With only one episode to go until our landmark 300th show, MuggleCast 299 covers the back half of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Part 2. This week we’re joined by HYPE host Selina Wilken!
– We dive deep into Part 2 of The Cursed Child
– Scorpius returns to an alternate reality
– Why Snape didn’t translate well on stage
– Would humiliating Cedric actually drive him to become a Death Eater?
– One listener wonders why Moody didn’t see Albus & Scorpius in The Maze?
– The Second Prophecy
– Voldemort had a child, which means… many things we didn’t think were possible
– Why was nobody suspicious/aware of a pregnant Bellatrix?
– The blanket: was it a stretch? We think so.
– Halloween 1981: are there certain events in the Potter series that shouldn’t be touched?
– Listener tweets
– Mega MuggleCast is coming!
– Support us on Patreon to receive signed album art and Bonus MuggleCast episodes. This month we’ll be using Bonus MC to discuss the latest news.
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Running time: 1:41:28, 61 MB
This episode was just so frustrating hearing you all tear the script to tatters. I feel like a complete idiot for liking it because it seems like everyone so deeply despised it and I have been accused on a number of occasions of being a shill trying to promote the play.
Sure there are questionable elements and parts that seem bizarre about it but to use phrases like ‘being able to stomach this’ seems so extreme and so negative that I wonder whether some people just went straight into the script hoping to hate it (just as there were people going into it with the intention of liking it regardless)
It must also be said, however, that fans have no right to decide what is canon to writing whatsoever. If Jo says that the play is canon, regardless of whether you like it or not, that is how it works. It’s her creation, it’s her writing, it’s her world.
Can you guys talk a bit more about Ron in CC? I personally felt, like many others, that his character was just completely butchered. I get that some say his chilled-out disposition shows that he’s the most stable and developed of the trio, but he just contributed absolutely nothing to the play. He was one-dimensional comic relief.
And something else that annoyed me was that I don’t think he and Harry even shared one line. Which just goes to show that he was essentially replaced with Draco, and that saddens me.
These are great reflections
Thank you! As a Ron-lover, I was really upset about this 🙁
I totally understand. I really found your comment about the few Harry-Ron lines insightful
Can you guys talk a bit more about Ron in CC? I personally felt, like many others, that his character was just completely butchered. I get that some say his chilled-out disposition shows that he’s the most stable and developed of the trio, but he just contributed absolutely nothing to the play. He was one-dimensional comic relief.
And something else that annoyed me was that I don’t think he and Harry even shared one line. Which just goes to show that he was essentially replaced with Draco, and that saddens me.
Even though prophecies are kept in the Department of Mysteries, no-one except the individual(s) they were made about can pick them up and hear the prophecy. That’s why Voldemort tricked Harry into going there and retrieving his – because he wanted to hear the last part of it (that Snape did not overhear). But yeah, I’m also very curious as to who made the Cursed Child prophecy and when.
So you say that the line Scorpious gives about the graveyard “supposedly” being haunted is ridiculous because in the Wizarding World, you can see ghosts and therefore KNOW if something is haunted. My question to you is, why then in PoA is the Shrieking Shack referred to as being rumored to be haunted? It seems you guys have a lot more leniency and forgiveness for events in the original Harry Potter series, but don’t afford any of that leniency to the Cursed Child, even in areas that parallel events and ideas presented in the original series. Almost as though you go out of your way to hate or dislike the Cursed Child… 🙁
This is an interesting point of view! I wonder if the Shrieking Shack is haunted by some other category or level and that’s why they didn’t think of it that way.
Technically the Shrieking Shack isn’t haunted at all, it was the Mauraders that made it seem that way. But regardless, tons of Wizards believed it to be haunted for years and years, making Granger345’s comment a completely valid point! These podcasters do indeed seem determined to hate this play and point out every last little flaw they can find, ignoring the fact that it is a PLAY and therefore cannot have the depth and background explanation of a novel.
I can’t speak for the hosts, but I know my initial reaction was also to pick it apart and find all its flaws because JKR tweeted that it was canon. At the time, I didn’t have a grasp on extended universe canon for the HP universe, because most extended content was easy [at least for me] to accept. I just ignored the pieces that contradicted the original novels, or found a way to make the contradictions work. But Cursed Child flew in the face of HP canon so hard that it knocked the wind out of me. It took several weeks and a lot of fan conversation to bring me to an understanding of this new extended universe canon where Cursed Child lives. And even with that understanding, it is going to take still more time for me to be able to “feel” that instead of just “know” it.
Perhaps we all need just a little more time to be able to talk about Cursed Child in a more friendly way.
I too was a bit taken aback by Portrait Dumbledore. But then again, since he’s passed he’s returned back to love/source and maybe just has more sentimental abilities to think bigger picture. I was like wait.. He’s crying? Lol
It was cool to hear in this podcast how the play elements were pleasing and translated like the dementors and such.
Overall, I really was happy to read the script book and finish reading it. I admit some plot elements were shocking (V+B=D!!) but I never read fanfiction so I didn’t have that to compare it to, and honestly I was just grateful for more Harry Potter by JK Rowling. I think it’s important to remember to be grateful for what we DO have. We’re complaining about not liking this or that but I would much rather have Pottered once more than to never have Potteted again at all.
Why didn’t the adults use Draco’s time turner to go back a couple months and stop the kids from getting the time turner from Hermione’s office in the first place instead of going back to 1981?
BOOM!!! Good one!
I guess plot-wise, they had to go through the entire struggle to get to the point where Harry and Albus liked each other again…blah blah blah…but your idea makes much more sense 🙂
And thats exactly why everyone treats time travel as such a hole-y (got it? haha) subject in stories!
Does anyone else think that Craig Bowker Jr was actually the spare and Delphi ruined her own prophecy by killing him?
You guys say Scorpius is a talented Quidditch player unlike his father? Excuse me, in PoS, Slytherin narrowly beats Ravenclaw in their match and Ravenclaw “flattens” Hufflepuff, Gryffindor beat Ravenclaw by 200 points then by the time of the last match Slytherin is leading the Cup by 200 points, suggesting they at some point had a massive victory over Hufflepuff, with Cedric as Seeker and Captain, mind you.
I saw the play and read the book afterwards. There were some big plot holes I saw in the play and confirmed reading the scrip. But one thing they got right is Harry. I am a doctor and went to the play with a doctoŕ friend who is a psychiatrist. He agrees that Harry would be this screwed up man after all he went through. I would have written a play abóut Albus and Scorpious getting the elder wand from Dumbledore’s grave. Lot’s of possibilities there.
The play in London was great. The ed scene made me cry. However, lots of plot holes.
I think that seeing the play makes the script a little better.