Harry Potter: Childhood’s end

I’m a muggle in mourning, said Anne Perisho in the Chicago Tribune. Ever since I was 11 years old, Harry Potter has been growing up right alongside me, in a “perfectly imagined” world more interesting than my own. But with last week’s release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2—the final film adaptation of J.K. Rowling’s bewitching saga—my magical journey with the boy wizard came to an end. “For me, the end of Harry Potter means the end of my childhood.” That sharp sense of grief is being shared this week by millions of Potter fans around the globe, said Matt Flegenheimer in The New York Times. The last installment in the series made a staggering $476 million in worldwide ticket sales in its first weekend, as legions of Potterites turned out to bid farewell to Harry, Ron, and Hermione. “Now it’s over. It’s the real world,” said college graduate Mily Mena, 23, who attended a midnight screening. “I feel like I have to, like, find a job.”

“What would this generation look like without Harry?” asked Monica Hesse in The Washington Post. “Glasses would be less round. No one would parade around in long, striped scarfs.” More important, there would have been “no vast democratization of bookworminess—the thrilling assertion that books were cool, and so was make-believe.” Since the first Harry Potter novel appeared in bookstores in 1997, reading rates among young Americans have steadily increased, reversing a decade of decline. All parents who raised children in the “Potter era” owe J.K. Rowling a big thank-you, said Janice Turner in the London Times. She wrote novels that “children wanted to read and that we could bear to share with them.”

But Harry hasn’t vanished, said William Langley in the London Sunday Telegraph. “In a commercial sense, his career may have hardly begun.” With 400 million books sold and $6.37 billion taken at the box office, Harry’s moneymaking magic is simply too strong to be abandoned. Potter fans will keep on flocking to the $250 million Wizarding World of Harry Potter attraction in Orlando, Fla. And a new, Rowling-authorized website is also in the works, part of a master plan to “establish Harry—like Mickey Mouse or Winnie the Pooh—as one of the imperishable stars of children’s entertainment.” When today’s Potter fans have their own kids, the adventure—and the profits—will live on.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up