The new Harry Potter series is coming to HBO, whether we like it or not. I myself have written, pretty extensively, at /Film about this series, how it looks almost exactly like the original film franchise (still true), and I largely agree with original director Chris Columbus that it feels pointless. (This is all without mentioning the Joanne “J.K.” Rowling of it all, but her nasty and violent anti-trans bigotry is its own issue entirely.) Still, again, the proverbial train — let’s call it the Hogwarts Express — has left the station, and a new trailer is here to boot. So what’s going on in this new look at “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone?”
Let’s go over the basics. Not even two decades after the original film franchise wrapped up, Warner Bros. Discovery decided to reboot the story of a young boy wizard chosen by fate to defeat a great evil, and cast young newcomer Dominic McLaughlin as said young boy, Harry Potter (a role originated in the movies by Daniel Radcliffe). McLaughlin will be joined by Arabella Stanton and Alastair Stout as his best friends — brilliant Muggleborn witch Hermione Granger and the wise-cracking boy with six siblings, Ron Weasley — and a whole host of Britain’s best actors, plus John Lithgow as Albus Dumbledore. Francesca Gardiner will serve as showrunner, and her former “Succession” cohort Mark Mylod will direct.
So what specifically did we spot in this trailer? From the introduction of a beloved Harry Potter pet to a peek at the Weasley home, here are five details you might have missed in this new trailer for “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.”
Is there a James and Lily Potter flashback in this Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone trailer?
The true inciting incident of “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” (which earned the subtitle “Sorcerer’s Stone” in America, because publishing executives presumably believed American kids wouldn’t want to read a book about a “philosopher”) happens before the real narrative begins. We’ll probably see this scene as the HBO series kicks off, as it also appeared in the film franchise, but here’s a reminder. In 1981, when Harry is just a baby, the Dark Lord Voldemort enters the Potter family home and kills his parents Lily and James in cold blood to get to the infant, having heard half of a prophecy that indicated Harry could be Voldemort’s downfall. Instead, Voldemort’s killing curse rebounds on him, and the strength of Lily’s love — in her final moments, she sacrifices her life for her baby son — saves Harry, seemingly bringing about Voldemort’s downfall.
So why am I even bringing this up? There’s a moment in the trailer that shows two older figures — a man and a woman — running down a romantic bridge and lighting their way with a whimsical spell. This could very well be a flashback to Lily and James in the years before they had Harry, giving us a look at the fallen couple. (Also, maybe they’ll be the right age this time; in the original movies, Lily and James were depicted as much older even though they were canonically in their early 20s when they got married and started a family.)
Hedwig the snowy owl makes her debut
Pets are sort of a big thing in the world of Harry Potter, and when new students are accepted to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, they can bring an owl, a cat, or a toad. (Weirdly, Ron has a pet rat that turns out to be a human guy — it’s a whole thing — and rats aren’t mentioned, but whatever.) In this trailer, we see Trevor the toad, who belongs to Harry’s dormmate Neville Longbottom (Rory Wilmot in the new series and Matthew Lewis in the movies), and we also meet, for the first time, Harry’s snowy owl Hedwig.
Most Hogwarts students either use the school’s available owls or have slightly more discreet owls (wizards send mail through owl post), but Hedwig is special because she’s a snowy owl — in the books, people comment on how beautiful she is almost constantly — and she’s particularly attached to Harry. Sadly, as many other characters do, Hedwig meets a devastating end in “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” but we have a ways to go until we get there, and it’s nice to see her introduced in this trailer.
The chess pieces get an upgrade in this version of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
The way that Joanne Rowling designed her wizarding world, in large part, boils down to “things are the same but slightly different and magical,” and that certainly is true of wizarding chess. All of the rules are the same but the pieces move with an unexplained amount of autonomy; the pieces follow instructions, but they also beat up their opponents without being asked. This is introduced in “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” and becomes a major plot point when the trio goes looking for the titular Stone, which is hidden behind a number of obstacles in the bowels of Hogwarts as Voldemort tries to steal it to give himself immortality, and finds themselves face to face with a giant chess set enchanted by Transfiguration professor Minerva McGonagall (Janet McTeer).
Ron ultimately sacrifices himself as a knight to allow Harry to take the queen, win the game, and continue towards the Stone. We don’t see that scene in much detail in the trailer (though there is a shot of Alastair Stout’s Ron that looks a lot like it’s from that scene), but we do get a close-up of a bunch of regulation-sized chess pieces beating the snot out of each other, making it clear that we’ve leveled up from the “moving statues” style found in the original films.
Hermione’s entrance to the Harry Potter universe seems different
When we first meet Hermione Granger in the original book and movie of “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,” she bursts into the train compartment occupied by Harry and Ron aboard the Hogwarts Express and demands to know if they’ve seen Neville Longbottom’s missing toad, explains that she’s already started studying, and asks their names all in one breath, overwhelming the two boys. It’s a pretty great way to introduce Hermione, an overachieving witch born to non-magical Muggle parents who possesses considerable intelligence, but can also be incredibly annoying about that fact. So how does this change in the trailer?
As Hermione makes her way through the crowded train as an incoming Hogwarts student, she stops by two girls seated together and asks if they did the summer reading — only for one to inquire whether or not there was any assigned summer reading. It’s a small change, but when you consider that the books are told almost exclusively through Harry’s point of view (meaning this scene couldn’t happen without him present) and the original movies stay within that general framework, it’s cool that showrunners Francesca Gardiner and Mark Mylod reworked her introduction.
Viewers get their very first look at The Burrow
Harry’s parents are long gone by the time he starts at Hogwarts, and his surrogate “family” — his mother’s sister Petunia Dursley (Bel Powley), her odious husband Vernon Dursley (Daniel Rigby), and their horrible son Dudley (Amos Kitson) — treat him like owl poo. That’s where the Weasleys, Harry’s real surrogate family throughout the narrative, comes into play. The first Weasley that Harry ever speaks to is the matriarch, Molly (Katherine Parkinson), who helps him cross the barrier into Platform 9 3/4 at King’s Cross Station … which eventually leads him to share a compartment aboard the Hogwarts Express with Ron. In the trailer, though, we see Ron at home as he receives his Hogwarts letter welcoming him to school, and we get a good look at the rest of the family in their rundown but charming home known as the Burrow.
As Ron receives his letter, we see Molly, overachieving Hogwarts third year Percy (Ruari Spooner), Ron, and the troublemaking twins Fred and George (Tristan and Gabriel Harland). We’ll get a better look at the Burrow during the show’s second season, “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets,” but it’s nice to see it show up so early.
“Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” arrives on HBO on Christmas Day 2026.
