Why Har­ry Pot­ter is still the num­ber one mil­len­ni­al phenomenon

“I don’t even know a world with­out Har­ry Pot­ter,” says Georgie Siri­war­de­na, Pres­i­dent of Exeter University’s Har­ry Pot­ter & Quid­ditch Soci­ety. Per­haps that’s the point. Whether you’re well-versed in wiz­ard­ing lore or a sim­ple mug­gle with a casu­al inter­est, few can claim to have no knowl­edge of JK Rowling’s boy wonder.

It is esti­mat­ed that 450m copies of the books have been sold world­wide, while the film series amassed some $7.7bn at the glob­al box office. Today, how­ev­er, it is the character’s last­ing cul­tur­al impact which is per­haps most notable. Rowling’s Alma Mater now has a soci­ety which reg­u­lar­ly boasts around 200 mem­bers, and a ful­ly-fledged Quid­ditch team to boot. ​“We have a huge amount of events,” explains Siri­war­de­na, ​“there’s a pic­nic, a walk­ing tour of Exeter, a tour of Leaves­den Stu­dios, the Yule Ball – even a Hal­loween social with Game of Thrones [fans].” But while there is still a tremen­dous appetite for Pot­ter down in Devon, the same is true across the UK. Almost every major uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus has some form of Har­ry Pot­ter soci­ety, and it is mil­len­ni­al fan­dom which has brought this to fruition.

Siri­war­de­na sug­gests that her own soci­ety com­pris­es ​“a gen­er­a­tion which grew up with Har­ry Pot­ter,” and this is where the series’ real suc­cess lays. With its episod­ic nar­ra­tive and school set­ting, Rowl­ing was able to spark a sym­bi­ot­ic rela­tion­ship with an entire gen­er­a­tion expe­ri­enc­ing some­thing sim­i­lar – albeit minus the Dark Lord. Ask any­one why they loved the series, and the answer always seems to come back to relata­bil­i­ty. Siri­war­de­na con­tends that the ​“char­ac­ters are relat­able, but not in a super­fi­cial way. They have enough depth to make them believ­able.” Com­bine that with an intrin­si­cal­ly human desire for escapism and you begin to see how and why the stars aligned for Rowling.

The mil­lion dol­lar – or rather 7.7 bil­lion dol­lar – ques­tion has always been: why did this par­tic­u­lar series become so wild­ly suc­cess­ful? Film­mak­ers and stu­dios have strived to re-cre­ate the mag­ic for­mu­la ever since. The cur­rent sprawl of con­nect­ed cin­e­mat­ic uni­vers­es have emerged in part in Potter’s slip­stream. And with Fan­tas­tic Beasts and Where to Find Them now in cin­e­mas and the insane­ly pop­u­lar ​‘Cursed Child’ stage show extend­ing its run, the series’ influ­ence is not about to wane any time soon. Indeed, the Pot­ter­verse is diver­si­fy­ing, with some fans tak­ing it upon them­selves to expand the uni­verse in their own way.

Mis­chief Man­aged, a short direct­ed by Suzy Shep­herd and cre­at­ed by stu­dents at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford, attempts to do just that. ​“The film is a short pre­quel, set dur­ing the era in which Harry’s par­ents and their pals were at Hog­warts: the Maraud­ers’ era,” says Shep­herd. ​“This era is often referred to and talked about in the series, and we know many of the char­ac­ters as adults, but we nev­er actu­al­ly go there, except in mem­o­ries. We want­ed to go there.”

It is this impulse which has made Potter’s world feel so acces­si­ble. Accord­ing to Shep­herd, Pot­ter­heads may ​“demand per­fect his­tor­i­cal accu­ra­cy in every­thing,” but they are also recep­tive to any­thing con­nect­ed to Rowling’s wiz­ard­ing world. Shep­herd goes on to explain that when film­ing her team ​“tried not to have scenes like the ​‘I am Khan’ moment in Star Trek, that depend entire­ly on inter­text to be inter­est­ing. There are no moments where James Pot­ter hap­pens to men­tion he likes the name Harry.”

This lev­el of fan­dom is per­fect­ly healthy, but is it sus­tain­able? Back in Exeter, Siri­war­de­na says that Pot­ter will con­tin­ue to thrive until it ​“gets to the point when peo­ple won’t con­nect with the books.” Although she is unsure as to when this might be, Shep­herd con­curs by sug­gest­ing that Har­ry Pot­ter ​“won’t have as big a hold over the next gen­er­a­tion of read­ers.” As mil­len­ni­als grow old­er, the mag­ic is bound to fade. Yet the Pot­ter­verse does pos­sess a time­less qual­i­ty akin to the worlds of Tolkien and CS Lewis, mean­ing that these are sto­ries will sure­ly be passed down to younger generations.

Aimee Kwan, one of the pro­duc­ers on Mis­chief Man­aged, offers a more pos­i­tive view of the future: ​“Har­ry Pot­ter touch­es upon so many themes of being an out­sider, the dreams of being able to do more than peo­ple say you can, and the nature of the book series means you can grow up with it.” The Boy Who Lived looks set to con­tin­ue doing just that.