Universal’s Hogsmeade Village and Diagon Alley are both brimming with unique experiences and endless intricate details that allow guests to delve into the magic and wonder of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. From the enchanted displays in each of Diagon Alley’s shop windows to Moaning Myrtle’s eerie voice in the Hogsmeade toilets, around every corner comes a new surprise that will make you feel as though you’ve apparated right into a Harry Potter film. 

Since it’s heavily rumored that Universal’s Epic Universe is set to expand on the already incredibly popular Wizarding World by adapting the Fantastic Beasts franchise for the parks, this got us thinking about which elements from the original Potter films could be brought to Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade as they currently stand right now, that would offer some new interactive opportunities to guests during their visit.

1. Meet a Magical Creature

The on-screen Wizarding World is home to a number of bizarre and beautiful magical creatures that could certainly make for a memorable meet-and-greet within either of the two lands. Similarly to how Universal introduced their baby raptor and triceratops meets, guests could get up close with a baby Hippogriff, or even a baby Dragon and learn a thing or two about the creature’s lore, just like the Hogwarts students would do in their Care of Magical Creatures class. Taking it a step further, if Universal wanted to go all-out they could even introduce a Raptor Encounter style greet and allow guests to interact with a full-size hippogriff.

2. Character Meet and Greets

Guests visiting the Wizarding World already have the opportunity to meet Stan Shunpike the Knight Bus conductor outside of Diagon Alley, however, offering the chance to meet some of Hogwarts School’s most beloved alumni would certainly be a treat. Aside from, of course, the film’s golden trio, Harry, Ron, and Hermione, characters such as Gilderoy Lockhart or Luna Lovegood would make great additions with their charming charisma and instantly recognizable costuming. Guests could be in for some hilarious discussions with these unique characters as they wander around Diagon Alley or Hogsmeade going about their day-to-day errands. 

3. Spell Training Show

Similarly to how Disney did their Jedi Training Academy over in Hollywood Studios, wizards and witches both young and old would likely leap at the opportunity to learn the proper spell-casting form from a Hogwarts professor themselves. Much like Harry and Draco’s duel in Chamber of Secrets, the training could operate in a similar format with new wizards going head to head, with the show culminating in the group working as a team to take down a death eater – complete with a handful of special effects to truly give the illusion of a real magical face-off. A more in-depth spell experience would pair perfectly with the various elements that are already available around both Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade for guests with interactive wands. 

4. Sorting Hat Experience 

One of the key elements of the Wizarding World, the Hogwarts Sorting Hat Ceremony was actually previously available to guests who visited Universal Orlando’s Annual Celebration of Harry Potter event but has, unfortunately, never been bumped up to a full-time offering. The sorting hat ceremony would allow guests to follow in the footsteps of a first-year Hogwarts student and find out whether they belong in Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Slytherin, or Ravenclaw house. What better way to kick off your magical day or round out your Wizarding World experience!

What would you like to see Universal bring to Diagon Alley or Hogsmeade?

Fans of the Wizarding World will have to wait a little while longer to cast a spell. The December 15 matinee 1 PM performance of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child has been canceled due to a breakthrough COVID-19 case. Performances are expected to resume for the 7 PM performance this evening.

The newly condensed, one-part production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child opened on Broadway December 7. The play, penned by Jack Thorne, director John Tiffany, and original series author J.K. Rowling, takes place 19 years after the events of Deathly Hallows as the title wizard’s youngest son begins his first year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

A message from the Broadway production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child regarding today’s matinee performance. pic.twitter.com/SYAdRGftti

— Harry Potter and the Cursed Child NYC (@CursedChildNYC) December 15, 2021

The Broadway production stars James Snyder as Harry Potter and Diane Davis as Ginny Potter alongside James Romney as their son Albus Potter; David Abeles as Ron Weasley, Jenny Jules as Hermione Granger, and Nadia Brown as their daughter Rose Granger-Weasley; and Aaron Bartz as Draco Malfoy and Brady Dalton Richards as his son Scorpius Malfoy.

The show is the latest in a string of COVID-19 cancellations, including Ain’t Too Proud—The Life and Times of the Temptations, Freestyle Love Supreme, Mrs. Doubtfire, and Tina—The Tina Turner Musical.

If you didn’t get a chance to catch the dazzling stage show “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” when it was last in San Francisco — before getting COVID-canceled in March 2020 — well, it’s back.

