Episode description

Welcome to Harry Potter Theory. Today we’re going to be discussing RETCONS- specifically, all of the RETCONS made by JK Rowling after the Harry Potter series had ended.

I should start off by making a clear distinction between what retcon USED to mean and what it means now, because somehow the term has evolved over time into something else altogether. Depending on which version of ‘Retcon’ you subscribe to, you’re going to have very different expectations for this list.

The ORIGINAL interpretation of Retcon, which stands for ‘Retroactive Continuity’, referred broadly to adding new information to previously told stories to expand or reinterpret the narrative. A good example of this would be JK Rowling revealing (through extended publications) that Witches and wizards VANISHED THEIR POOP via magic before the Hogwarts plumbing system came into effect. 

And the more commonly understood modern definition of retcon refers specifically to changes that contradict previously established facts in the narrative, whether intentional or unintentional.

The distinction here is that this interpretation places an emphasis on these new facts conflicting with existing canon.

A third definition I found online seems to support either:

‘a literary device in which facts in the world of a fictional work that have been established through the narrative itself are adjusted, ignored, supplemented, or contradicted by a subsequently published work that recontextualizes or breaks continuity with the former.’

But for the sake of today’s video, we’re going to separate them, first placing our sights on works that CONTRADICT the source material, then shifting our perspective to more recently introduced content that SUPPLEMENTS the source material (but doesn’t change it).

Starting with the former.

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