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Even without much movement from the franchise lately, the Wizarding World of Harry Potter is a juggernaut of a thing–we know all about the boy wizard either from reading the books or from watching all the Harry Potter movies in order when they were released, or both. And at this point, it’s just too massive of a piece of our recent pop culture to go away any time soon, and even if we tried to forget about it, author JK Rowling’s incendiary and problematic commentaries would constantly bring it back up anyway. But it’s a moot point–like DC, Marvel, and Star Wars, the Harry Potter franchise is probably going to be a part of our lives for the duration.
The Wizarding World imagines an alternate version of our own world that’s full of magical folks hiding in plain sight. As a generational saga, it explores a fascinating story primarily from the perspective of a child who’s having to process, while he comes of age, that he’s the beginning of the end of a very long drama that had been going for decades before he was born. Harry and his pals, Ron and Hermione, have to deal with some extraordinary situations all while the adults in their lives repeatedly use them as pawns in that greater wizard conflict–something the kids become increasingly aware of as they grow up. Each of the seven books tells the story of one school year at the magical academy of Hogwarts, from when Harry is 11 until he’s 18.
The screen version of the Harry Potter franchise is in the midst of a lull at the moment as the planned five-film Fantastic Beasts spin-off series is in limbo after three movies–the only further plans for any on-screen Wizarding World fun right now is the upcoming HBO series that will re-adapt the main book series. But that series is still in the early stages of development and could be several years away.
For now, then, we’re left with the mainline Harry Potter flicks and the Fantastic Beasts series as our only screen adaptations of this beloved franchise. So let’s take a look at each of these films, in the order in which they were released, and with all the info you need on where to find and stream each of them.