But the “Cursed Child” now playing in previews at The Curran is significantly different than the version that was playing two years ago at the stately Geary Street theater. The main thing is it is no longer a two-part 5-plus-hour affair, which fans could enjoy in marathon style on a single day or split up over two days. It’s now a newly-staged single-performance show running about 3½ hours.

But, as the New York Times wrote of the new version of “Cursed Child” when it opened on Broadway late last year, “it remains diamond-sharp in its staging and dazzling in its visual imagination, as magical as any spell or potion.”

And the story line — created by Potter author J.K. Rowling, Jack Thorne and John Tiffany — is pretty much the same. The action returns to Hogwarts 19 years after the books and movies left off, and Harry Potter’s son is a student at the legendary wizarding school.

Details: In previews through Feb. 10; main run is Feb. 10-Sept. 4; check websites for COVID updates; $79-$299 (subject to change); sfcurran.com or sf.harrypottertheplay.com.

Evil Genius Beer Company is honoring the world premiere of a Harry Potter exhibit that’s coming to Philadelphia with the release of a beer inspired by the book and movie series.

“Harry Potter: The Exhibition” will arrive at The Franklin Institute on Friday, Feb. 18. The long-awaited program was first announced in July, and will be an immersive experience that brings together fans of the Wizarding World to get an up-close look at original props and costumes used in the films.

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As part of the festivities, the Fishtown-based brewery and taproom is releasing a special-edition homage to butterbeer on Feb. 18.

“Spoiler Alert: It’s LeviOSa, not LevioSA” is a vanilla caramel blond ale with a 6% ABV. The beer is made with natural flavors and has a sweet taste thanks to the toasted and caramelized malts used during the brewing process. It will be available exclusively at the brewery, either by draft or growler.

Two Harry Potter-inspired cocktails will be available through March 20 as well. These include the “Throwing Snowballs at Voldemort,” a butterbeer slushie made with Stateside vodka, and the “Defrosting Broomsticks,” a butterbeer-inspired martini. 

Evil Genius will also be hosting several special events through the end of March in conjunction with the Franklin Institute exhibit. 

Kicking off the lineup is a 0.5K charity run on Saturday, March 12 at 12:30 p.m, hosted by The Hogwarts Running Club. Tickets are $30 and include a free pint and a swag bag with Evil Genius branded water bottles, bottle openers and more. Proceeds from the event will be donated to support Trans Lifeline, a hotline-based charity that provides emotional and financial assistance to transgender individuals. 

On Sunday, March 27, Evil Genius will hold a Harry Potter-themed drag brunch. Tickets for “Gryffindor in the Streets, Slytherin in the Sheets” are still available. The event will open at 11:30 a.m., with the show to follow at noon.

Aside from its Harry Potter-themed event line-up, Evil Genius will join other area vendors on Saturday, March 12 from 12 until 6 p.m. for the “Block Party Under the El.” The anniversary party for the brewery’s tasting room includes themed-photo opportunities, food provided by Red Stone Pizza, and drinks. 

Anyone under 21 or without identification must be accompanied by a parent or guardian who is 21 or older. 

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Evil Genius Celebrates Harry Potter

ANSWERS:

1: Professor Minerva McGonagall, Chapter 1. 2: Rubeus Hagrid, Chapter 4. 3: Garrick Ollivander, Chapter 5. 4: Molly Weasley, Chapter 6.

5: Professor Albus Dumbledore, Chapter 7. 6: Professor Severus Snape, Chapter 8. 7: Professor Minerva McGonagall, Chapter 9.

8: Hermione Granger Chapter 10. 9: Draco Malfoy, Chapter 12. 10: Draco Malfoy, Chapter 13. 11: Ron Weasley, Chapter 14. 12: Professor Severus Snape, Chapter 15.

13: Hermione Granger, Chapter 16. 14: Professor Albus Dumbledore, Chapter 17. 15: Professor Quirinus Quirrell Chapter 17. 16: Professor Albus Dumbledore, Chapter 17. 

First things first. I am not here to debate whatever “cancel culture” means to you today because, frankly, I do not care. But I am interested in why the need to separate the art from the artist is suddenly crystal clear when it comes to J.K. Rowling and the Harry Potter universe—in a way that it’s not for other once-beloved creators. We’ve been urged to stop streaming Travis Scott’s music following the Astroworld tragedy. And who doesn’t have extremely messy and uncomfortable feelings about revisiting Woody Allen’s filmography?

And yet somehow the internet, as a general vibe, has been able to sever Rowling and her transphobic screeds from the magical world she created with surgical, unambiguous precision. 

