Warning: Spoilers for “Harry Potter and The Cursed Child” (as well as the rest of the franchise) are ahead. This is the second and final part of a review of “The Cursed Child.”

Let me start off with what I liked.

The first act was a fantastic continuation of Harry’s story and the relationship with his son, Albus. While Harry may be “The Boy Who Lived,” he isn’t “Number One Dad.” Harry struggles to be a good father for Albus. He doesn’t know how to handle the black sheep of the family. Harry never knew any real parents and any father figure he had in his life such as Sirus Black or Albus Dumbledore died right as Harry started to get close to them. Harry never learned from someone else so he has no idea how to be a good parent when his struggling son needs him to be.

This was an interesting exploration of Harry’s character and it was nice to see him presented with a challenge he had never faced before despite his amazing accomplishments.

This book also forces Harry and Draco Malfoy to work together. This was another strength of the story. They are very untrusting of each to start the book but eventually grow to overcome their distrust for the children’s sake. They eventually somewhat forgive one another and while not being friends, are definitely past bitter hate. Seeing them grow past their childhood hatred and work together reminded me of why I loved the original books so much.

Other than that, I wasn’t a fan.

Let’s start off with the story revolving around the time turner. It was a mistake for J.K. Rowling to ever create this accursed device in “The Prisoner of Azkaban” and I’m not sure who thought it’d be a good idea to bring it back.

The problem with the time turner is that it’s essentially a get out of jail free card. It takes away any stakes the story has built because the time turner literally erases any mistakes characters have made when they go back in time. It doesn’t matter how bad they screwed up as long as they can go back to the past and make everything better.

They never have to actually deal with the consequences of their decisions. Not to mention time travel always creates unnecessary plot holes in any story that it’s in. It’s not a very effective way of telling a story, especially when essential to the plot.

The reason why something like “Back to the Future” is so effective with time travel is because the movie really isn’t about time travel. It’s more of a 1950s homage movie that shows just how alike two generations can be despite the time gap. It also worked because Marty went to the past by accident and he only had one shot to fix the damage he had done and get back to 1985. The stakes were high unlike “The Cursed Child”.

The second major problem I have with the book is the villain. If a villain’s only goal is to bring a previous villain back to life, then you don’t have a strong villain. I never got the sense that Delphi herself was dangerous, intimidating or challenged the heroes in any significant way. I felt that from Voldemort in the seven books before “The Cursed Child”, but that’s because he did terrible things, had goals and a frightening personality. There was no villain in “The Cursed Child” until the last act of the book.

When she finally revealed herself, I just groaned because the book didn’t want me to be scared of her, it wanted me to be scared of Voldemort, someone whose story is already finished.

Why and how did Voldemort even have a child? He never really cared about other people or having a relationship with someone. He never expressed interest in anyone physically either. I find it hard to believe that he would even consider having sex to begin with. Even if his child was unintentional, it doesn’t fit his character. He sought power and eternal life.

His way to cheat death was through his Horcruxes, not by having offspring.

Also, when did he even have the chance to do this? Bellatrix Lestrange was never pregnant as far as we know in the original series before her death. Delphi was born in 1998 during the Harry Potter timeline, the same year where Harry defeated Voldemort for good. This doesn’t make any sense. If ‘dark magic’ is the explanation for Bellatrix’s amazingly rapid process of pregnancy and childbirth, then that’s just lazy writing.

The characters aside from Harry, Draco, Albus and Scorpius feel shallow. Ron barely does anything and has been reduced to an overly-affectionate comic relief character. Hermione makes questionable decisions that go against the brilliant witch Rowling had built in the original series (probably for plot convenience and to get the story going).

Any other new characters are hardly even mentioned and because there are two separate stories going on with the adults and Albus and Scorpius, no one character really gets a chance to shine.

It even fails at passing the torch to the new characters because even though it’s Albus’s story, it’s Harry and the original cast that has to save the day in the end. Albus makes it possible for this to happen, but that’s it.

“Harry Potter and The Cursed Child” is a book that never should’ve been made. It leaves the franchise in a shallow mess of what it used to be and leans too much on its name. The book fails to capture the magic of Harry Potter and only weakens the lore to the series.