> Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Man... there is way too much deus ex machina at every plot point of that book to give it any credit. If you have the end of the 6th book as a starting point and the end of series that Rowling had in mind as an end, then Deathly Hallows is just connecting those two points using plot conveniences at every single opportunity. Too many fortunate coincidences in a very short period of time. (Half-Blood Prince is still peak Harry Potter IMO).

How is there too much deus ex machina? You threw out that label and never mentioned a single plot point to substantiate your claim.

I believe there's very little deus ex machina. The main point is that Voldemort delved too greedily into dark magic, weakening himself very much, while Lily's love magic was pure and protected her son against Voldemort's evil magic. This is why Harry can see into his mind and why he manages amazing feats like Gringotts or escape at Godric's Hollow, because Voldemort's hubris handed Harry the tools. It's all explained in the chapter "King's Cross", re-read that chapter and you'll gain fresh clarity.

JKR does introduce new concepts and history unknown previously to Harry, but name a book she doesn't do that. She'd be raked over the coals if she didn't offer anything new in one of her longest of the seven books. She needed the Deathly Hallows as a new mystery, a new suspense that creates tension throughout the book, pulling you onwards and competing for the horcruxes. It also highlights Harry's temptation to attain that which Dumbledore sought, but ultimately Harry chose the wiser path than Albus.

The other new concept was wand lore, which was not very fleshed out before DH. I don't love that wand lore dictated the final duel so heavily, why does Harry have to win based on overpowering a 3rd wizard, the wand truly knows that? Why not just have Harry's courageous, love-inspired magic overcome Voldemorts? It's kind of a letdown that Harry beats Voldy because he took 3 wands from Draco's hand...

Other than these two concepts, I don't see anything new and cheap like a deus ex machina. That term would literally mean that Harry is defeated by Voldemort in the end (he never was), only to be saved by a God at the last minute (he never was). Harry won on his and his allies' courage, and Voldemort lost due to his own hubris and his own determination to focus on wands and to tell all his servants not to kill Harry.

From wikipedia:

> Deus ex machina is a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem in a story is suddenly and abruptly resolved by an unexpected and unlikely occurrence.

Examples from Deathly Hallows.

Having no idea how to proceed on your quest of finding and destroying Horcruxes? The only soul who was there with Voldemort when the locket was planted, happens also to be magically bound to Harry and have obligation to obey Harry's every command.

Need to impersonate someone? Just pick a hair off your cloak for the potion.

Don't know where the next horcrux is? Immediate vision from Voldemort's mind to help you.

A character who has crucial information is killed? Well no, instead of using a spell like any other time, Voldemort decides to leave Snape to slowly die giving him just enough time to share his memories with Harry.

Need to check if your mortal enemy is really dead? Don't verify yourself but send the only person in the group who has any incentive to lie to you about it. (And you're supposed to be able to magically tell when people are lying by the way).

The way to destroy a horcrux is hidden in a place accessible only to those who speak parseltongue? Nope, Ron can just guess his way into an ability that was previously established to be hereditary or transfered through magic.

I could go on... the point isn't any single one of these, it's more about how they accumulate throughout the book.

I think a key property of a deus ex machina is the abruptness of the occurrence. In vulgar Latin...an asspull. A lot of these examples had years of set-up or serve a narrative purpose.

- Yeah finding the locket was a bit too serendipitous but Kreacher has been shown before to obey Harry _contemptuously_. When asked to report on Draco's activities in HBP, he reports the most mundane things, making his report essentially useless without breaking his obligation. He only finally cooperated when Harry looked at him as a creature with feelings, not just a servant. Ties back to when he asked Dobby to sit down in CoS, which sends the elf wailing at the decency.

- Polyjuice has been established since CoS, along with the cost of using/making it and its limits. Hardly sudden and hardly an unfair advantage.

- Did a Voldyvision ever lead Harry directly to a Horcrux? I don't remember so. The closest I recall is Harry willingly slipping into this trance to verify Voldemort's anger at discovering the loss of the locket---not a huge advantage and a reasonable tactical move. The diadem, Harry had to rack his brains for that, even empathize with a ghost.

- Voldemort couldn't Avada Kedavra Snape because he believes Snape is the Elder Wand's master.

- Snape lied to Voldemort to the very end, his legillimency is not infallible. Sending Narcissa Malfoy is a bit of good luck, I'll grant, though it also emphasizes how one of Voldemort's weaknesses is his inability or plain refusal to read people. He failed to see that Snape loved Lily so, which caused him to turn for the good, and he failed to see how much Narcissa cared for her son---he didn't consider she'd have a reason to lie to him.

