Maria Miller

The end of an era was marked this summer with the release of the last Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2. The movie sold $168.5 million in tickets on the first weekend alone, breaking the record for the highest opening weekend sales in history. As part of an eight-film series, based off of the seven novels by J.K. Rowling, the films are the best-selling series of all time, making in sum around $6.46 billion, not to mention the books which have sold approximately 400 million copies worldwide in over 67 languages. So what makes this series so popular? Why is the entire world so engulfed in Harry Potter's?

In terms of the story, J.K. Rowling was a genius in forming a whole new universe within the realm of our reality. She conjured up a culture - pun intended - with every minute detail, further deepening the reality between pages of the magical world. She takes great care to set a tone for each location, so when we return to a setting after time, we recall memories we had there almost as Hermione and Ron would. Her explicit characterization manufactures a personality for every character, great or small, mentioned once or a thousand times in the novels, so when a name is said, we know not only who it is but what to feel about them because we remember their story from earlier in the series. This interconnectedness of the people and places within the novels makes their world as real as if it were our own.

And it's not just the people and places - it's the everyday items we don't necessarily notice. In The Sorcerer's Stone, we share wonderment with Harry as he catches a chocolate frog on the train. In The Deathly Hallows, our eyes are opened to a deeper history of the wizarding world when Hermione reads The Tales of Beetle the Bard. We even get to know the characters in the picture frames, making us feel at home when Harry, Ron and Hermione enter the Gryffindor common room. It's so magical because it's so real, and Rowling's writing submerges us into her reality so that we experience everything as first-hand as the characters, as if we were attending Hogwarts ourselves. Needless to say, we all fell in love with the world she created.

Even after the completion of the last movie, the series will go down in history as one of the top selling books and films of all time. With such relatable characters, complex plots, and excellent writing, Harry Potter will live on past the back cover and into generations to come. Mischief: Managed.