Nicholas Hoult has achieved something genuinely impressive.
He has managed to become Defence Against the Dark Arts professor and leave the job before teaching a single lesson.
HBO announced earlier this month that Hoult would play Gilderoy Lockhart in Season 2 of its enormous new Harry Potter television series.
Excellent casting.
Everybody updated their articles.
Fan accounts produced approximately 11,000 photoshops.
Then, just 12 days later, television's most suspiciously cursed teaching vacancy struck again.
Hoult is out.
And HBO has turned to a man who already knows quite a lot about enormous fantasy franchises, grim castles and spending several years surrounded by people wearing cloaks:
Kit Harington.
Yes.
Jon Snow is going to Hogwarts.
And for perhaps the first time in his career, he will be playing a character whose primary concern is whether everybody is looking at him.
NICHOLAS HOULT'S GLORIOUS 12-DAY CAREER AT HOGWARTS
Hoult's casting was reported on 12 August.
He was due to join Season 2 as Lockhart, the spectacularly vain celebrity author who becomes Harry's Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher during Chamber of Secrets.
Then Monday happened.
Reports from Variety and Deadline confirmed that Hoult had left because of scheduling conflicts, with Kit Harington immediately stepping into the role.
Hoult reportedly has other major commitments, including returning as Lex Luthor in the upcoming Superman sequel Man of Tomorrow.
Which means the poor bloke has essentially had to choose between:
Being a bald evil billionaire trying to destroy Superman
and
being a blond fraudulent wizard trying to sell books to schoolchildren.
That's range.
Still, 12 days is an extraordinarily efficient Hogwarts career.
Most Defence Against the Dark Arts teachers at least have to wait until June before something catastrophic happens to them.
Hoult didn't even make it to the stationery cupboard.
ENTER JON SNOW
Harington is obviously best known for spending the better part of a decade playing Jon Snow in Game of Thrones.
Jon Snow wore black.
Jon Snow brooded.
Jon Snow stared dramatically into the middle distance.
Jon Snow had roughly the same relationship with personal publicity that most people have with dental surgery.
Gilderoy Lockhart could not be more different if HBO had deliberately constructed him in a laboratory.
Lockhart adores fame.
He writes books about himself.
He distributes photographs of himself.
He boasts constantly about his achievements.
He has won Witch Weekly's Most-Charming-Smile Award five times and regards this as information everybody desperately needs.
His favourite topic is Gilderoy Lockhart.
His second-favourite topic is also Gilderoy Lockhart.
If Instagram existed at Hogwarts, the man's screen-time report would require its own owl.
So after years of watching Harington portray a reluctant hero who looked deeply uncomfortable whenever anybody mentioned leadership, HBO has apparently decided:
Make him blond and give him a publicity department.
Frankly, we're interested.
THE REALLY WEIRD BIT: HE'S ALREADY BEEN LOCKHART
Here's where the casting becomes much more interesting than simply grabbing another famous British actor.
Kit Harington has already played Gilderoy Lockhart.
Not on screen.
In the recent Harry Potter: The Full-Cast Audio Editions, Harington provided Lockhart's voice.
That cast also includes names including Hugh Laurie, Matthew Macfadyen, Keira Knightley, Riz Ahmed, Simon Pegg and Bill Nighy.
So HBO hasn't simply hired Jon Snow.
It has effectively promoted Audio Lockhart to Physical Lockhart.
Harington previously described taking the audiobook role as a very easy decision because of how entertaining the character is to play.
And you can see why.
After years of fictional responsibility involving armies, death, ice zombies and the potential destruction of civilisation, spending several episodes worrying about whether your hair looks sufficiently magnificent must feel like annual leave.
LOCKHART IS BASICALLY AN INFLUENCER WITH A WAND
For anybody who somehow escaped Harry Potter the first time around, Gilderoy Lockhart enters the story in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
He is enormously famous.
He has written successful books detailing his apparently heroic encounters with dangerous magical creatures.
He is handsome.
He is charming.
He has fantastic hair.
There is, unfortunately, a slight problem.
