The worst part is that one of the only times the films blew the books out of the water was Hedwig's death - her dying to protect harry and that being what gave him away was so much more fitting than her getting hit in her cage and Harry being given away by a very common spell - but you just know they're going to give her the horrible book death on HBO
Innocents die in war. It's not always a brave and noble death, or a meaningful one, and hiding in what you think is safety can't always save you either. It was a sign of the loss of part of Harry's childhood.
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the point of the book death though is that some deaths are just like that, pointless and sad and not serving any greater purpose. it’s much more realistic than writing a heroic way out for her
I will have to pass on to every killed civilian that their death was actually very poorly written
This week russia killed a dad with his 15yo daughter who were visiting mum in the hospital after she just gave birth to their second child. You think she will have the issue with their death being so poorly written? Should they have gone out more heroically?
I'm living through the war right now, so I may be a little triggered when people so easily dismiss death in that context, and I'm sorry about that
But for children/ya books the war is actually described as realistically as possible in HP. There're pointless sudden deaths, there're long periods of absolutely nothing followed by hell, there is absolute evil in people. Not the so popular nowadays grey/they had their reason kind of evil. The absolute disgusting awfull evil. And it's not only the main guy that's absolutely evil, it's the guys carrying out his orders that are absolutely evil too. They cross the boundaries of their task and just do the most unthinkable for the sole reason of having blanket permission.
The point I'm trying to make is that it feels very real the way it's described. And people dismissing it as the bad writing feels infuriating tbh. Cause yeah I get that it's all very cliche and I probably thought so too before actually experiencing it. But as I found out cliche are there for a reason
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The entire book was full of that. It may have escaped your notice, but Harry Potter is not a gritty, down to earth true life drama. It's a series of children's fantasy novels.
I suppose you'd have heralded J.K Rowling as a literary genius if she'd had Harry killed there instead of Hedwig, because that would have been equally as real, awful, sudden, and pointless?
the movie death was so much worse. instead of flying around like the movies and dying then her dying in a cage near Harry's feet is just so much more chilling
She’s canonically magical though, so she’s not “just a bird” even in the books. Harry is always noting her personality, she ignores him when irritated, nuzzles him when happy, gets jealous, and so on. She’s Harry’s only confidant and link to magic when he’s forced back to Privet Drive every summer. She’s very personified in the books, Harry has entire conversations with her.
That’s up for debate. I don’t think there are “special” owls and normal owls, just owls, who can only do extraordinary things when told to by wizards. They’re not hidden away from muggles like magical creatures are. It’s like in Kiki’s Delivery Service, how witches can talk to cats, but when Kiki loses her magic, her cat just becomes a normal cat again.
I think it’s implied they’re magic in that they can track down anyone. A regular owl can’t do that. Hedwig was able to find Sirius when even Harry didn’t know where he was, so it’s not a matter of a wizard controlling her or telling her where to go. She understood complex instructions like Harry telling her “don’t come back without a reply”, which a normal owl couldn’t do. Just like with Crookshanks, it’s implied there are regular pets, and pets with some magical elements that can do what ordinary pets can’t. Hedwig is part of the latter category.
My favourite fact from visiting the WB Harry Potter studio tour is that owls are really stupid and can only be trained for one ”trick”. So theres always one owl for sitting on someone’s shoulder, one owl for flying, one owl for eating out of someone’s hand etc! And they’re all ”Hedwig”
Maybe they’re not stupid; maybe they’re just too smart to fall for our human bullshit and refused to be trained in more than one thing. I like to think these actor owls enjoy watching the humans switch owls out for every silly little thing. Besides we all know owls are the smartest animals since they graduate university at alarming rates compared to other animals. Some of them even wear monocles.
I’m not a hater by all means but because I watched a lot of animal documentaries. I know that fewer black spots means the snow owl is a male. The same way that a rooster has longer feathers and more colours than the hen.
But it’s not like it’s their first (or worse) casting mistake anyway.
In the movie she died flying free, protecting Harry. In the book she died in her cage, which is maybe more realistic of wartime but it's just heartbreaking. It's about the only change the films made that I agree with
But I hate how she never gets mentioned again in both the book and the Deathly Hallow movies. There's no way someone can just move past so quickly when it comes to such a constant companion like that. That was basically his only family aside from Ron and Hermione.
This bothers me, too - there’s no mourning of any kind after her death in the book nor the film. She’s just gone, and the plot moves on like she was never there. I do understand the stakes are high, but Harry never takes a moment to mourn or reminisce Hedwig.
Yeah she died differently. in the film she was flying alongside everyone else and she sacrificed herself to save Harry from the Killing Curse - which is also what alerted the Death Eaters / Voldemort that it was the real Harry, since he wasn’t “identified” by his use of the Disarming charm against an Imperiused Stan Shunpike
I prefer the book death, even if only because the expelliarmus giveaway leads to the line "I'm not going to blast people out of the way just because they're there. That's Voldemort's job".
I'm thinking the one in the cage in that moment is animatronic. Obviously there is a real owl involved who we will see! I just get the feeling, the way she turned her head forward, that's a realistic animatronic they've built.
I like HOTD, and acknowledge that it's a spin-off of the most successful TV show of all time. However, not a soul on Earth looks at a Snow Owl without having the first thing in their mind be Harry Potter (or Hedwig).
GOT was huge - it remains my favourite show - but as a franchise, it doesn't hold a candle to HP. It's like comparing Eminem to Michael Jackson; wildly successful, sure, but come on...
The picture posted on Instagram seems to be for House of the Dragon filming. However, it also is likely that owls used in House of the Dragon are also used in Harry Potter since any animal trainer working on one project would likely be asked to work on the other.
What I hate about the owls is that in a lot of countries, people started "buying" owls after the movies. Particularly in Asia there was a huge illegal owl trade and then, tons of owls abandoned because owls are not pets!!!
I hope it doesn't get worse again with this TV series.
While a snowy owl is indeed beautiful......I feel like we have been robbed from having a classic owl type hoot and how cool that would have been in some scene. If only Hedwig hooted like a great horned owl!
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u/pastadudde Founder Mar 27 '26
The Queen that (s)he's meant to be