- Ron "speaking" Parseltongue as a plot turn feels a bit rushed and unsatisfying indeed but is not at all miraculous. I can say "Spasibo" to thank my Russian coworkers even if I'm not Russian and hardly has training in Russian.

I'd say a big thing is how old you are when reading HP. I loved all the books and loved the ending. Over time I started reading Asimov and Vinge and became repulsed by the quality of the whole HP story. One lucky boy doing dumb things and getting away with it, all happening in a world where magic is done in the worst balance between mystic and explained. If I recall correctly, they tried to make the most sense of the Snape's magic spells. Compare the nonsense to the way a young man of 16 years imagined magic in Eragon where I really liked how he tried to keep as much consistency with energy cost and implications. Harry Potter really is just mostly for kids

For a counterexampel, my personal experience is pretty different. I had read almost every one[1] of Asimov's novels and short stories by the time Deathly Hallows came out when I was 16, and I was still a big enough fan of Harry Potter to finish each book the day it came out.

To this day i'm pretty confident I could pick up a Harry Potter book and enjoy it. There are different types of storytelling, and not every kind has to have balanced stakes or world-building that stands up to scrutiny. And it's not like Asimov's work doesn't have similar flaws: as much as I love the scope of the Foundation series, it does settle into a bit of a pattern of setting up seemingly insurmountable challenges and then resolving them through neat changes to the rules of engagement of psychohistory (though as a much more ambitious series than HP, it's more understandable).

[1] Literally; I was ravenous

True. I was around 9 when I got into HP and 15 when the last book came out so it hit me right at the appropriate age where the books get slightly more serious as you grow up but you're still a kid who is into the book universe. The lore or some of the overarching plot points don't make too much sense when looking at them with adult eyes but you still have to give Rowling credit for writing books that are just difficult to put down for someone at the right age.

Yeah, Eragon did get the "magic world" right in its fantasy series. But then it lost track of the story in its reams of pages ...

The almost carbon copy of Star Wars to Eragon really changed my perception of the series.

Yeah, but the Eragon stories were just one boy's quest to minmax himself.

Couldn’t agree more. I wish I hadn’t read it. HBP was the peak. In DH they just run around the woods for a while. I was extremely disappointed with DH.

"They just run around the woods for a while."

I'm sorry, that's plain incorrect. First, they're at Privet Drive, then the Burrow, then Grimmauld Place, then they camp for a few weeks-months but it's highly condensed plot-wise. They don't "run around the woods" at any point, that silly chase scene with the snatchers is onlyin the film.

Why do they hide? Because there is ZERO safe-space in the rest of the UK. They are forced into hiding to maintain their safety until such time as the horcruxes are gone and battle can commence. How is that much different from Frodo and Sam wandering the wilds alone at the last 2 LotR books? In HP, they are in society and non-wilderness far more than Frodo and Sam. And then they do a lot of epic shit at the end that has nothing to do with the woods.

Re-read the book, the woods part is a very small aspect.

I have read it many times.

Why was the book centered around a children’s story that we didn’t hear about until book 7? Why were the deathly hollows items not mentioned at all throughout the entire rest of the series? Why do we not find out until the last book that the invisibility cloak should have faded a long time ago? That last point especially irritates me because it just smells like lazy writing.

I love Harry Potter. I have read the series many many times. I sincerely wish I had never read the last book. It felt rushed, unplanned, and almost desperate.

There is a fluid cohesion between books 1-6 that completely disappears in book 7.

JKR didn't fully flesh out her universe at the start. She had feature creep just like any app, she added tons of spells and stories and characters and enriched the world book by book.

While HP:DH does have a "summary" vibe, going back to all the old places and seeing all the old characters' plots wrapped up nicely, I do think she needed SOME new material in there. She needed to create new tension, she needed new suspense; simply wrapping up things she'd already devised wouldn't have been fresh enough for her, or for us, I think.

If I had to change just two things about DH, I think I'd remove the epilogue (it could just be an online essay, there's no need to put a second bow on top of the present, you know?) and I'd remove wand lore. The idea that your wand changes allegiance whenever someone bests you in any way, physical or magical? Come on, that is borderline plot manipulation. Now, Harry wins the fight at the end because Voldemort's wand knew that Harry's hands pulled some wands out of Draco's hand, who in turn disarmed a Dumbledore who wasn't trying to not be disarmed? I mean, ugh, wand lore was a sort of hand-wavey MEH aspect, IMO.

