New seasons of the Harry Potter series will be much shorter than expected

The Harry Potter series has officially started filming, and we're starting to learn more and more about the upcoming HBO series, including the anticipated episode count for each season of the series.

According to a new report from Express, the Harry Potter series is a little shorter than fans were probably hoping for. The first season, and the six subsequent seasons, will feature six episodes each. The report also mentioned that the Harry Potter series is expected to be seven seasons long, one season for each book in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter book series.

I have to say I'm not surprised that the first season will be six episodes. The season, which will be based on Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, one of the shorter books in the series, tells a crucial part of Harry Potter's story, but I don't know how you make an interesting season of TV with that story. It probably needs fewer episodes because the stakes seem so low in that first book compared to the later books.

While the stakes get a lot higher at the end of the first book and continues in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, we probably can anticipate six-episode seasons for season 2 and season 3 of the Harry Potter series, too.

It definitely gets a lot trickier as we get closer to the story from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. That is the second-longest book in the series. I don't know how that season will only be six episodes, so it will be interesting to find out if that six-episode season pattern continues throughout the full series or if they will start to make longer seasons later in the run.

Interestingly, Channing Dungey, the CEO of Warner Bros. TV, mentioned in an interview with Deadline in May that they were close to setting the episode count for the show's first season.

"Not something that we can share, because we’re still working on some finesses on the last couple of scripts, and the question becomes, do we think that it’s worth breaking one into two more? We should know shortly, I would think."

So, it's going to be something to watch since no one has gone on record yet with the official episode count. Again, I know fans probably want 8-10 episodes in each season, but I just don't know how realistic that actually is going to be.

Express also reported that each episode will cost almost $100 million, so that could be one of the reasons that HBO and Warner Bros. are aiming to keep the episode counts down.

We'll share more news about the Harry Potter series episode counts as we find out, but plan for short seasons. The Harry Potter series will arrive on HBO in late 2026 or early 2027. The release window has not been revealed just yet.