To be clear, I have very little to complain about when it comes to J.K. Rowling. She and I vehemently disagree on certain political topics, but to me, I love her wit and realism, and she's provided me with a good time in everything from literature to movies to video games.
And while I normally wouldn't care about her leftism, Rowling's issue — like many leftists — is that she lets her leftism get the best of her creativity.
I'm sure many of you have seen the changes made for the new Harry Potter HBO series: namely, that Snape, the character most known as a pale-skinned, hooked-nosed antagonist that Potter is always suspicious of for crimes and evil, is now black.
First trailer for the ‘HARRY POTTER’ series.
— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) March 25, 2026
Releasing this Christmas on HBO. pic.twitter.com/X5PPZ3ME46
It's yet another race swap in a long line of unnecessary race swaps, but this one is far more egregious because Rowling's writing of Snape's image was an integral part of his character. I'd also add that if you were to keep many aspects of the character in the book, a lot of it would come out looking incredibly racist in the modern day.
This includes everyone always being suspicious of him, James Potter's treatment of him as a youth, and the hilarious fact that he's often accused of being a "dark wizard." These facts aside, the swap was clearly done, not because the black actor portraying him, Paapa Essiedu, was the best actor for the job, but because of the self-imposed representation checklists.
This has most Harry Potter fans up in arms, with many concluding that black Snape likely means you're going to see many other things forced into the show that scratch that leftist itch, including a far more overtly gay Dumbledore.
This is more than just an annoyance for conservatives, as many leftists would like to pass it off. This is an interruption to the story that fans love. If you have to take a moment to insert politics, you have to sacrifice story movement, and this only becomes more pronounced when that element was not in the story at all and was shoehorned in after the fact.
The thing that should hit hardest here, and should be understood the most, is that the fans weren't even asking for this. No one wanted this "update," and nobody was angry about the lack of "inclusion" for their specific group. If they were, then they weren't really fans of the series; they're there to see their political viewpoints represented and enforced.
I feel like Rowling should know all about that, seeing as how she's been on the frontline of stopping the transgender movement from pushing itself into spaces it didn't belong, namely, women's spaces. For some reason, Rowling, an incredible storyteller, hasn't made the connection that this rule could easily apply to many things, including her own stories. I don't think she sees it because the one doing the ideological intrusion is herself.
She seems to think that, since she's the author of the books, she can go back and rewrite or reframe characters, story elements, and plotlines, but that's just not the case. If you do that, then you're no longer handling the story; you're writing bad fan-fiction around it. She's taking her own work and using it as a staging ground for telling another one that wears the original's mask but puts an entirely different spin on it.
That is, ultimately, fan-fiction.
Now you might say, Brandon, she owns the rights. It is her creation. She can do as she pleases.
You're not wrong. Harry Potter and all its contents are hers by right, but the soul of the story has transferred hands. It did so a long time ago.
Harry Potter now belongs to the fans who took her story and made it the world-conquering sensation that it is. Everything from the series, to the movies, the video games, the theme parks, the gatherings, and everything else is all there because the fans made it possible. They're the ones who fell in love with the story and carried it to the heights it achieved.
Yes, Rowling wrote it, publishing companies printed it, but that's just not enough. Rowling has written other books I bet you can't name. Publishers put out books you never hear about all the time.
It's all the fans. Without them, Harry Potter isn't what it is.
And I think that making big changes, especially for all the wrong reasons, isn't just disrespectful to the story, it's disrespectful to the fandom that built the hype around it. They don't love the "updated" story; they love the original. It's why they're there. Taking it from them to make it more modern is a slap in their face.
Funny enough, the left is currently trying to spread the idea that you cannot ethically consume Harry Potter content because of Rowling's position on the transgender issue. I think consuming this new updated Harry Potter content is a bad idea because no one in the artistic creation industry should get the idea that changing the creation everyone fell in love with is okay.
And I'm not alone on this. I'm not sure how the new Harry Potter series will do in the long run, but I do know that many people will be watching it with a tinge of sadness and betrayal, and I hope Rowling understands why.
