all canon to the world of wizardly she has created. But does that mean that it has to be true for us, the fans?
Let’s consider the fact that our original media for this franchise came in the form of the novelizations. We had 7 books presented to us that were supposed to represent the entirety of the Harry Potter universe for us. That was the outline of knowledge we were given and that was what we were given as canon. The movies worked based off of that canon to create its own media. Some things were different from the books when it came to the movie, mostly exclusions, but there were some additions. For example, Luna and Neville danced around the idea of a relationship, but those who read the books don’t necessarily consider that as canon, as it takes place in a different media from what the original canon was presented.
This happens a lot with anime and manga. A lot of the time the full story is presented in the form of a series of mangas and then later is adapted into an anime which inevitably excludes many things and often even changes some relationship or situations. It usually depends on whether the fan was first presented with the manga or the anime when it comes to what they believe to be the real canon. Basically, either media could be canon, but they cannot be canon together. It’s up to the fans to decide which can be canon. At the same time, some shows have season 0s which are a different storyline completely and are often considered to be a different universe all together and therefore exist outside of the real canon, and that’s acceptable to fans.
So now we’ve been presented with a new media outlet of the Harry Potter franchise and it’s completely different from anything we’ve had before. I personally don’t take this to be canon. I take this as something that exists in a different universe from the real Harry Potter franchise. Sure there are some things that I don’t mind agreeing with the existence of. I love the idea of Albus being in Slytherin and him being in love with and best friends with Scorpius Malfoy. I love the idea of Draco marrying a girl who made him a better person. But other than that, I don’t take any of this story to be canon.
And I think that it’s very fair for us to take our own idea of canon. It’s up to us to decide what passed the original media outlet is canon and what is not. I also think because of that, it’s time for J.K. Rowling to stop presenting us with new media outlets of Harry Potter. I think it’s time for her to leave it to the fans to create their own canons of what the future of the characters hold and let go of it for herself.
So overall, I did not like this story. It seemed like a poorly written and poorly researched fanfiction. (I’m not dissing on fanficiton. There is some amazing fan fiction out there.) The story and the characters were uncharacteristic and it just didn’t make sense.
To me it seemed like this was just J.K. Rowling’s attempt at staying relevant, as she seems to every year have to shove something new Harry Potter down our throats and it just needs to stop. This franchise has an amazing and creative fan base and it’s time for us to just have our wizarding world to make of it what we, the fans, want to make of it. It’s our turn for the story and we don’t need to be told what is canon and what isn’t canon anymore.
Let me know though in the comments below what your thoughts on the play were. I’m really curious to know what you thought of it.
I hope this incredible long winded review makes up for the lack of a seasonal reading list, again this took me WAY too long to read. I will try my hardest to have a reading list for spring as I know a lot of you really enjoy those posts!
Anyway, let’s talk in the comments more about “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child”.
Until next time,
Kat
For those who don’t remember when I reviewed this product a long time ago, this is a skin moisturizer, specially for the face, that has natural sun block properties as well. Back then I was so excited about this product, especially because at the time I was living in California and my skin was going through A LOT of harsh sun and wind. I also really loved the fact that I could mix it with a little bit of foundation and it would cover my face well with that slightly tinting moisturizer (after all the product already has a slight skin tone shade to it so it mixed well with my light ivory foundation).
Technically, I am calling this two separate products even though it’s going all under one category, because when it really comes down to it, I’m not a huge fan of either the shampoo or the conditioner anymore and I’ll tell you why.
Plus the shampoo is inconsistent. Which I understand is common with more naturally based products, but I don’t like the fact that the last bottle I picked up had shampoo in it that was the consistency of water. It was so thin that it didn’t even sit in my hand without spilling everywhere. Definitely not normal for shampoo.
This is a product I never reviewed before on my blog, but that’s mostly because I NEVER fell in love with it. And simply, I think it just doesn’t work for my hair type.
But when someone approached me about the skin care line Perfectly Posh saying they were having an online selling party for the products, I was actually interested. As you guys know, I love trying out different skin care products to review on this blog. I’m always looking for good, inexpensive but quality products to use on myself!
I actually got this as a free gift from the online party I was a part of, but as far as free gifts go, I really have enjoyed this hand Cream. It’s made with apricot kernel oil, coconut oil, vitamin E, and aloe and smells like a pear and cranberry mix. It smells very fall, and we all know that I love fall! The smell does linger for awhile, so I definitely see that as a pro.
I haven’t decided if I really like this product or not, it’s a hair serum that is supposed to protect your hair from heat treatment, like hair drying, and calm frizz. Of course, it’s an oil based product being made from Kukui (my all time favorite) oil, jojoba oil, and argan oil to polish and tame hair. You can use it on wet or dry hair to maintain frizz.
Cackle Spackle is a face mask that contains charcoal powder, volcanic ash, kaolin clay, and spearmint. It’s said to “detox” you, but the work detox is kind of a misleading term. It doesn’t pull any toxins out of your body. What it does do is deep-cleans your face and pulls out the dirt and grime from your pores, leaving you with a fresh, clean face. The spearmint and eucalyptus also helps to tone your skin.
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I only used a small sample size of this moisturizing face crème, and I tried it after the party was over, but I instantly regretted not purchasing it. But no worries, it’s on my wish list for my next Posh order.
Kat Classics 