Say goodbye to your comfort binges – Harry Potter has officially left Netflix.
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As of yesterday, the entire Harry Potter series was no longer available on Netflix Australia. On Thursday, the offical Twitter account apologised for not giving subscribers fair warning, and pointed to licensing issues as the reason why.
“I solemnly swear that I’m sorry for not letting you know that Harry Potter was leaving Netflix,” Netflix said on Twitter.
“Licensing fantastic movies is a beast and we wish we could keep them all.”
I solemnly swear that I’m sorry for not letting you know that Harry Potter was leaving @NetflixANZ. Licensing fantastic movies is a beast and we wish we could keep them all. (Especially Azkaban, the best one, don’t @ me).
More info on licensing is here: https://t.co/cpM9RiDbqg pic.twitter.com/niUYQO9U8F
— Netflix ANZ (@NetflixANZ) January 16, 2020
As Lifehacker pointed out, Netflix has a habit of quietly removing content from its libraries when the license expires; just this January, for example, it deleted a few dozen TV shows and movies, most notably the earlier seasons of American Horror Story. (As of right now, you can still watch Freak Show, Hotel and Roanoke.)
In a particularly rude twist, when you search for ‘Harry Potter’ on Netflix, the only titles in the series available to you are the first two in the Fantastic Beasts series. These are, of course, nothing on the original series; Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them was an okay venture into the wizarding world, but The Crimes of Grindelwald can most charitably be described as a hot mess.
If you want to watch the OG Harry Potter films, you’ll have to download them from Google Play or iTunes – or else rustle up those old school DVDs. Those still work, right?
