Note: This was written the night of the first previews. It's not entirely reflective of my current feelings. Mostly, the events in Orlando today have left me unable to think about Cursed Child much, but I still felt this way for the most part until this morning. Who knows how I'll feel later. I'm not even going to edit this because I can't be bothered to get back into the negative feelings in this post.
I will say that I've accidentally stumbled on one spoiler since I wrote this that I'm neutral towards (but would have rather not seen). I've also read things about fans who've read the spoilers not being happy about them, so that doesn't help anything. But I'll wait and see.
After trying to stay optimistic I grew a bit vocal about my less than enthusiastic feelings towards the upcoming Fantastic Beasts film. By now, I've talked about that more than I would have cared to, but throughout my changing feelings about the movie, I also kept saying over and over that I felt extremely optimistic about the play.
I was so thrilled and excited and happy. Just all of the positive adjectives, but then today something strange happened.
The first public previews were today, meaning that members of the public have now seen the play. Don't worry about spoilers here. While I know they're on the Internet, I haven't read any. (I did, however, see someone going on about them and saw a vague comment that still felt like it should have been under a spoiler warning, but I'll save my complaints about that for another time.)
Once the spoilers starting coming out on the Internet, I suddenly felt terrified. This was probably due, at least partially, from fear that I was going to see something that I didn't want to (and, to be fair, I nearly did), but it either started out as more than that or has morphed into more than that. While at first I felt cautious and kept thinking "Okay. Now I have to be careful online until the end of July," somewhere along the line today, I started feeling straight up terrified. It's an overreaction to be sure. One that some people would scoff that.
The thing is, I realized that we've had the ending of Harry Potter for nearly ten years. For ten years I've had the comfortable knowledge that I knew how everything ended. Now, that's over. I don't know what happens to those characters in this play. It could change everything. While I hate how disappointed I feel about Fantastic Beasts, a story about Newt Scamander can't disappoint me as much as a play about all of the characters I already love potentially could, and now that the play feels like even more of a reality, that truth is slapping me in the face.
I don't even know if I could call myself excited anymore. I'm just scared. It's entirely different from how I feel about Fantastic Beasts, which I already have specific concerns about before the movie. I don't have that with the play. I just have this feeling of fear that isn't based on anything about the play itself. It's not that I don't want this story. I'm just scared of it.
It's a strange feeling really. One that I'm not sure I've ever experienced before because I've never cared this much about a book series that was supposed to be finished only for there to be a new story years later. I guess what I'm saying is that I'm worried this will be the Go Set a Watchman of the Harry Potter universe. Not because I have any evidence saying it will be that bad but because I just have this blind fear that it will be.
So, yeah, I've been feeling a lot of things today. I'm sure my exact thoughts on the play will fluctuate as the next two months go on. Hopefully they won't change because I saw spoilers, but with how long the wait is, I wouldn't be surprised it something makes its way through to me.
We'll see.
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