Please Let 'Harry Potter' Die; Signed, a Former Fan Tired of J.K. Rowling

The Wizarding World could soon return to your television screen as HBO Max finalizes its deal for a Harry Potter reboot series.

Between the Universal Theme Parks, Broadway/West End plays, multiple film series, video games like the recently released Hogwarts Legacy, and spinoff books, there’s no shortage of content about The Boy Who Lived. While some devoted fans of the franchise haven’t fallen ill with Harry Potter fatigue, many of us have lost our passion due to the hateful rhetoric peddled online by its author, J.K. Rowling.

Many have promised to boycott any future content tied to Rowling, myself included. Long gone are the days I spent traversing the Warner Bros. Studio Tour, imagining myself immersed in Rowling’s beloved book series. The author I once loved spends her days spewing transphobia on Twitter as a proud Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist (TERF). The production of a new Harry Potter series is a direct slap in the face to the transgender and gender non-conforming community.

Rowling could have stopped after she “accidentally” liked a few transphobic tweets in 2018. Instead, she threw herself full force into the “gender-critical” movement. Though transgender people are four times more likely to be victims of crime than cisgender people, Rowling maintains that she’s protecting women and girls when she sends her legions of followers to harass transgender activists.

Under her pen name, “Robert Galbraith,” Rowling published a book in which a transphobic YouTuber is murdered by an activist and another in which a cisgender male serial killer dresses as a woman to trick victims. In a recent interview, she compared transgender people to Death Eaters – evil followers of Lord Voldemort that wish to murder all wizards and witches born to non-magical parents.

Harry Potter leads Daniel Radcliffe (Harry), Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley), and Emma Watson (Hermoine Granger) have all condemned Rowling’s transphobic comments and spoken supportively of the LGBTQIA+ community. They stand with thousands of broken former fans who once equated Harry’s literal coming out from a closet to the Queer experience.

Do you have to boycott HBO’s Harry Potter series? Of course not. But to support the series publicly shows an outward disregard for the safety of transgender and non-binary people, who are increasingly the targets of discriminatory legislation and hate crimes.

Would you watch a Harry Potter series on HBO? Share your thoughts with Inside the Magic in the comments. 

*Editor’s Note: This Op-Ed is based on the opinions of its author and does not necessarily reflect the views of Inside the Magic.