Harry Potter HBO TV Series Trailer Breakdown: 5 Reveals You Missed – SlashFilm

The first trailer for HBO Max’s “Harry Potter” TV show has dropped, and while a lot of fans found it underwhelming (and many more intend to boycott the series due to author J.K. Rowling’s involvement), it’s still sure to be scrutinized frame-by-frame. One detail that die-hard fans will pick up on right away is that the first season of the TV show is officially sticking with its source material’s original title of “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.” This sets it apart from the first-ever “Harry Potter” movie, whose title was localized in the United States as “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” (although it was still titled “Philosopher’s Stone” in much of the world).

Otherwise, this TV show looks to be hewing fairly closely to the overall aesthetic and costume designs previously established by the “Harry Potter” movies and continued in the recent video game “Hogwarts Legacy.” After all, there are already theme park attractions based on these aesthetics, not to mention an awful lot of merchandise, so the TV series couldn’t shake things up too much.

This first teaser trailer for “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” focuses on laying out the basic set-up and introducing the biggest characters, including the young trio of Harry (Dominic McLaughlin), Ron (Alastair Stout), and Hermione (Arabella Stanton). However, a closer look reveals other key characters and some novel design choices.

Harry Potter’s first trip aboard the Hogwarts Express also marks his first encounter with the colorful world of magical junk food. Wizarding World candy isn’t so much “better” than mortal candy as it is “more lawsuit-worthy,” but it does add some excitement to the process of snacking. 

Acid Pops, for example, are so sour that they can burn a hole in your tongue. (If you were born a Muggle, you can achieve the same effect by eating a large amount of Sour Patch Kids.) There are Cockroach Clusters, which are made out of cockroaches. And then there are Chocolate Frogs (perhaps inspired by the British schoolground favorite and unofficial inflation tracker, Freddos), which come with a free trading card but have a tendency to hop away while you’re distracted by said card.

Shots of Harry and Ron on the Hogwarts Express show them surrounded by piles of sweet treats, including what looks like packets of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans (they might taste like strawberry or they might taste like ass!) and what can only be a Pumpkin Pasty. While Bertie Botts’ Every Flavor Beans have found success as real-world tie-in merch, Pumpkin Pasties have yet to be put on the market in the non-wizarding world, so the show pretty much had free reign when it came to designing them.

The old Hollywood adage “never work with children or animals” is tough to abide by in the case of the “Harry Potter” franchise, which features an abundance of both. One animal that accompanies Harry throughout his school career is Hedwig, a snowy owl given to him as a birthday present by Hogwarts groundskeeper Rubeus Hagrid (Robby Coltrane). Given the complexities of having an owl on screen (either real or CGI), and given that Hedwig spends most of her time in Hogwarts’ owlery, it’s likely that we won’t actually see much of her in the show. 

One place where Hedwig and Harry definitely do share the screen, however, is during Harry’s first visit to Platform Nine-and-Three-Quarters. In the book, this moment plays out like a stress dream version of dealing with British public transport. Not only is there no sign for Platform Nine-and-Three-Quarters (turn out you have to run directly into a random brick wall), but Harry has to rush around King’s Cross Station looking for it while pushing a trolley loaded up with all of his luggage for the school year and an owl in a cage.

The teaser trailer for “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” includes this scene, giving us our first look at the TV show’s version of Hedwig. Though, given that she’s being pushed along at high speed by a small child, let’s hope this particular owl was CGI.

While the “Harry Potter” books described the Hogwarts school uniform as plain black robes and a plain pointed black hat for day-to-day wear, the movies brought the wardrobe for witches and wizards closer to a traditional British school uniform. Students do wear black robes, but they’re adorned with the school logo and worn over a shirt-and-tie combo. The hats were tried once, in “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” but never appeared again — probably because the brimless design made them look like dunce caps. 

It appears the hats have been ditched entirely for this TV show, although “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” has stuck with the standard-school-uniform-plus-robes design that’s now a core part of the brand. (“Hogwarts Legacy” used it as well.) One notable variation is the Hogwarts crest, which has been streamlined from its complex design featuring the four house animals and the school motto into a simple “H” with tree roots growing from the bottom and branches growing from the top.

With so many students milling around in the teaser trailer, it’s easy to miss this first look at Neville Longbottom (Rory Wilmot), seen above in the one class where he actually excels: Herbology. Canonically, Neville even grows up to become Hogwarts’ Herbology professor. Unfortunately he’s notoriously incompetent at pretty much every other school subject, which makes him a target for bullies like Draco Malfoy (Lox Pratt).

Despite his scholastic struggles and low self-esteem, Neville ends up revealing hidden depths of bravery in the first “Harry Potter” book and goes on to defy his underdog status throughout the rest of the franchise. When the story begins to delve into the prophecies surrounding Harry and Voldemort (a role whose casting has yet to be announced for the TV show), Neville is revealed to have a surprising connection to the fateful night that Harry’s parents were murdered.

If there’s one aspect of the “Harry Potter” books that the movies failed to fully capture, it’s the hype surrounding Harry’s top-of-the-line Quidditch broomsticks. In the first book, he’s mysteriously gifted a Nimbus 2000, which is later superseded by the even flashier Firebolt. On screen, though, it’s quite hard to make a broomstick look sleek and cool while still keeping it fundamentally … broomsticky.

“Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” is giving it a shot, however. In the teaser trailer, Harry is seen carrying a Quidditch broomstick that looks like two flat broom-heads stuck together and topped by a smaller, circular broom-head. It’s hard to say whether this looks any more like elite tier sports equipment than the broomsticks in the movies. Adding more bristles to the equation, if anything, only highlights the broomstickiness of the broomstick. But if the series makes it to season 3, I kind of hope the Firebolt ends up being just five broomsticks stuck together.

HBO’s “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” will premiere around Christmas 2026.