Most of it is complete bollocks.
Lockhart's heroic adventures were actually performed by other witches and wizards. His genuine speciality was tracking these people down, stealing their stories and modifying their memories so they couldn't expose him.
Essentially he built an entire celebrity career by nicking other people's content and making sure the original creators couldn't complain.
So, naturally, he'd be enormous on social media.
The Hogwarts authorities nevertheless decide that this man should teach children how to defend themselves against dark magic.
Educational recruitment apparently wasn't great that year.
Kenneth Branagh played Lockhart in the 2002 film adaptation, turning him into one of the franchise's most wonderfully irritating characters.
Now Harington gets his own attempt.
And we desperately hope HBO understands that the entire performance lives or dies on one thing:
the hair.
THERE MUST BE BLOND
Harington's dark curls became nearly as recognisable as Jon Snow himself.
Lockhart, however, belongs firmly in another follicular universe.
The character is famously blond, polished and immaculate.
There should be volume.
There should be product.
There should be enough movement to make a shampoo advert nervous.
The transformation alone has enormous meme potential.
Take one of television's most famous brooding brunettes.
Apply peroxide.
Add robes.
Hand him several books with his own face on the cover.
Tell him to smile like somebody has just announced a mirror shortage.
Done.
Gilderoy Lockhart.
THE HARRY POTTER MACHINE IS ALREADY MOVING FAST
The remarkable part is that Season 1 hasn't even aired yet.
HBO's first season, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, is due to premiere at Christmas 2026.
The company has already renewed the programme for a second season based on Chamber of Secrets, with production expected to begin this autumn.
The main cast includes Dominic McLaughlin as Harry, Arabella Stanton as Hermione and Alastair Stout as Ron, alongside John Lithgow as Dumbledore, Janet McTeer as McGonagall, Paapa Essiedu as Snape and Nick Frost as Hagrid.
So HBO isn't exactly dipping one cautious toe into Hogwarts.
It has cannonballed into the lake and started ordering furniture for Year Two.
That production overlap also helps explain why scheduling matters so much.
This isn't a film appearing every two or three years.
HBO is attempting to adapt seven enormous books across multiple seasons while its young cast members continue doing the inconvenient business of growing up in real time.
When somebody's diary no longer fits, there isn't much opportunity to wait around.
Hence Nicholas Hoult becoming perhaps the first celebrity in history to have promotional articles announcing his Hogwarts appointment still circulating while somebody else has already taken the job.
ONE CURSED JOB VACANCY
There is something particularly appropriate about all this happening to the Defence Against the Dark Arts role.
Within the books, the position becomes notorious because nobody lasts longer than a year.
Quirrell?
Bad ending.
Lockhart?
Bad ending.
Lupin?
Gone.
Moody?
Complicated.
Umbridge?
Let's not.
By the time Harry leaves Hogwarts, the recruitment advert presumably reads:
DEFENCE AGAINST THE DARK ARTS TEACHER REQUIRED
Competitive salary.
Excellent castle views.
Free meals.
Life insurance strongly recommended.
HBO has now managed to start the curse before the second season has even entered production.
Nicholas Hoult lasted 12 days.
Technically, that's worse than Lockhart.
BUT HARINGTON ACTUALLY MAKES A LOT OF SENSE
Underneath the obvious Jon Snow jokes, this is potentially very smart casting.
Harington can do comedy.
He understands enormous genre productions.
He already knows the character.
And there is something inherently funny about taking an actor strongly associated with grim sincerity and asking him to portray the most magnificently unserious man in the building.
Lockhart needs somebody capable of playing confidence without competence.
Charm without self-awareness.
A man so overwhelmingly pleased with himself that even his own reflection occasionally needs some space.
Harington has spent years trying to escape being permanently identified with Jon Snow.
If nothing else, platinum-blond hair, outrageous robes and five Most-Charming-Smile Awards should help.
And after nearly a decade hearing:
“You know nothing, Jon Snow.”
he finally gets to play a man whose entire personality is:
“Actually, I know absolutely everything. Have you bought my book?”
Now that's character development.
