Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stoneis charming, whimsical, and arguably the only installment of the series that genuinely boasts childlike wonder as opposed to the far darker and more sinister tones ofThe Chamber of SecretsandThe Prisoner of Azkaban. Still,Harry Potterwas able to flourish and improve with ageon its side—a luxury infrequently granted to a lot of high-profile IPs, especially nowadays when a single movie or show’s season not performing perfectly could ruin its chances of franchise potential. If there’s any proof in the pudding thatHarry Potterremains massively popular, it’sHogwarts Legacy.
Star Warsis another example of a franchise IP that has monopolized the industry, though how it has chosen to structure its storytelling has been interesting, to say the least. By compartmentalizing itself into generational trilogies,Star Warssullies its potential to extract other meaningful stories from those time periods without spin-offs scalping mainline entries for nostalgia bait and popular iconography.Harry Potterevaded this three-act entrapment by centering installments around each of the Boy Who Lived’s school years at Hogwarts, and it’d be fascinating to seeHogwarts Legacydo something similar.
How Trilogies Fall Victim to Lazy or Rushed Storytelling
Trilogies are not inherently a poor way to tell branching stories across multiple installments, but despite their popularity they can be lackluster if the storytelling within them isn’t developed well. Many elements or arcs can feel rushed by the end, for example, and the whole premise of a trilogy is reductive as it infers that a lot of loose threads should be knotted or addressed in the span of three installments, which may not be enough time for every character or event to reach a satisfying conclusion. On the other hand, a trilogy might be the perfect amount of time with which to tell a story; it’s context-dependent and not an end-all-be-all solution.
TheFantastic Beastsspin-off seriesdoes, in fact, package itself as a trilogy, and it stands to reason that it was received disastrously in comparison to the ordinaryHarry Pottermovie franchise.Fantastic Beastseven draws some intriguing parallels toStar Wars’ sequel trilogy—both having promising and revitalizing beginnings (and Where to Find ThemandThe Force Awakensrespectively), while their respective sequels were comparably divisive.
Hogwarts Legacy Can’t Sell Itself Shorter Than Harry Potter
BecauseHogwarts Legacyfollows a custom protagonist, it seems likely that a sequel to it would feature someone else entirely so it doesn’t need to canonically establish who they are, and as an anthology piece it would have sustained longevity. However, trilogies may be more practical from a game design standpoint considering how long it takes to produce even a single AAA game nowadays, and even then AAA franchises such asGod of Warare trimming blockbuster sagas down to two games in order to account for that colossal resource and time sink.
Withreports thatHogwarts Legacy’s follow-up will make efforts to tie into HBO’s upcomingHarry Potterseries, though, there’s already a decent likelihood that multiple sequels could be in the pipeline and potentially release alongside subsequent seasons of the show.
It would be disappointing ifHogwarts Legacydidn’t continue its original tale with a setting far removed from the influence of Harry Potter’s exploits, but tyingHogwarts Legacy’s sequel into the HBO show would be marginally better than restricting itself to a trilogy so long as it meansHogwarts Legacyhas as many entries as it needs to tell whatever stories it wants to tell.Hogwarts Legacycan be a gold mine if Avalanche and Warner Bros. handle it with care, and a trilogy isn’t necessarily the best way to ensure that as many trilogies in the past have demonstrated.
