You know why Game of Thrones fell apart after the fourth, maybe fifth, season?? Because it was created by MEN who didn't plan for the future and totally fucked themselves and it could have been avoided. But J.K. Rowling? As a woman, Rowling planned everything in advance.
When I was told that I wasn't allowed to like Harry Potter anymore, I was pretty sad.
By Mike Reid | January 2025
Ok, sure. Why not? Let's do it. Let's talk about gender.
Let's compare the two most epic stories of magic in the history of stories (or at least in the last 25 years): one created by three men, and one created by just one woman.
Game of Thrones vs. Harry Potter.
And let’s be honest: the men behind Game of Thrones — the actual creator, George R.R. Martin, and the two showrunners, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss — held it together for four, maybe five seasons before the wheels came off.
By the end, despite record-breaking budgets and jaw-dropping production values, they'd managed to alienate a good chunk of their audience with an ending that felt rushed and hollow.
But not J.K. Rowling.
J.K. Rowling — who identifies as a woman in the most traditional sense, with pronouns so obviously she/her that you don’t even have to ask — did what the men of Game of Thrones could not.
She held it together.
Through seven books, eight blockbuster movies, and one damn amusement park.
Over the course of 14 dazzling years, Rowling delivered 16 iconic cultural moments — each one more magical than the last.
Thursday, June 26, 1997
Book 1: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
Thursday, July 2, 1998
Book 2: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Thursday, July 8, 1999
Book 3: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Saturday, July 8, 2000
Book 4: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Friday, November 16, 2001
Movie 1: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
Friday, November 15, 2002
Movie 2: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Saturday, June 21, 2003
Book 5: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Friday, June 4, 2004
Movie 3: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Friday, November 18, 2005
Movie 4: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Saturday, July 16, 2005
Book 6: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Movie 5: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Book 7: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Movie 6: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Friday, June 18, 2010
The Wizarding World of Harry Potter opens in Orlando, Florida
Friday, November 19, 2010
Movie 7: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1
Friday, July 15, 2011
Movie 8: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2
And she never screwed up.
Such success should have been impossible, right?
I mean, sure, J.K. Rowling definitely worked her ass off.
But come on — divine assistance must have been in the mix.
Or maybe it wasn’t divine at all. Maybe our alien siblings, the Pleiadians, got hooked on the story by Book Four and so decided to break their non-intervention policy (which they’re definitely breaking a lot these days) just enough to keep things on track.
Pleiadians are allowed to intervene to prevent nuclear disasters, so why not prevent a literary disaster they must have concluded?
And of course, in a parallel reality where the Lizard People have more influence, the story ends with Voldemort winning, Harry and all his friends dead, and everyone bitter and broken.
Thankfully, we’re not in that reality.
But even after the final Harry Potter movie got a 96% on Rotten Tomatoes (in our current reality) and J.K. Rowling became the richest women in the universe, did she stop?
Nope! She kept trying to entertain us.
There was more Harry Potter content — tons of it, actually — but none of it ever quite recaptured the lightning-in-a-bottle magic of the original seven books and eight films based off those books.
So Rowling tried branching out. She wrote The Casual Vacancy, her first stab at adult fiction — a darkly comedic dive into the grimy politics of a small-town election.
But let’s face it: nobody cared.
Because nothing J.K. Rowling could ever conjure up could eclipse those seven books, eight movies, and one theme park. Nothing.
So, nine years after the last movie premiered and three months into the global pandemic lockdowns, Rowling must have been a little bored. Maybe a little frustrated. So she logged onto Twitter (now X) and casually threw out some suggestions for what to call someone who menstruates.
"Wumben?" she suggested.
Wimpund?
Woomud?
Which, let’s be honest, was totally offensive — because J.K. Rowling is obviously really, really good at coming up with cool names for things.
But in this case, it felt like J.K. Rowling was saying: "Alright, motherfuckers. You don’t want to read my adult fiction, even though I’m working just as hard on it as I did with that Harry Potter bullshit? Fine. I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to make myself into Voldemort, just to see how it feels. And while I’m at it, I’m going to ruin Harry Potter."
And it worked.
It fucking worked.
Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe), Hermione Granger (Emma Watson), and Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) all came out swinging, publicly condemning Rowling’s comments.
"Jesus Fucking Christ, what is wrong with her??" Daniel Radcliffe tweeted at 4:44am, apparently unable to sleep. "What if she’d put that little effort into naming the Hogwarts houses? We’d have Gyffndr, Grfffffrrr, Gruffy, and Grufflepuffy, and the sorting hat scene would’ve been an absolute trainwreck."
"I memorized every spell in every book in the library!" Emma Watson tweeted the following morning, obviously still grappling with the Hermione-shaped shadow that looms over her life. "And J.K. thought up cool spells like Expelliarmus, and Wingardium Leviosa, and Rictusempra, and Sectumsempra, and Expecto Patronum. But Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud? For fuck’s sake."
"I agree 100% with Hermione!!" Rupert Grint tweeted five minutes later, before deleting his tweet 25 minutes after that and then posting 3 minutes later, "I agree 10,000% with Emma!!!"
And so just like that, the magic was over.
And then in 2022, Elon Musk bought Twitter, fired everyone, and renamed it X.
And then in 2024, Donald Trump was elected president. Again.
And now nobody — nobody! — claims membership in the Woke Club, past or present.
So I guess Harry Potter’s back on the table?
But here’s the truth: you can’t put the cat back in the bag.
You can’t un-ruin Harry Potter.
A certain part of the magic is now gone. Forever.
So in a sense we’re kind of back at square one. Starting over. We need to come up with brand-new ways to create magic.
But that, my friends, is the beauty of resetting expectations.
Because from here, there’s nowhere to go but up.
And who do we have to thank for that?
None other than J.K. Rowling herself.