4 Signs J.K. Rowling Is the Next George Lucas

Similarly, Rowling is the sole locus of information about the Harry Potter universe. It literally exists entirely in her head, so her word is law. She also knows she can always stay in the news by revealing some trivial bit of information about the characters or plot that wasn't in the books or films because fans will gobble it up like pumpkin pasties, but these revelations sometimes carry severe consequences for the story long after it has ended.

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"Wizochoc is people!"

Her most significant retcon happened all the way back in 2007, when she announced that Dumbledore was gay. She certainly must have had noble intentions, making a beloved character part of a community that still faces a lot of discrimination, but it demonstrated her willingness to irrevocably alter the context of the story after the fact just for funsies. And when grilled by fans, Rowling will toss out tidbits on what everybody from the Dementors to the house elves are up to nowadays. More recently, Rowling decided that she'd made a grave mistake pairing Harry and Hermione with ginger members of the Weasley family instead of each other. It seems to be only a matter of time before we find ourselves in a "Snape shot first" situation, because ...

Anyway, there are enough plot problems in the later Harry Potter books (as we have discussed at great length) as well as senseless, heartless deaths (Hedwig! Dobby! Why?!) that everyone around Rowling had clearly grown similarly terrified of questioning her process. Only her own eventual good sense stopped her from killing off one of her crucial main characters. She's gotten so overconfident that she can't even be bothered to remember basic details about her own universe when she's talking shit: When asked by a fan how many students were at Hogwarts, she shrugged and went, "Eh, 'bout a thousand, probs," even though there is tons of evidence that there's no way the school can handle that many students -- evidence that she herself wrote.

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"Oh, I don't read them when I finish; I just watch the movies. Reading's for nerds."

But as for Lucas, what she says goes, no matter how mouth-shittingly backwards it is, and it's bound to start fucking up the story. We might think we're safe, because the series is over, but even if she never pulls a special edition re-release on us, she's bound to keep returning again and again to the Potterverse, because ...

And since The Phantom Menace, he's barely touched a single project not affiliated with Star Wars or Indiana Jones for almost 20 years. Rowling may similarly be imprisoned by her own creation. After the record-setting sales of the Potter series, the decidedly mixed reviews and more modest sales that met her first stab at a novel for adults must have been a bitter potion to swallow. Hoping to escape the pressure, she released her next novel under a pseudonym, to even more dismaying results. During the first few months after its publication, before she was revealed to be the author, it sold only 1,500 copies. It was described by one reviewer as "good for a debut novel."

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Better cast Aguamenti 'cause you just got buuuuurned.

Maybe that's why ...

And even though she's rich enough to make all of England pretend they're centaurs for the rest of their lives, we empathize with Rowling. She's in a bind. People want to read Harry Potter books because they have rosy memories of them, but a new story couldn't possibly be as good as the originals. Voldemort is dead, and the kids have grown up and look unsettling.

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"We got a great idea for a new film: Harry's an old man, who casts income tax hexes and eats prune frogs for his wizard colon."

Instead, she's working on a stage play that will "explore the previously untold story of Harry's early years as an orphan and outcast." Sit down, Potter fans: We're getting prequels.

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On the bright side, you've already got your Jar Jar out of the way.

Manna loves to argue about Harry Potter minutiae on Twitter.