Opinion ‘Harry Potter’ and Franchise Fatigue: Why the magic fades when it never ends

Take The Cursed Child (2016), which was touted as the “eighth story,” but landed on stage and page as poorly written fanfiction. Time-turner plot holes, flimsy arcs, and melodrama, which had even the most devoted fans muttering, “This is not canon. This does not count.” Then came Fantastic Beasts, a would-be cinematic franchise that sputtered out under messy scripts and aimless plotting. What should have been a deeper dive into wizarding lore instead felt like a corporate cash grab wrapped in CGI. By the time the third film limped into theaters, most of us had already checked out. Even Hogwarts Legacy, the open-world video game that would have been groundbreaking a decade ago, arrived in 2023 into a very different climate. Instead of feeling like a fresh immersion into the wizarding world, it landed against the backdrop of J K Rowling’s controversies and long-simmering franchise fatigue.

But fatigue is not only about saturation; it is also about lack of reinvention. With each revival, audiences are confronted with recycled plots and the same flaws embedded in the original work. The house elf subplot, treated as comic relief, now reads as a dismissive handling of slavery. Slytherin, a school house that functions as a factory for fascists, was never interrogated as a system, only used as shorthand for “evil.” Disease-carrying werewolves have been read as metaphors for the AIDS epidemic, goblins as personifications of anti-Semitic traits, and multiple attempts to make sense of the wizard economy have come to naught. These flaws were always embedded in the text, but largely invisible to young readers caught up in the narrative. They are simply harder to ignore with each retelling with fresh faces, but the same plot.

Revisiting them now, especially under the shadow of Rowling’s public persona, they are impossible to ignore. What stands out is how little has been done with them. The author herself had opportunities, through spinoffs, interviews, and endless post-book revelations, to refine or deepen her world. Instead, the interventions (retroactive identities, shallow retcons, and half-explanations) only made the foundations shakier, revealing how thin the scaffolding had been all along. This is where the fatigue truly sets in.

Meanwhile, fanfiction communities thrived. From Dramione to Snarry to every improbable pairing in between, online writers built parallel canons that often felt more daring, diverse, and emotionally rich than the “official” material. In many ways, fanfiction became the real site of creative expansion, while the licensed stories circled back on themselves. What the studio treated as an inexhaustible brand, fans treated as an open playground, and their imagination frequently outshone the sanctioned output.

Unlike The Lord of the Rings, which retains its sense of specialness precisely because J R R Tolkien’s world was built on depth and coherence, Harry Potter was constructed more like a stage set, convincing enough for the story, but never meant to be inhabited beyond it. Tolkien’s world could support layers of history, language, and myth without collapsing, which is why every adaptation feels anchored in something solid. Rowling’s, by contrast, buckles when pressed, because the details were never designed to bear that kind of weight.

Or take Star Wars, another franchise of immense cultural reach. For all its missteps, it survives because it continually reinvents itself through new timelines, new characters, new forms of storytelling. Sometimes it fails, sometimes it surprises, but it moves. Harry Potter has remained static, circling the same story with different packaging. What was once expansive now feels claustrophobic.

So Harry Potter persists, but in a diminished form. Each new project feels less like a spark of magic and more like the mechanical turning of a money-making wand. For a story that once made millions believe in magic, that kind of exhaustion is fatal. When I see that leaked set photo of Harry and Hagrid, my heart still stirs, but only for a moment, a reminder of something we used to love.

Sometimes, the most magical thing a story can do is end.

aishwarya.khosla@indianexpress.com