Before Harry Potter ever stepped foot in Hogwarts..And even before Voldemort killed his parents, there was a whole other story—one of dark wizards, ancient secrets, and magical wars.

This is everything that came before.

So settle in, brace yourselves, and let’s wind back the clock on Wizarding History.

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I recently came across a clip on YouTube where author Brandon Sanderson and his podcast guest Dan Well were discussing Voldemort’s character.

Aaand things got pretty controversial pretty quickly, as shortly after posing the question, “Is he a good character?”—they both came to the same conclusion: he wasn’t.

Naturally my first inclination was to feel ANGER because HOW DARE THEY insult the main antagonist from the series that I love.

But then I began to wonder….Is he a good character? Or do I just like him because I like the Harry Potter story as a whole?

Is he compelling in his own right? Is he actually interesting?

And..Can a book even be good if a CORE character is bad?

All of this got me really thinking about what makes a good character. Is it depth? Motivation? Backstory? Complexity?

Yes, he’s powerful. Yes, he’s terrifying. But is he relatable? Does he evolve?

So today, I want to dig deeper into whether or not Voldemort is actually a well-written character, or if he’s just been heavily propped up by the strength of the narrative around him.

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Given that I have a Harry Potter YouTube channel, you might not be too surprised to hear that most of my recommended content on YouTube is..*SHOCKER* Harry Potter related.

But every so often, I see something in the same realm, but just a little bit different..which in this case was a video of Jordan Peterson analyzing the series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYedNVMB2YQ 0:50-1:20

Now, it’s not often that mainstream figures discuss Harry Potter. It’s 2025 and nearly 3 decades have passed since the first book came out. So naturally, I was curious- and I decided to see what he was talking about.

But what exactly is the connection between Jordan Peterson and the Wizarding World? And why does he seem to think it’s so important? Is it possible that he’s just bending the Harry Potter story to his philosophical will? Or are there elements to the story that perhaps many of us have never considered.

Today I’m going to be breaking it down, clip by clip, and seeing if I can make some sense of it all. Don’t worry, none of this is political- we’re strictly staying on the topic of Harry Potter.

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Welcome to Harry Potter Theory. Today I’m going to be bringing you up to speed with everything that is Harry Potter as of May 2025.

Because…There’s a lot happening in the Wizarding World right now — from casting announcements to production updates and even a few surprises that no one saw coming.

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Welcome to Harry Potter Theory. Today we’re discussing Ghost Plots.

You might not be too surprised to hear that Rowling, who wrote the 7 Harry Potter books in a 10 year timespan, generated a fair bit of information (storylines, plots, characters) that simply never made it in to the final versions of the beloved books. And in time, these secondary pieces of information have come to be known as ‘Ghost Plots’.

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Welcome to Harry Potter Theory. Today we’re going to be taking a look at aspects of the Harry Potter universe that everyone seems to remember…The wrong way. And partly to blame for all of this is the fact that the Harry Potter books were adapted to film.

The short answer for WHY all of this happened is that in transforming the beloved book series into movies, a lot of liberties were taken.

• Characters personalities were changed
• Scenes that NEVER occurred were added
• Character roles were switched
• And in many cases, aspects of the books were outright omitted

But now that so many years have passed, a lot of these movie misconceptions have become so ingrained that they've completely overwritten how we remember the original Harry Potter books. How you perceive this video will depend entirely on how you engaged with the series. For some, the films were too frustrating to finish — filled with inaccuracies that clashed with the books- and by going down this path their memory of the books (and more importantly, accurate information) remained intact.

But for many others, the books and movies have blended together into one seamless version of the story. Harry Potter as a whole became an amalgamation of both book and film — with the lines between them increasingly blurred.

And in many instances these changes became so pervasive that they overwrote how nearly everyone remembered the source material.

After you’ve watched the video, let me know how many of these things YOU remembered the wrong way. Be honest.

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When we’re first exposed to the Harry Potter story, Gryffindor are introduced as the ‘good’ guys. They can’t do any wrong, can they?

Slytherin Bad. Gryffindor good.

But, it’s not really that simple, is it?

Because when you actually look past the golden glow of Gryffindor House — past the roaring lion mascot, the impressive Quidditch performances, and the constant rule-breaking that somehow always gets rewarded 100 house points at the end of the year — what you start to see is a culture that’s not exactly representative of moral superiority or emotional maturity.

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Albus Dumbledore is widely regarded as the most powerful wizard of his time. Some may say Voldemort, or even Grindelwald, but in my opinion- Dumbledore had something special that the others didn’t.

He was truly one of a kind.

Or…Was he?

My question today is: was Dumbledore as special as we make him out to be? Does he deserve to be pedestalized to the extent that he is? Or is it possible that someone else could reach- or even surpass- his level of power?

Surely SOMEONE has the potential to match him, right? And if so..Who?

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