Q&A: Should Harry Potter Have Died At The End?
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I found the picture above while browsing Reddit and I thought it was quite an insightful interpretation of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It’s amazing to me that J.K. Rowling was able to infuse so much subtext into the novels and create something that has consumed the heart of millions all over the world. That said, I feel that she fumbled it at the end. The question of the week is: Should Harry Potter have died at the end of the saga?
The happy ending… The common fallacy that most storytellers succumb to both in movies and in written fiction. I personally feel that Harry Potter dying at the end would have been the perfect conclusion and pushed the saga into the realm of epic greatness. Sure, it would have been a sobfest and many fans would have been left upset that their favorite character didn’t get his “happily ever after”. But ultimately, it would have been unforgettable.
Harry Potter is a hero and if he dies so that the rest of the world gets to live free from evil, then that’s a worthy ending in my book. The novels and movies perfectly drew toward that inevitable conclusion and I feel Rowling had initially intended Harry Potter to die but changed her mind in the face of the overwhelming popularity of the books.
What do you think? Should Harry Potter have died at the end of the saga? Let it be known in the comments!
48 Comments
Well she did sort of base him on the idea of war heroes, and she kept him alive for that. Those who come back victorious. Why is dying epic though? When so many of them died for him to live, and he did in a certain way, him finally living is not commercial but only fair.
Also then according to the prophecy, he would have died and Voldemort would have lived.
Can you please delete this comment
No!
Why do you want to delete the comment? I wonder the same thing, why is dying so much more profound? What Rowling manages to do with the end is make good on that quote “winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is”. It’s not about the dying, inasmuch as it’s about Harry’s willingness to do so.
Although, I really wouldn’t have minded him dying. For someone who was (is?) rather invested in the novels, I didn’t really care for Harry that much.
It’s the same comment as below
I was quite fond of Harry in the books, but he was perhaps not my favourite. Though in the films, he ended up being my favourite.
Well, him coming back to life sort of “cheapens” his act if you know what I mean. He dies but he can’t actually die.
Well she did sort of base him on the idea of war heroes, and she kept him alive for that. Those who come back victorious is very heroic, and he did it for the good. Why is dying epic though? When so many of them died for him to live, and he did in a certain way, him finally living is not commercial but only fair.
Also then according to the prophecy, he would have died and Voldemort would have lived.
In sacrificing himself, he would have a noble death. Then let the other ones finish off Voldemort.
But only he can kill him! One kills the other- listen to Trelawney man!
True but these are minor tweaks here and there. It could also mean that Harry dying would make Voldemort vulnerable and not immortal anymore.
Wow. I really, really LOVE that Reddit photo. NEVER thought of it like that. Pretty brilliant.
Personally, I loved the ending. I like that Harry lived. It’s the ultimate victory. After experiencing all this shit, after being thrown into darkness time and time again but comes out still strong of heart and a good natured person – that right there is a victory that deserved to be written. To have Harry die permanently to save friends and loved ones – honestly, it just doesn’t feel RIGHT. I understand where you’re coming from mate, but I don’t think it would have worked. Rowling gave us the best of both worlds: a hero who ‘died’ (and did so willingly!, all the while providing readers with a good twenty pages of the most heartbreaking literature I read in a decade) and a hero who lived.
Plus it reiterates the nickname the wizarding world gave him: ‘The Boy Who Lived’. The Daily Prophet – or rather Rita Skeeter – would have a field day with ‘The Boy Who Lived…for 17 years until Voldemort came back and made him not so living’.
Beautiful, perfect ending, IMO. And although I appreciate David Yates & Co. for expanding the Harry/Voldemort fight, by golly, did they totally mess up THE moment. This marvelously dramatic exchange in the Great Hall is traded for a rather impersonal body deterioration. Another part I loved about Harry’s survival is that sense of understanding and power he gained when he chose to carry on post-King’s Cross, and his taunting of Riddle and the extreme feeling of a one on one fight that didn’t translate oh so well with the film.
Sorry, could go on and on about this. But again, LOVE that image, and can’t wait to read what people write. Good topic!
Glad you like that picture! Indeed, I didn’t think of it this way either but it’s pretty neat that the Deathly Hallows make sense in that manner as well.
Again, I understand why JK Rowling went with that ending and why some if not most people are satisfied with it. However, does it have to be a happy ending to be a perfect one?
Spoiler warning on this headline haha and yes I do think Harry or some one from the core trio should have been sacrificed. When I read the final book I really thought it would have benefited if Harry had been killed.
