UPDATE: The Black Snape replies have spilled into a full-blown meme wave — the memes have taken over X, from Adam Driver fan-casts to “I’m Black Snape” parodies within hours of the teaser dropping.
HBO dropped the second teaser trailer for Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone on Wednesday, and this one gives fans a more of Paapa Essiedu’s Severus Snape, including the character’s first dialogue.
“Let’s hope you show some talent on the Quidditch pitch, Potter,” Snape tells Harry (Dominic McLaughlin) in the new footage, which also shows the Sorting Ceremony, the start-of-term feast in the Great Hall, Quidditch, the invisibility cloak, and extended looks at John Lithgow’s Dumbledore.
The first teaser only flashed Snape for a moment. This one puts him on screen and lets him talk.
Then J.K. Rowling posted it to her 13.7 million followers on X, and the replies came in.
Rowling’s Replies Are All About Snape
Rowling shared the trailer with three emojis: a heart, an owl, and a lightning bolt. The post passed 400,000 views and 20,000 likes within hours, and the 800-plus replies are dominated by one topic.
“Black Snape. Not gonna watch it,” posted @ExMarisss.
“Still not too late to cast a proper Snape,” wrote @AnonPlzX. “Black Snape ruins all immersion of this series. It will be impossible to ignore in the latter seasons, and you know more race swaps are coming. No point getting invested. I won’t be watching unless changes are made.”
“I will support everything Harry Potter forever EXCEPT THIS,” said @scorpiosoka. “I’m sorry, I can’t deal with black Snape. studios need to learn they will lose money & viewers when they blatantly disrespect source material.”
“I’m a massive Potter fan but the casting for Snape pretty much ruins this series for me,” posted @StonehengeStan. “Snape being white is as relevant to the character as Kingsley being black. There was really no need to change anything. Something tells me a white man would never be cast as Kingsley though.”
Even the positive replies come with the same reservations.
“90% Looked great. Shame about Snape, really makes you groan,” wrote @EbanSmith907, while @AyoKnight1 posted, “All perfect, but black Snape though.. I love the new kids. Hope they dont turn out idiots like the old ones.”
One of the most-liked replies goes at Rowling directly, pairing photos of book pages — “Snape’s pale face,” “sallow skin had gone the colour of sour milk,” and “marble white” underlined in red — with this: “I’m quite surprised you support a project which so much destroys what you wrote. You are legendary and so are your books, and this series will ruin them.”
The meme wave that hit the first teaser is back, too: an AI image of Adam Driver as Snape captioned “Could have had the best casting of Snape right here. Oh well, into the trash it goes,” an “I’m Black Snape” parody music video, and a recut of the “You’ve got your mother’s eyes” scene with a cruder punchline about Harry’s mom.
The YouTube Numbers Flipped From March
On YouTube, the new teaser is running 72,000 likes to 16,000 dislikes on 1.5 million views.
The first teaser was buried in downvotes almost immediately, hitting 241,000 dislikes in its first 12 days, and it now sits at 373,000 dislikes on more than 14 million views.
Essiedu’s casting has drawn backlash since it was first announced, with fans pointing to the books repeatedly describing Snape as pale-skinned. Giving him actual screen time and a line of dialogue put it right back in front of everyone.
The eight-episode first season premieres this Christmas on HBO Max. Season 2, adapting Chamber of Secrets, is already ordered and starts filming this fall, with Kit Harington stepping in as Gilderoy Lockhart following Nicholas Hoult’s exit.
Watch the trailer:
