HBO's 'Harry Potter' Series Needs A Younger Dumbledore Actor For Flashbacks Actorsvaultpro

Professor Albus Dumbledore is a role that has already been shared by three actors in the Harry Potter movies, and by recasting the Hogwarts Headmaster in the upcoming TV show, HBO can rectify one of the biggest inconsistencies with how the character has been treated in live-action. Originally played by Richard Harris in the first two movies, the actor’s passing in 2002 resulted in Michael Gambon taking over as the rest of J.K. Rowling’s books were adapted for the big screen.

John Lithgow will be the latest addition to the small group of actors who have played Dumbledore, but the first non-British figure to do so. Already older than both Harris and Gambon when they made their respective Harry Potter debuts, Lithgow is expected to remain in the role of Dumbledore throughout the multi-season run that HBO has in mind. However, there has also been a far younger actor to play the Hogwarts headmaster, and although it made sense to cast him at the time, it created a strange problem that the upcoming show can now avoid.

Jude Law’s Professor Dumbledore Looked Far Too Young For the ‘Harry Potter’ Period in Which He Appeared

Warner Bros. Pictures

Harry Potter isn’t the sort of franchise to regularly use flashbacks, making them especially memorable when they’re included. One of these examples is in 2002’s Chamber of Secrets, when Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) uses Tom Riddle’s (Christian Coulson) diary to take a glimpse into the formative years of the student who would eventually become Lord Voldemort. The sequence shows Hogwarts decades before Harry’s arrival, and yet the movie makes only a token gesture to make Harris’ Dumbledore seem any younger. That being said, the divisive Fantastic Beasts movies, which served as prequels to the main films, made a more commendable effort to age down Dumbledore.

Jude Law played a younger Professor Dumblefore in 2018’s The Crimes of Grindelwald and reprised the role in 2022’s The Secrets of Dumbledore. The trilogy spans certain years in the 1920s and 1930s, so it was logical for Fantastic Beasts to choose a younger actor to play Dumbledore in the Harry Potter prequels. Unfortunately, there is a strange side effect that comes with the casting. Dumbledore’s Harry Potter flashbacks in the original movies never showed any actor other than whoever was currently playing the part. As a result, there are sequences shown in those movies that are set very close to events in the Fantastic Beasts movies, so the jump from Dumbledore looking like Law to Harris/Gambon is canonically very sudden.

For the diary scene in The Chamber of Secrets, it could be argued that Tom/Harry are remembering Dumbledore as he looks in the present day, but that excuse can’t really be utilized for other Harry Potter flashbacks that show the Hogwarts headmaster. The reality of the situation is that the Fantastic Beasts movies hadn’t yet been made. As such, there was never a plan to cast a younger version of Dumbledore, so Jude Law couldn’t have appeared in the movies as the visibly younger version of the character.

How the HBO ‘Harry Potter’ Series Can Fix This Dumbledore Inconsistency

Harry and Dumbledore in the Astronomy Tower in Half-Blood Prince (1) — Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

The Harry Potter timeline problem that casting Jude Law introduced to the movies has been heavily discussed online, so it’s likely that the relevant people at Warner Bros. are aware of the issue. Thankfully, there is a very easy fix now that the movies have already made this very specific mistake. HBO can cast a younger actor to play Dumbledore, who can stand in for John Lithgow whenever it would be logical to do so. Flashbacks would be one obvious scenario, but this dual casting would also help HBO draw upon the Fantastic Beasts-era storylines and fold them into the main story somehow, if that’s part of the roadmap.

Of course, the Harry Potter flashbacks in the movies work pretty well if the Fantastic Beasts movies are ignored. Even though Dumbledore never quite looks young enough during these flashback sequences, it should be remembered that he was over a century old in the first book alone. As such, he would still look fairly elderly even two or three decades earlier. From a filmmaking perspective, especially when dealing with fantasy storytelling, the refusal to replace Harris or Gambon for these sequences makes sense. Therefore, it wouldn’t be all too surprising if the show followed in similar footsteps and decided early on not to go down the path of subbing in a younger Dumbledore actor. Either way, a choice needs to be made early on and adhered to throughout.

A Significantly Younger Dumbledore Actor Wouldn’t Be Required Until At Least ‘Harry Potter’ Season 2

Each run of HBO’s Harry Potter show will adapt one of Rowling’s seven main Wizarding World books. So, with Season 1 bringing The Sorcerer’s Stone to the small screen, Season 2 will address The Chamber of Secrets. The first book doesn’t really include any scenes that couldn’t just use John Lithgow as Dumbledore. The prologue — which features Dumbledore — does take place around a decade before the main story begins, but that’s not enough of a time jump to leave Lithgow on the sidelines.

However, Season 2 will need to recreate the scene that shows Harry (Dominic McLaughlin) using Tom Riddle’s diary to take a look at the Hogwarts of yesteryear. The exchange between Dumbledore and Tom during this sequence is very important to the larger storyline, so it needs to be included in Season 2. Therefore, this will be the first real instance where audiences will get to see if HBO has opted to have a younger actor play Dumbledore in distant flashbacks, or whether the Harry Potter show will just roll with Lithgow throughout.