I apologize to the 7 people who haven’t seen HP yet ahah
Glad you agree Joel. If not kill Harry then at least kill off Ron or Hermione. They just had all those minor side characters die but there was very little impact to those deaths.
Well, if you take into consideration mirroring of the books and stuff… Ron could’ve died (and probably was planned, but JK chickened out LOL) since he did “fell” on that epic chess fight, which allows Hermione and Harry to move forward to the next bit.
Ron’s exit in DH wouldn’t be so random that way. xD Though Ron’s always been the kind to be there, be pissy at people for a while, and then return~
ANYWAY. I don’t think Harry was ever meant to die. His story wasn’t so much of a war hero, but a survivor of war. Having a survivor eventually dying is just depressing.
Ahaha imagine if Ron had died in the very first movie. That would have been incredibly dark for a kid’s movie
LOL, no – I meant Ron falling in HP1 would be mirroring his eventual death when time comes on HP7… but he didn’t, and JK had the most terribly cheesy epilogues to prove how happy everyone was…
I always imagined Ron and Hermione’s kid – describe with unruly red hair – as Ronald McDonald xD
I haven’t read the books, but i think harry surviving worked fine in the film. My only gripe was that it was unclear how he came back, as i had to ask a cousin of mine who has read the books for the explanation. I don’t feel i should have had to do that to understand what happened
Yea I had no idea until I read the last book as well. Certainly a lot of those moments where you don’t really understand what’s going on if you haven’t read the books.
You actually read all the books? Which book is your favorite?
Tough question, I would have a hard time choosing a favorite. But my three favorites would be Goblet of Fire, Half Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows. What is yours?
hahahaha, those are my least favorite books – except for maybe Goblet, but that one falls in #3 or #4. I guess the first three are pretty children books when reading at our age xD
I don’t know if it makes sense, but I think it is more ‘romantic’ when the hero dies… lol
SPOILER WARNING
For example when Hartigan dies in Sin City it was sad but much more original.
Yes exactly. And a lot more memorable and dramatic!
Read the books and saw all the films and I think that it is just fine.
The way it plays out is fine. For me life and death are central to the plot but more important is the idea of love (Harry and friends) and the absence of love (Voldemort)
But isn’t dying for your loved ones the ultimate act of sacrifice? Him coming back to life kind of cheapens his act.
True, but also recognizing from a strictly plot driven level, [SPOILER] the whole horcrux thing is kind of a get out of jail card to bring him back to life.
Even if it was a cop-out, it is one that I do not mind. The story was so epic to begin with that I can forgive JK’s want for a happy ending with one exception the epilogue … blech!
Actually, I think the Horcrux would have been a great way to kill him off IMO. Voldemort killing Harry so he kills the horcrux inside him. What was more far-fetched was this entire explanation that Harry couldn’t die because Voldemort had some of Harry’s blood (or whatever it was, seriously probably 90% of people didn’t get that)
Now that is an interesting question! I think I would have been a bit annoyed if he had died at the end because then what would have been the point of reading 7 books (or watching 8 movies) about him almost dying only to see him die in the end after all. What I didn’t like was seeing him and the others grown up and happy. Surely after all that they wouldn’t be content with a normal “family” life. Leave some stuff up to the imagination!
I don’t feel it would have been a waste. For example, you might read Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables (SPOILERS] and find that Jean Valjean, the main protagonist of this really long novel, dies at the end in the arms of his adopted daughter Cosette and his son-in-law Marius[/SPOILERS] but that’s what make the ending, and the entire novel so beautiful and unforgettable.
I agree with you on Les Mis but JV dies and Marius becomes the new man of the house. Who would e the next HP when there is only one?
There is no need for the next HP. Hermione, Ron, Neville and company can finish off the fight!
Interesting question, Castor! Well, Rowling gained a lot of inspiration from MULTIPLE places and authors and other series, including The Lord of the Rings by Tolkein. Would it have been better if Frodo had died in the end? Well, he didn’t die, but he did move on (kind of to his afterlife), which did make the ending bittersweet.
Part of the picture created in both series is inspired loosely (please read loosely here) on Jesus Christ sacrificing himself for the sins of mankind, dying, and then rising again. It really does fit the picture of Harry being born to die (like Jesus), being willing to sacrifice himself, and then coming back to life to defeat the villain.
What many other people have alluded to–the war hero–also is likely a reason for why Rowling chose the ending that she did.
