HBO’s new Harry Potter series has beefed up the cast for upcoming seasons, with one recruit actually reprising their role. The astonishingly popular fantasy series, which was originally adapted for the big screen between 2001 and 2011, is embracing a new era as the story is retold with a brand-new cast and a much longer format story.
At present, each year of Harry Potter’s time at Hogwarts is set to play out over an individual season, which will consist of eight episodes, at least for season 1, which means the show will have a lot more room to explore and refine the story that initially occupied a single feature-length slot.
While much of the cast of the series is comprised of actors who are new to these specific roles, there is one actor who was recently announced to join the ensemble who has had ample experience exploring their character already. That is, of course, Kit Harington, previously of Game of Thrones fame, who will be playing Gilderoy Lockhart in the upcoming HBO series.
Kit Harington Has Already Played Gilderoy Lockhart In Harry Potter
In the original film series, Gilderoy Lockhart was played by Kenneth Branagh, whose success as both an actor and a filmmaker made him an excellent candidate to portray one of the most famous characters in the Wizarding World after Harry Potter. However, when the books were recently recorded for Audible with a full cast, Kit Harington tackled the role of Lockhart.
On top of his prior experience, Harington also appears to be an avid fan of the Harry Potter series, which he has spoken openly about in a recent interview with Collider in the wake of this announcement:
“I’m a huge Potter fan. I’ve got to be honest, he’s one of my favourite characters, so, to be offered to play him is a real dream. I’ve had a taste of him [in the audiobook] and felt my way around him. He’s just a wonderful creation.”
Evidently, Harington has a passion for the project, combined with familiarity with his character, and a baseline upon which he can use to develop and build his performance in the series, which all makes for a profoundly exciting opportunity with this new casting. Because of course, before Harington was cast, Nicholas Hoult was announced to be playing Gilderoy Lockhart in the show.
Harington Is Quietly A Better Choice To Play Lockhart Than Nicholas Hoult
Nicholas Hoult rose to fame at a young age for his spectacular performance in About a Boy, where, as a child, he held his own beside acclaimed actor Hugh Grant. From there, Hoult went from strength to strength, securing prominent roles in major franchise films like X-Men: First Class, Mad Max: Fury Road, and most recently, Superman.
Beyond his notable roles in global franchises, Hoult has also gained acclaim and widespread recognition for leading roles in projects like Juror #2, The Menu, and Nosferatu, cementing his reputation as one of Hollywood’s most talented up-and-coming stars.
And yet, despite all of that, Hoult’s apparent scheduling conflict resulting in the actor being replaced by Kit Harington seems like the best possible outcome. Harington feels like a much more suitable choice for the off-kilter celebrity of the Wizarding World. Capable of playing both deeply serious characters and those with profoundly unserious undertones, Harington just makes sense.
And while Hoult is arguably the more experienced and diverse character actor of the two, Harington has proven his ability to captivate and convince audiences with his charm, attitude, and ability to play layered, complex, lovable characters. Gilderoy is all of that wrapped up in a neat package, making him an ideal character for Kit Harington to continue playing.
- Release Date
-
December 25, 2026
- Showrunner
-
Francisca Gardiner
- Directors
-
Mark Mylod
-
Dominic McLaughlin
Harry Potter
-
Janet McTeer
Minerva McGonagall
-
-
PakarPBN
A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.
In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.
The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.
