A Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the first entry in a series of seven books covering the story of “the boy who lived”. Readers not only followed Harry’s journey as a young wizard but also his battle against Lord Voldemort, the darkest wizard of all and who tried to kill him when he was just a baby.
The Harry Potter books were a big success, and it didn’t take long for the series to be adapted to the big screen, and so the movies were released between 2001 and 2011, with the final novel, Lord Voldemort’s origins, the formation Order of the Phoenix, and everything about the Marauders. This last group is a very special one as it has a direct connection to Harry, and it’s actually the perfect spinoff idea for the HBO Max TV show.
The Marauders were a group of friends with a talent for getting into all types of trouble and breaking the rules at Hogwarts. The group was formed by Remus Lupin, Peter Pettigrew, Fred Weasley, and which showed every inch of the grounds at Hogwarts: every classroom, hallway, corner, and secret age, and accurately identified every person and their location within the grounds, even if the person was wearing an invisibility cloak, was under the magic of a Polyjuice Potion, or was an animagus.
As the Marauders were formed way before Harry was born, there were only a few, brief looks at them through flashbacks/memories and a couple of details about them were revealed through casual conversations, making their story the ideal spinoff for HBO Max’s Harry Potter series. By focusing on the Marauders, the series could fill in all the blanks in their story and answer some of the biggest questions left by the Harry Potter books and movies about them, such as how they all met, their dynamic through their years at Hogwarts, the process of creating the map, and their involvement in the First Wizarding War. A Marauders TV show could also show more about Peter Pettigrew and his association with Voldemort and eventual betrayal that led to the deaths of James and Lily Potter, as well as the attempted murder of baby Harry Potter.
HBO Max’s Harry Potter TV show already has the basics for a Marauders spinoff, and a TV series is an ideal format to tell their story from the very beginning up to Pettigrew’s betrayal, Potter’s dead, and Black’s imprisonment, maybe even covering what happened between that and Black’s escape from Azkaban. The Marauders’ backstory is one that fans have wanted to see for years, and it’s not too late to finally make it happen.