I think Book 6 and Book 3 are the pinnacles...they don't feature battles with Lord Voldemort, they're nicely self-contained, they have fantastic endings, I'm getting chills thinking of them.

To be fair Frodo and Sam wandering alone was a low point of the LotR series for me as well. I do remember starting to skim when we got into the interminable sequence of "and they're still climbing the mountain". Like, I get it's a struggle but 800+ pages in and it's not going to get any realer for me sitting in a comfortable chair (or on an airplane as I was) then it already was.

Honestly, Frodo and Sam in the woods was also the least enjoyable part of lord of the rings for me.

Well, ok, second most if we're going by the books, there was the two chapters of bombadil

BTW, why didn't they leave the country? Really weird that with the wide world open to them they decided to stick around the UK.

Because the whole series depicts the UK as the center of the world, a continuation of the pre war Pax Brittanica.

Little, if any, mention is made of wizards/witches from other countries unless absolutely required, and none are portrayed as being equal to the one based in England. There is not even a mention of Ministries of Magic of other nations (China?) or in former colonies (US? India?).

My biggest frustration with Harry Potter is that Harry never has to actually make tough decisions. All moral dilemmas are resolved by a deus ex. He never even has to murder the villain, just deflects his spell back at him. My eyes rolled straight to the back of my head.

The books deliver a fantastical, childish view of morality where the world will always save you from having to make difficult decisions.

> The books deliver a fantastical, childish view of morality

Almost like they were written for children...

Plenty of young adult books, which is what Harry Potter was, especially after the first book, engage with difficult moral situations. Harry Potter instead tells you that you can have your cake and eat it too.

I mean, it's a book about magic... what do you expect?

Brian Sanderson (and others) have written plenty of magic-filled books with more interesting endings. If you want a 'hard magic' system, the one in the Mistborn series is pretty interesting (ingesting and 'burning' particular metals for particular abilities):

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistborn

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Sanderson

'Booktuber' Merphy Napier recently did two videos on magic systems in fantasy novels:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcMQk4ltJa0

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nd6f3tAOUHk

Brandon Sanderson*

Sanderson has lectures on a system of rules for magic in books to balance their coolness against deus ex machina: https://stormlightarchive.fandom.com/wiki/Sanderson%27s_Laws...

That's not an excuse for sloppy writing though. Even a book about magic needs a level of consistency within its own universe and when the quality is above a certain level, I'm prepared to suspend disbelief and go along with the story and not nitpick.

It's also a children's book that evolved in a book for young adults. I always thought it was supposed to be whimsical and fun, not have serious complicated plots

It isn't really a true finale in the same way as those two examples, but I would throw out Infinity War and End Game as a joint example. The Marvel Cinematic Universe was able to successfully put a capstone on a cinematic project on the scale that had never even been attempted before. It was impressive enough to end a single story like Harry Potter in a satisfying way. The MCU was able to do the same for a wide variety of stories, dozens of characters, and over twenty movies.

Also it doesn't hurt the MCU's legacy that there is the obvious comparison with Game of Thrones that magnificently failed a very similar task the exact weekend that End Game came out.

It's really incredible just how well Endgame stuck the landing, but the whole MCU is impressive. Even the worst films of the MCU are still totally watchable, just forgettable. And comic movies are really easy to get wrong, that same decade of MCU movies overlapped with both Andrew Garfield Spiderman movies, and a smattering of forgettable or outright bad DC comics movies.

That Rise of Skywalker and the final season of Game of Thrones came out in the same year helps to contrast how much most things don't stick the landing.

I really liked Infinity War and have re-watched it a couple of times.

I watched End Game in the theatre and have not seen it again since. I really didn't enjoy the whole "goofy time travel" aspect, and re-visiting all the prior movies/events.

> I really didn't enjoy the whole "goofy time travel" aspect, and re-visiting all the prior movies/events.

It is certainly more comic-booky than some of the other MCU movies and the acceptance of that will vary from person to person. It also isn't a completely unique concept. They basically stole it from Back To The Future 2 which was also a big hit.

I'll call out Silicon Valley as having a great finale too. I still watch the final documentary every now and then. one of the greatest satires I will probably ever see.

True, silicon valley had a great finale but kinda rushed.