Particularly for millennials who grew up alongside the books and then the movies, the series and its characters occupy a uniquely personal place in people’s hearts in the way that only children’s books can. I was nine when I first read The Sorcerer’s Stone just the right age for the richly-drawn world to more than half convince me to expect a Hogwarts letter in two years, and I was 11 when the first film premiered, the same age as Harry, Ron and Hermione. I remember reading an interview with Emma Watson sometime around 2002, when she and I were both about 12, in which she said something like, “it’s a world you want to be real.” And it was. 

Every kid has a special, magical world they live in in their imaginations—Narnia, Middle Earth, Green Gables. It just so happened that this particular generation all had the same one: Hogwarts.

Image: Warner Bros.

Honestly revisiting the books as adults, the holes and problematic aspects of the Wizarding World become more clear. The economic system, for instance, has rightly been called feudal. The Gringotts goblins are uncomfortably close to anti-Semitic charicatures. And no, Quidditch has never and will never make real sense. But none of that really penetrates when you’re 12. The world’s strict sorting and caste system could be seen with adult eyes as slightly fascistic—but when you’re a kid, these are the elements that allow you to put yourself into this world and personalize your experience in it. Hogwarts Houses that reflected your best personality traits and talents, bespoke wands that respond to your unique abilities, and animal patronuses that reveal your soul’s true core—all these things appeal to our need for self-definition and categorization, like your Astrology sign or love language or Meyers-Briggs test results. (I am a Gryffindor with an acacia and unicorn hair wand and my patronus is a Siberian cat, thank you.)

Harry Potter is now, frankly, a world too big and too rich for any one person to have built single-handedly, least of all Rowling herself. 

Because of this, I feel a personal ownership over Harry Potter in a way that I don’t over, say, Louis C.K.’s Louie, a show that I once loved. While other artists are indelibly connected to their own work—how do you separate Bill Cosby from The Cosby Show?—Harry Potter feels, in some ways, like it’s mine alone. Not that Rowling hasn’t tried to claim supreme ownership of the World she generated. 

Image: Warner Bros.

On Twitter, when Rowling isn’t grousing about pronouns and spewing hateful nonsense about trans women, she’s dropping random new canon into the Harry Potter universe. Dumbledore is gay! Hermione could be Black! Hogwarts has no tuition! Uncle Vernon loves Top Gear! She likes to wish happy birthday to Harry and Ginny’s fictional children, and suspects that Lord Voldemort would have evolved beyond the need to eat food. 

But hard as she tries to reclaim it, the Wizarding World is, in many ways, lost to her. Harry Potter fan-fiction has flourished online, becoming a genre of its own. Quidditch is now a real-world sport with gameplay rules edited for logic and, ironically, extremely progressive regulations on gender homogeneity within individual teams. People have gotten Harry Potter tattoos and themed weddings—including my own sister. And many have taken the actors and film creators as Harry Potter standard-bearers rather than Rowling herself. She was not even invited to the 20th Anniversary Reunion Special on HBO Max. 

I admit that at first, I had a hard time reconciling the world that meant so much to me as a child and adolescent with the more troubling one I see as an adult—and especially its creator. But Harry Potter isn’t just a series of books anymore. It’s a commercial industry, a media conglomerate, a culture, and a community. It is now, frankly, a world too big and too rich for any one person to have built single-handedly, least of all Rowling herself. 

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Cast your mind back 25 years. Hanson’s MMMbop was number one, Titanic topped the box office, and Tony Blair had just been elected PM.

But perhaps more culturally significant than all three of these 90s moments is the first 500 copies of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone being published at the end of June 1997.

It would become the third best-selling novel of all time, establishing JK Rowling as one of the world’s most loved and best-selling authors; a towering figure in the arts.

But the prolific author’s legacy now seems destined to be defined by the culture war sparked by her position on women’s rights and gender.

Rowling thinks, in some circumstances, women and girls should have the right to single-sex spaces – prompting accusations of transphobia, which she denies.

The controversy has rendered the author notably absent from anniversary celebrations – as was the case with the recent TV reunion – decisions widely presumed to be driven by the deepening controversy.

Attempting to separate the art from the artist is now apparently a mission for many invested in ensuring Harry Potter continues to be lucrative.

More on Jk Rowling

• Quidditch changes its name to distance itself from JK Rowling

• Warner Bros admits it was ‘wholly wrong’ to block Sky News questions in JK Rowling censorship row

• Fantastic Beasts movie: Dumbledore and Grindelwald’s gay relationship edited out for Chinese market

Sky News was invited to a new Mandrakes and Magical Creatures feature at Warner Brothers Studios this week, and such is the effort to distance the brand from the toxicity of the debate around trans rights, Sky News wasn’t allowed by the PR to bring up JK Rowling’s name in the interview.

