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Would A Very Potter Musical work today? We asked Darren Criss

The Glee and StarKid star had a lot to say about how certain things become popular on the internet

Image credit: StarKid

If you were an internet kid circa 2009, you are probably familiar with A Very Potter Musical. The student-made musical parody, which came out at the height of Pottermania, became an early viral hit and rocketed star Darren Criss to fame.

So when Popverse video producer Veronica Valencia (and musical theater nerd) got to chat with Criss at C2E2 '24, she asked if the same magic (heh) could be captured again.

"It's hard," said the Glee and StarKid leading man, "because the paradigm like of being mainstream or having any sort of accessibility moves so much faster than the rate of content creation, that it's kind of hard to say what would happen. Anything that's a 'lightning in a bottom moment,' if you can use that as comparative image, the lightning happens so fast that the bottle has to be in a specific place that if it was moved a centimeter to the right, it wouldn't have gone in the bottle."


Related: American Horror Story fans have Glee to thank, says Ryan Murphy


"Like if the Beatles came out 5 years later," he continued, "and they weren't the boys they were from a certain class from a certain part of the world... There are so many things that happen in culture that are completely predicated upon a specific amount of circumstances."

Indeed, A Very Potter Musical was quite particular lightning in a quite particular bottle, as any fan of the YouTube sensation can attest. So would the weather/glassware conditions be correct for it today? Criss's answer might disappoint you.

"No," Criss concludes, "I don't think there would be any place for something like A Very Potter Musical now, because it would have been conceived different. It wouldn't have even been considered."

It's a bit of a bummer, but Criss has a point. Despite its beloved status in the hearts of many fans, the grand heyday of Harry Potter fandom is, if not over, at least waning. But could the conditions be right for something similar? Could a StarKid musical based on, say, Stranger Things work?

We'll just have to monitor the clouds and make sure we know where our bottles are.


About C2E2

Chicago's signature pop culture weekend returns with US's best artist alley, a roster of must-see TV and movie stars, and more.

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Location

McCormick Place, Chicago
United States

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Grant DeArmitt

Grant DeArmitt: Grant DeArmitt (he/him) likes horror, comics, and the unholy union of the two. As Popverse's Staff Writer, he criss-crosses the pop culture landscape bringing you the news and opinions about the big things (and the next big things). In the past, and despite their better judgment, he has written for Nightmare on Film Street and Newsarama. He lives in Brooklyn with his partner, Kingsley, and corgi, Legs.

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