'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them' is the Best Possible Follow-Up to the 'Harry Potter' Series

This past week, the author of the massively successful Harry Potter book series, J. K. Rowling, announced that she would be pairing up with the Warner Bros. production company to produce a brand new movie series. This new series will be based on one of Harry’s fictional textbooks, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and its fictional author, Newt Scamander.

It will follow Newt’s journey as he discovers magical creatures around the world. At the beginning, it will be set in New York City, and it will take place roughly seventy years before the first Harry Potter book, which will put it smack dab in the middle of the Roaring 20’s. Since the original series was set in the United Kingdom in the 90’s, this new setting will be vastly different from what we are used to.

However, that might be a good thing. Harry Potter has become a very exclusive franchise—if you don’t read the books, then watching the movies is a completely different experience for you than for those who have. If you don’t watch the movies or read the books, then you are often missing a lot when you go to shops that sell the books and the merchandise. I have friends who didn’t get into the series when they were young that often feel excluded because Harry Potter fans tend to be a bit elitist about having grown up with Harry.

But this new series will give people who didn’t grow with Harry a chance to experience the magical world without having to know anything about Harry Potter beforehand. They will get to follow a brand new hero with new perspectives, new adventures, new goals, and new opinions through the Wizarding world. They will get to build their own emotional rapport with the world, and then, if they feel they want to, they can go back and get to know Harry too.

It’s also a wonderful thing for present Harry Potter fans as well. We will be able to see the international Wizarding world, minus the war we were accustomed to seeing. This is before Voldemort’s rise to power, so things won’t be quite as dark. We will also be able to see Wizarding life outside of school—Newt will be starting the series as a young adult, having graduated from high school, so we will be able to see practical applications of magic, plus more advanced magic. Not to mention, we will be seeing unprecedented amounts of magical creatures during Newt’s travels. This is our chance to learn more about the Wizarding world as a whole.

History will also play a big part in this series. The setting of New York in the 20’s will open us up to hundreds of possibilities as far as the mixing of the Wizarding world and Muggle history. Maybe we could see wizard flappers, Wizarding jazz clubs and speakeasies, the American Ministry of Magic having to deal with Prohibition, or maybe even wizards of color that are involved with the Harlem Renaissance. J.K. Rowling now has the opportunity to make her fictional world even richer and more colorful than it was before, and because she is in full control of writing the screenplay, the only content that will be cut is content that the creator herself deems unimportant.

So for those of you who are disappointed because you were hoping for a prequel or a sequel to Harry’s life, sit back and imagine the amazing things this new series could accomplish, and be happy. A series that we thought was finished is getting a brand new kind of life.