Review: "Hogwarts Legacy" only promotes a legacy of hate

It's not just about not buying the game, but not playing it at all.

As a millennial, I grew up on Harry Potter. I remember grabbing the first book from the library and devouring this magical tale of a boy wizard destined to save the world. I remember begging my uncle to drive me to pick up my pre-ordered copy of the seventh book on release day, then frantically reading the entire thing in seven hours on my grandmother’s couch.

Like many of my generation, it became a core part of my childhood. We grew up as Harry did, albeit we never received our own Hogwarts letter.

And for many of us, Harry Potter now contains bittersweet memories — partly due to J. K. Rowling and partly due to simply growing up and seeing that there was a darkness in the books that had little to do with Voldemort.

The biggest complaint about JKR is that she is transphobic and anti-feminist. This is true. All people are worthy and deserving of respect, and this is a concept that JKR tramples without thought or consideration.

But we are going to focus solely on Hogwarts Legacy, which released today, and the anti-Semitic tropes it pushes onto the audience.

The latest installment in the expansive Harry Potter franchise takes the audience to the 1890s as a fifth-year student who “holds the key to an ancient secret that threatens to tear the wizarding world apart.”

The main storyline of Hogwarts Legacy surrounds the bloody conflict known as the Goblin Rebellions, an era of wizard history where goblins rise up due to the discrimination and prejudice they suffer at the hands of human wizards. They have no goblin representation in the political body of the wizarding world, are banned from carrying wands and are forced into slavery (“because they like being slaves!”). Goblins are sometimes even brutally massacred and their cultural artifacts carted off. 

Players can either assist Ranrok, the leader of the rebellion, or stop him. Choosing the former gets them branded a Dark Wizard, which means that choosing to free goblins is on par with trying to murder innocent children. The game makes it clear that the "moral" option is to continue the goblin subjugation.

Goblins are, on their own, controversial fantasy creatures. While the term likely originated in Wales, 19th-century literature began to draw parallels between the gold-hoarding, hook-nosed creatures and Jewish people. Prior to that, goblins enjoyed centuries of not being associated with any religious or ethnic group besides that of the Folk. But anti-Semitic stereotypes of Jewish people being greedy, materialistic, hook-nosed child-nappers have been around since at least the Middle Ages, if not earlier.

Goblins in the wizarding world of Harry Potter reinforce this connection: small of stature, hook-nosed, gold-hoarding bankers for wizards across the world. It also goes into more distressing tropes: goblins are kidnapping children to use their blood for dark rituals, which reflects a long-standing conspiracy called “blood libel” that maintains Jewish people kidnap Christian children to use their blood for ritualistic purposes.

Furthermore, there are goblin artifacts that are undeniably based on real-world Jewish artifacts used for holy days, such as the shofar.

Catholics are charged with tackling oppression and injustice multiple times throughout the Bible and the Catechism. When speaking about anti-Semitism in 2018, Pope Francis said "we are responsible when we are able to respond." He continues, saying that "indifference is a virus that is dangerously contagious." 

Hogwarts Legacy promotes hateful messages swathed in magical lore and Catholics should not let themselves be indifferent. Perhaps especially when it comes to a franchise that is beloved by millions, it's more important than ever to acknowledge the real-world harm that is caused by supporting the hate-filled legacy of Hogwarts Legacy.