Our reporter was interrupted mid-flow and made to redirect the line of questioning.

When we asked why, the response on email from the third-party PR running the event was “JK Rowling is not connected to Warner or Tom Felton, the team felt it was not relevant to the piece”… Not aside from the fact she created Harry Potter and executive produced the films.

(For the record, PRs don’t and shouldn’t – for all sorts of reasons not least press freedom – dictate Sky News editorial direction.)

Felton – left somewhat awkwardly momentarily in the middle – was allowed to tell us: “I was auditioned 500 metres from where I am now, which is nuts.

“That was when I was 12, and here I am at 34 years old talking about it still…

“We all expected the Harry Potter fandom flame to start dousing as the years go on and clearly it’s not going anywhere,” Felton added.

So 25 years on, Harry Potter is as popular and profitable as ever and seems unscathed – apparently, as long as you don’t mention she who must not be named.

The notion that JK Rowling can or should be cancelled is bizarre to many, but trans woman Nicci Take, who enjoyed reading and watching Harry Potter with her children, told Sky News she is largely just deeply disappointed by it all.

“I am anti-cancel culture, she should be allowed to say what she thinks,” says Nicci Take.

“Her views are manifestly out of sync with the general population and desperately, tragically out of sync with the Harry Potter fanbase… trans is almost cool, it’s certainly normalised.

“People know we’re not sexual predators, they know we’re not preying on people in bathrooms, they know because they know us, they’ve met us….

“That’s what happens, people don’t meet us, engage with us, and yet they have opinions about us,” she adds.

Read more:
JK Rowling criticised for ‘condescending’ and ‘transphobic’ tweets
Authors leave JK Rowling’s literary agency over her comments about trans people

Most associated with the wizarding world are perhaps understandably reluctant to comment on the clash, but many concede Rowling is taking more of a backseat.

Thomas Taylor, the original front cover illustrator of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (who told me he wishes he’d made Harry’s hair “madder” – which I love) agrees the author seems to be less prominent in events.

“It is a bit strange not to see the author when we are celebrating a book,” admits Mr Taylor.

“It seems to me that fans own Harry Potter now anyway, the fan space has always been incredibly rich, creative and inclusive and I hope people can continue to find what they need in it and shape it to the way they want it to be,” he adds.

Taylor credits the books with bringing back reading when “in the 90s we were panicked that reading was dying off, with video games and TV”.

“This book came along and children were queuing up at midnight dressed up as wizards to get hold of the latest copy and read it, that’s definitely worth celebrating,” he said, reminding us of the fevered fandom that HP ignites.

The Harry Potter cast seem also to be torn between their relationship with Rowling and any discomfort with her position on gender rights.

Daniel Radcliffe was quick to issue a statement confirming his solidarity with the trans community, saying “trans women are women”.

He also reassured fans, saying: “if Harry Potter resonated… that is sacred”, in a plea to separate the art from the artist.

Emma Watson appeared to take aim at Rowling in her BAFTAs shout out for inclusivity and “all the witches”.

So, while the polarised debate is largely hosted on Twitter, its toxic mess spills over the edge of the social platform, leaving an unfortunate stain on the record of modern public discourse infiltrating our biggest cultural and media institutions from BAFTA to Warner Bros Pictures and Bloomsbury publishers.

All of them now forced to consider how to navigate events being hijacked by the issue.

Mina Eduardo Lima are the MinaLima illustrators who have worked on the Harry Potter films and a special edition copy of the first book.

Mina Lima points out the world now transcends the author.

“The wizarding world has become so established now, what she did was entrust creative minds to tell their version of her worlds, our book is just one of those manifestations as well so it’s almost like she’s done her genius and now she hands over the baton,” Lima told Sky News.

So perhaps it doesn’t matter that JK Rowling isn’t present at the anniversary celebrations.

Perhaps she and HP fans don’t care whether she attends events held by those invested in ensuring Harry Potter continues to be wildly profitable.

Such is the intensity of the debate, Rowling revealed earlier this year that she’s had so many death threats she could wallpaper her house with them after trans activists doxxed her (meaning they published her address and personal information on the internet with malicious intent).

But as the 25th anniversary of one of the world’s most beloved books is celebrated, whether Rowling has been or should be cancelled continues to obscure the future of the Boy Who Lived.