5 Harry Potter Roles Kit Harington Was Born to Play in the HBO Series, Ranked

Kit Harington just traded the Wall for wands. After years of grim duty in the frozen North, the Game of Thrones star has stepped into the Wizarding World as Gilderoy Lockhart for Audible's new Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets audiobook. And he is not shy about wanting more.

"I will be a background extra, I don't care."

Talking to Variety, Harington said he would happily pop up in HBO's upcoming Harry Potter series in literally any capacity. This is not a passing celebrity crush, either. He grew up with the books, was 11 when Harry was 11, drifted away for a while, then came back via Stephen Fry's audiobooks. He says he has listened to them every night for six or seven years as a sleep aid, knows them backward and forward, and calls himself a complete nerd for the books. In other words, he is fluent in this universe and all its emotional weight and darkness.

Quick franchise refresher while we are here: Harry Potter is J.K. Rowling's seven-book saga that became eight films at Warner Bros. Pictures, not counting the three Fantastic Beasts spinoffs. The original films starred Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Michael Gambon, Alan Rickman, and Ralph Fiennes, and the combined 11 movies have hauled in about $9.5 billion worldwide.

So if HBO gives him a shot, where does Kit actually fit? He has the brooding hero thing down, sure, but he has also played ruthless and complicated. Here is where I would plug him into the reboot, from interesting curveball to most spot-on pick:

1. Igor Karkaroff - Introduced in Goblet of Fire as Durmstrang's headmaster, Karkaroff is fear and regret in a fancy coat. He once threw in with Voldemort, then spent the rest of his life trying to outrun that mistake. Harington showed this blend of swagger and panic in the 2023 neo-Western crime thriller Blood for Dust, playing Ricky, a drug-running killer who projects steel but is fraying inside. His Karkaroff could finally feel like the scared, slippery survivor the books describe, always glancing over his shoulder because he knows the bill is coming due.
2. Antonin Dolohov - One of Voldemort's nastiest Death Eaters in the books, barely spotlighted on film. Dolohov is not flashy like Bellatrix; he is cold, efficient, and terrifying in his calm. Harington has already done the disciplined, fanatical villain as Admiral Salen Kotch in 2016's Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, a dictator-like true believer. Make him Dolohov and you get a duel-room nightmare: no grandstanding, just surgical violence and loyalty to the dark.
3. Remus Lupin - Kind, brilliant, quietly wrecked. Lupin carries shame and self-doubt like a second skin and still chooses to be decent. Harington's best work often lives in that restrained ache. Jon Snow spent years doing what is right while believing he did not deserve much happiness, and that energy fits Lupin. In a series with more runway than the films, he could dig into Lupin's push-pull between tenderness and self-loathing so his friendships, love life, and losses land even harder.
4. Sirius Black - The reckless heart, the wounded soul, the fiercely loyal godfather who represents freedom for Harry. Harington can toggle from warm to dangerous in a breath, which is essential for Sirius. You want the guy who lost his youth to Azkaban and never really healed, but can still light up a room for his godson. Also, he already has that roguish, hair-loose vibe from, well, multiple roles, including his Marvel Eternals stint. Give him time and the end of Sirius's arc becomes utterly brutal in the best way.
5. Godric Gryffindor - My favorite swing. If the show dips into flashbacks or a proper founding-of-Hogwarts thread, Harington as Gryffindor makes a ton of sense. He can do old-world noble without sanding off the flaws. Imagine a courageous, stubborn idealist whose belief in bravery creates as many conflicts as it solves. That turns a statue and a house name into a person. Even if the founders only cameo in portraits, he would sell the legend like it was earned, not just inherited.

Point is, he is not angling for a vanity cameo. He speaks this world and its characters like someone who has lived with them for years. And yes, if all he gets is a blink-and-you-miss-it portrait gag, he has literally said he will take it.

What would you cast him as?

Harry Potter films are currently streaming on HBO Max.