It probably felt rushed because of the rinse/repeat of all preceding seasons (group experiences success only to have it dissolve before their very eyes)

I would add Lord of The Rings, but it turns out that industrious old prof turned the whole trilogy out in one shot. It was his publisher who released it in stages. Interestingly he had a hard time convincing someone to print it at all:

> A dispute with his publisher, George Allen & Unwin, led to his offering the work to William Collins in 1950. Tolkien intended The Silmarillion (itself largely unrevised at this point) to be published along with The Lord of the Rings, but Allen & Unwin were unwilling to do this. After Milton Waldman, his contact at Collins, expressed the belief that The Lord of the Rings itself "urgently wanted cutting", Tolkien eventually demanded that they publish the book in 1952. Collins did not; and so Tolkien wrote to Allen and Unwin, saying, "I would gladly consider the publication of any part of the stuff", fearing his work would never see the light of day.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings#Receptio...

Mr. Robot's entire final season. Especially the last half.

It really was incredible, especially after watching Game of Thrones and seeing how that ending turned out. Episode 8 of season 4 was briefly at the top of IMDb, and it was an amazing revelatory episode.

First half of the final season was great, but the writing in the last half felt rushed and at times cheap. It ended up being predictable, where the rest of the show was the complete opposite. They had the ability to write better, first half of that season and prior seasons proved this, but came off as if they were trying to wrap it up too quickly and finalize the loose ends :/

As I understand they intended to have 5 seasons but condensed it to 4.

I agree the last season felt rushed but overall I felt the whole course of the show was more cohesive than most series.

I'm largely with you on HP. Most impressive was how JKR was able to keep Snape's loyal/evil question unresolved to the very end and still come up with a plausible explanation for it all. Rereading the whole series shows little hints along the way. It was deftly done.

It was a great time, having midnight release parties for a book!

> in general, what separates the best tv shows from great tv shows - is that they are able to have a good ending.

"Dexter" has made this painfully clear.

Ugh. I loved the premise of that show and the first two-ish seasons. There were a few more decent seasons in there, but I don't remember which ones. The final season was embarrassing, though.

Have you heard they've returned to do another season?

https://news.sky.com/story/dexter-one-of-tvs-best-known-seri...

I have not. Wow. I don't even know what to think of this...

I thought that the Homeland series finale was in the same class. After a meandering few middle seasons, the last one was surprisingly satisfying.

well i gave up on homeland during the meandering middle seasons, i'll have to pick it back up now.

The Mandalorian Season 2 Last Episode: the best ending to a season finale ever! Totally lived up to the Hype!

Futurama also had a fantastic ending.

I agree. (Edit: to add to this, I've always thought that the third-last episode of Futurama, 'Murder on the Planet Express', was a return to form and reminiscent of the heyday of the show).

On the subject of tv shows, ‘Peep Show’, the British sitcom, also had a very strong final season and final episode.

Yes, they tried to end the show a couple of times but the last-last episode is lovely.

Or four

Ozymandias it is, it wil live up to me for decades, such a good script.

> Breaking Bad last season

I actually thought BB went downhill and quit mid-way through the last season, but I understand I'm in the minority.

I'm with ya. While season 5 had some phenomenal individual scenes (like "tread lightly"), it didn't land with me as a whole in the way the earlier seasons did. The finale of season 4 is to me, with the haunting "I won" line, is the ultimate ending in my mind.

100% The first four seasons were great, with a ton of character development. The last season was incredibly rushed, and felt like they went from $0 to $millions overnight, and then introduced (annoying) characters and fell into quick traps. It was super frustrating to me.

Real tv fans have come to accept that the last season of The Wire and the last episode of Breaking Bad are pretty blah. We just shake our head and move on.

Surprised to see Harry Potter discussion on HN. I thought it is a book series for Kids and Teens. Do Adults (30+ age) find it interesting too?

2007 was thirteen years ago, Gordon. Have the Men in Black stolen time from you again?

Someone who was a teenager when it came out could easily be in their thirties now. So could someone who started in on the series when they were a kid, and kept up with it as they grew.

I have learnt many lessons from Harry Potter and consider them real. The beautiful scene of Death and the Three Brothers [1][2] has so much to teach us.

[1]https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Death_(The_Tale_of_the_T...

[2]https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/The_Tale_of_the_Three_Br...

Well. I was 10-12 when Harry Potter was released and it’s been 20 or so years...