James Oconner 
Anil Krishna 
Jonathan Millar 
HBO’s Harry Potter Series Will Explore the Backstory of a Key Character, Actor Confirms
© HBO
Fans have been wondering for a while whether HBO’s adaptation would stick as closely to Harry’s point of view as the original story did, and the early footage seems to suggest otherwise. The books and movies usually stayed with Harry unless there was a good reason to follow someone else, but the series has more room to move around. We’ve already seen footage involving Hermione and Professor Dumbledore when Harry isn’t around, and now Johnny Flynn, who is playing Lucius Malfoy after taking over the role from Jason Isaacs, has hinted at the same thing happening with his character.
Lucius was never exactly a sympathetic figure in the original books or movies. He was the wealthy Malfoy family patriarch, deeply invested in pure-blood wizard supremacy and more than happy to look down on Muggles and anyone he considered beneath him. He was also manipulative and clever enough to switch sides when it suited him, making him less of a loyal follower and more of a man who was always looking out for himself.
The HBO’s Harry Potter series, though, seems interested in showing how Lucius became that person. Speaking with Radio Times, Flynn explained that Lucius was bullied when he was younger and eventually became a bully himself because he didn’t really know another way to deal with people. Flynn said that’s how he plans to approach the character, adding that the people who bullied him were abusers but were also victims at some point themselves. As he put it, “No one in this world is entirely good or entirely bad.”
It’s still unclear how much of Lucius’s past we’ll actually see. The series could show parts of his Hogwarts years through flashbacks, or Flynn could simply use that history to shape the way he plays Lucius in the present. Either way, it gives the character another layer that the original story didn’t spend much time exploring.
There are already signs that the show wants to bring the Malfoy family into the story earlier, too. Lox Pratt, who plays a young Draco Malfoy, previously revealed that viewers will see inside Malfoy Manor as early as Season 1. That could give the series more time to establish the family and, naturally, Lucius himself. In the original story, Lucius doesn’t properly enter the picture until Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, so getting this much closer to the Malfoys from the beginning could make their family dynamic feel very different this time around.
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