Jon Snow is going to Hogwarts: Kit Harington takes the role Nicholas Hoult held for less than 2 weeks
The Night's Watch oath says nothing about Defense Against the Dark Arts, and yet here we are: Kit Harington, 39, professional brooder and the most famous bastard of Winterfell, has been cast in HBO's Harry Potter series. Season 2. Gilderoy Lockhart. Yes, *that* Lockhart — the fraudulent, hair-flipping, self-adoring celebrity wizard Kenneth Branagh played in 2002, a man who never met a mirror he didn't fall for.
Jon Snow, who famously knew nothing, will now play a man who claims to know everything. The range!
The 13-day professor
The chaotic part: this role was already cast. Nicholas Hoult was announced as Lockhart on August 11 — and by August 24 he was out, a tenure of thirteen days, which is short even by Hogwarts DADA-professor standards, and those people get cursed. Per the official announcement, "Kit Harington will be stepping into the role of Gilderoy Lockhart" after a scheduling reshuffle — Hoult is busy being Lex Luthor in the Man of Tomorrow sequel, and the production calendars simply refused to get along.
Thirteen days. There are gym memberships that lasted longer. There are situationships that lasted longer.
He's not even pretending to be chill about it
And look — Harington is not doing the detached-actor bit. "To be offered to play him is a real dream," he said, calling himself a lifelong Potter obsessive and Lockhart one of his favorite characters. He's also already played him once: Harington voiced Lockhart in Audible's full-cast Potter audiobooks last year, so technically this is a promotion from radio wizard to television wizard.
A Potter superfan, cast as the wizarding world's biggest fraud, on the network where he spent a decade dying in the snow. Somewhere a casting director is taking a very smug sip of coffee.
Where this all lands
The receipts, for your group chat:
- Season 1 (Philosopher's Stone) premieres on HBO and HBO Max this December 25 — a Christmas release, because subtlety is dead.
- Season 2 (Chamber of Secrets), with Harington's Lockhart, starts filming this fall.
- The adult faculty is stacked: John Lithgow as Dumbledore, Janet McTeer as McGonagall, Paapa Essiedu as Snape, Nick Frost as Hagrid.
- Hoult, for his part, exits with zero drama and a Superman franchise to console him. He'll live.
Winter came, winter went, and now the King in the North is going to assign his own autobiography as required reading. Honestly? Perfect casting. Ten points to whoever thought of it.