I can definitely see where you’re coming from about not wanting that “happy ending” for the sake of a happy ending. That’s how I felt entirely about the latest Sherlock Holmes. I guess, IMO, the ending of Harry Potter worked well (given what I said I believe it’s partly based off of), and also because I didn’t really see it as a happy ending. If anything, it felt more bittersweet, at least watching it. Major characters had been dying or getting killed off since book 4, and I think Snape’s death was the big clincher in the final book (more so than Ron’s brother or Harry’s other friends). I didn’t really think there was this major happy ending with a victory party or anything of sorts.
Those are my thoughts! Interesting discussion, Castor
I can definitely the religious undertones and I know J.K Rowling is a devout Christian so it definitely makes sense Kristin.
And yea, Sherlock Holmes should have ended 3 minutes earlier and it would have been that much better!
Also, that picture – so cool! Thanks for including that. I really like it.
Yea, it’s a great way of looking at the HP saga!
Well, I think if he died so the world would be in peace, it would’ve been a memorable ending. Probably we’ll love it more (the movie buffs) but not the HP fans, as they have read the book religiously and that’s not how it suppose to be.
Yea there was no way Yates/Kloves would have deviated from the book’s ending but certainly it would have been fun. Much like a Harry-Hermione fling would have been
Harry and Hermione fling, umm, yes add a little more drama
There were too many things going Harry’s way for him to die in the battle with Voldy.
First, the prophecy states that Harry must be the one to vanquish the Dark Lord. So unless you end the book/movies under the rule of the Dark Lord, Harry was going to live.
2nd, a combination of Harry being a horcrux AND Voldy using his blood to come back alive essentially made Harry invulnerable to being killed in woods. Dumbledore understood this at the end of Goblet of Fire, and made sacrificing Harry that much easier, even if things didn’t exactly go to plan because of the whole Elder Wand thing, which leads me too…
Lastly, the Deathly Hallows. This is one of the areas that the movies messes up on, I believe. In the book, when Harry goes to the forest, he has the invisibility cloak on him. And of course, he finds and uses the Resurrection Stone inside the snitch. All while being the master of the Elder Wand. All three of these things together make him the master of death, no? Three different explanations of how he survived his death.
As much as I love me a lead character getting killed off, he was always going to make it through. As for other main characters, Rowling has said that Ron was supposed to have been killed off, but she just couldn’t do it.
That’s right Red – I read the book in a day when it came out so my memory of the details was so foggy when I saw the movie. I recognized though that there were some things that were different near the end of the film.
But that’s what I’m saying. All of these minor tweaks and it almost seems like all these far-fetched details were added to justify Harry Potter coming back from the dead.
And wow, good point on him being the Master of Death pretty much the whole time ahah
…Harry Potter…”the boy who lived”…
…I think with such a long series of films it would have been a travesty if, at the end of all that adventure and personal growth, Harry Potter dies. This was about overcoming evil on the simplest level and therefore the main character triumphs. That said, Rowling when crazy killing off everyone else which smacked of a desperate attempt at being darker and more adult.
That’s the thing, she killed many but none of the main characters so it didn’t leave as much of an emotional impact (except for Snape)
I was going to say that there was no way that Harry Potter could die because then there would be no way to make more sequels. But then I realized that he could still have a role as a spirit or one of those pictures on the wall… So it would be fine as long as he was movie dead and not really, really dead.
Episode 73: Harry Potter and The Ugly Picture Frame.
What sequels ahah? I’m fairly sure we have seen the last of Harry Potter at least in terms of this series.
I’m not speaking as a big Harry Potter fan here, I have never read the books (nor do I plan to) and I only started to appreciate the movies after Part 5. But I think it was necessary that Harry lived. Sure, he could have died, if it meant Voldemort would die too and therefore good would triumph over evil anyway, but I think we needed to see Harry physically triumph over Voldemort, if for no other reason than to show that somebody could, even a boy.
Had it been that Harry actually did die, the first thing that would have crossed my mind was that Harry had now become the wizarding world’s very own Neo from The Matrix, and that wouldn’t have been cool.
Great post! I love how Harry Potter has affected evernoye in some way or another. I first started reading the Harry Potter books when I was in seventh grade. I believe that was around the time Twilight came out because I had just finished reading that and while I was waiting for the next book in the series I decided I would read something else. Up until that point I hadn’t been a big reader and it would take me weeks to finish a book if I ever even bothered to read one at all. But, once I read the Harry Potter books my whole perspective on reading changed and I actually began to truly enjoy it!
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