Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts 1 & 2 by J.K. Rowling, Jack Thorne and John Tiffany

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

It’s not often that I feel inclined to write legitimate reviews on [Goodreads]—I usually content myself with ratings. However, I have to vent my thoughts about this for cathartic reasons. What follows is arguably just a petulant rant. You have been warned.

I delayed reading Cursed Child for years because I saw enough about it online to know I would not like it. Alas, the obsessive completionist in me finally took the plunge, and the self-fulfilling prophecy was realized.

Let me begin by admitting that I am extremely biased. I am part of the generation that grew up with Harry Potter, and I am one of those Millennials whom the Zoomers meme about building a whole personality around the HP series. I’m not saying I’m proud of it, but that’s how it was. I remember sitting in a kindergarten classroom in the late 90s and being positively enthralled as my teacher read aloud from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone . I incessantly harassed my parents to get every book from 4-7 on release day. My best friend and I would share each new book, literally reading over each other’s shoulders because we only had one copy between us. I attended the opening night of every film, and I loved them just because they were Harry Potter and hated them because the books were so much better. I was part of online HP communities and fansites before Pottermore was even an inkling of an idea. To this day, I still reread or relisten to the series religiously every few years—more for nostalgic comfort than anything else.

All that being said, I recognize how difficult a feat it was to satisfy fans of this series who had so many memories and so much love tied up in this world and these characters. I don’t envy the challenge of creating an entertaining play for a beloved series with a dedicated fanbase. BUT! I just cannot get over how much Cursed Child felt like a blatant slap in the face to the HP fandom and the preexisting universe. As others have already said, it reads like bad fanfiction. And if it were just bad, unofficial fanfiction, I could shrug my shoulders and simply move on. But this is officially licensed and published OOC fanfiction with J.K. Rowling’s stamp of canonical approval, and that is what simply I can’t get past.

The opening scene has dialog taken directly from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’s epilogue, and it has completely different characters saying the lines. Why? Why did this canonical story insist on changing the existing plot from the get-go? Was it laziness? Was it cruelty? Was it just to make sure we all knew from the start how OOC almost every known character would end up being?

What kills me is that there are several aspects of Cursed Child’s plot which I love. Albus Potter being sorted into Slytherin house and becoming Scorpius Malfoy’s BFF? Heck yes! 100% onboard—sign me up! Our favorite trio struggling through the monotony of parenthood and careers? Sure, I’m here for it. The difficulty of being a child of “The Boy Who Lived” and feeling forever smothered by his shadow? Completely logical plot point. Aunt Petunia’s hidden grief and guilt at her sister’s loss? I have always been desperate for someone to expound upon that!

It is the terrible execution and worldbuilding (or rather, world destruction) of Cursed Child that makes it so horrible. It sacrifices existing character traits along with disregarding and destroying previously established rules and canon of the series.

First of all, you cannot convince me that Voldemort in all his resurrected, noseless, serpent-esque glory was:

A.) Biologically capable of conceiving a child

B.) Interested in copulating, even with his most loyal and obsessed Death Eater... I mean, come on! If ever there was an asexual villain in the history of villains, it would be this guy. And the only living thing in the entire series he showed the remotest affection towards was Naginini, so if he was going to do the dirty with anyone, it probably would have been her.

C.) Concerned with creating progeny, even if the act of sex itself meant nothing to him. This dude had no regard whatsoever for any life except his own and his serpent’s. He thought he had obtained immortality through objects, so why would he spare a thought to the closest humans can truly come to immortality—procreation?

Secondly, I always thought it was way too convenient how Rowling dealt with the ever-problematic introduction of time travel into her universe. I think Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is the weakest book in the series because the sci-fi/fantasy time travel trope always leads to inevitable plot holes. And then we get to Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: “Whoops—all the Time-Turners are destroyed now! So much for that problematic plot device!” Well, if it was convenient for Rowling to get rid of the Time-Turners to avoid further inconsistencies, it’s downright contrived to suddenly bring them back for the most trope-tastic story ever told... “Gasp! There was a secret child of the main antagonist all along! Why, I never!”

And speaking of that “secret child of the main antagonist,” the whole buildup of that plot point made no sense:

SCORPIUS: The rumor is that my parents couldn’t have children. That my father and my grandfather were so desperate for a powerful heir, to prevent the end of the Malfoy line, that they... that they used a Time-Turner to send my mother back...

ALBUS: To send her back where?

ROSE: The rumor is that he’s Voldemort’s son, Albus.

Um, excuse me, WHAT?! Why would anyone come to that conclusion? As mentioned above, I find it difficult to believe Moldy Voldy would have sex with anyone, much less Draco Malfoy’s rando wife. Seriously, we have no clue who this woman even is as a character, but it is supposed to be plausible that a villain as prideful as Voldemort was willing to bang her to create pureblood progeny?

Please, PLEASE tell me how that rumor makes any logical sense to anyone with two brain cells. Remember, Time-Turners have supposedly been destroyed. There’s also a supposed limit to the number of hours, not years, which time can be turned. Why would this rumor have started and why would a group of children (who have not even begun school at this point, mind you) be so well-versed in this gossip? There’s nothing throughout the rest of the play that makes this rumor seem believable or convincing at all.

Lastly, there are SO MANY plot holes in this story (see above regarding time-travel devices leading to inevitable plot holes)! Swiss cheese has fewer holes and is more digestible. And a lot of the holes are not even related to the Time-Turners! I honestly believe that the creators of Cursed Child were more concerned with creating a cool magic show on stage than producing a decent, conceivable story. The nonsensical disparities are too many to list, but here are some mind-boggling things that specifically stood out to me:

• Albus Potter supposedly sucks at magic to the point others bully him by calling him a squib, but as a fourth-year student, he’s able to produce a nonverbal underwater engorgement charm on Cedric Diggory?


• Just because the Battle of Hogwarts was lost, why would Hermione and Ron ever in a million years start referring to each other as “Granger” and “Weasley?”


• Okay, Delphi is concerned with saving Cedric to change the past because she believes in this dumb, contrived prophecy. Whatever. Are Albus and Scorpius really so stupid that they think interfering with the tasks is a more logical way to go about this than finding a way to give someone a heads up about—gee, I don’t know—Barty Crouch Jr.? Seriously, what the heck? Someone make it make sense!

Anyway, in conclusion to this rambling, I cannot fathom how this barely cohesive story got a canonical seal of Wizarding World approval. More than that, I don’t understand why this is not universally despised by fans of the series. Sure, as a standalone work, it might be okay (at best), but it directly contradicts the priorly established story and facts from the HP universe. I’m bitter about it. I wish it didn’t exist. Life goes on.

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𝓟.𝓢. This review was crossposted from Goodreads because it contains actual thoughts rather than a typically facetious single-sentence remark. View all my book ratings and pointless takes on Goodreads or The StoryGraph.