Hermione Granger and the Quarter Life Crisis

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Fan Film
Title: Hermione Granger and the Quarter Life Crisis, also abbreviated as HGQLC
Creator: Eliyannah Amirah Yisrael
Date: S1: Jan 16, 2017 - April 26, 2017
S2: June 6, 2018 - October 13, 2019[notes 1]
Length:
Medium: Fan-made webseries
Genre: Post-Canon
Fandom: Harry Potter
URL: YouTube playlist of all episodes

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Hermione Granger and the Quarter Life Crisis, also abbreviated as HGQLC, is a fan-made webseries focused on Hermione Granger after the end of Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows. The series is produced by Sunshine Moxie. The lead actress is Ashley Romans, a black woman; the diverse cast and creative team is one reason the show has garnered significant media attention.

The series is complete with two seasons of short episodes (roughly between 10 and 30 minutes in length). Seasons one and two have five and seven episodes respectively. More information on individual episodes can be found here: HGQLC/Episodes.

About

Promotions on social media summarize the series as a "Webseries about the greatest witch of her age tackling her biggest obstacle yet: becoming a woman!"[1] In a blog post on blackgirlnerds.com, Eliyannah Yisrael, the creator and director, provides a more in-depth summary:

"Hermione Granger and the Quarter Life Crisis features a black Hermione who wakes up at 25 and decides that she doesn’t want to stay with Ron Weasley, remain in the UK, or grow up to be Minister of Magic. Instead, she moves to LA where she reconnects with her old Hogwarts roommate, Parvati Patil, her witty, feminist Muggle cousin, LaQuita Granger, and Draco Malfoy. She also meets a couple of new friends, including an Ilvermorny grad/hacker named Juniper Diaz."[2]

Yisrael also expands on her motivation for creating the series, discussing her deep connection to Hermione as a character that shared not just "personality traits... but that we also shared the same struggles. Hermione’s whiteness never stopped me from recognizing her inherent ‘blackness.’"[2] She also discusses her dissatisfaction with the ending of The Deathly Hallows, where Hermione's complexities and future is quickly put to rest in a few sentences.[notes 2]

Episodes

All episodes to date are listed on HGQLC Episodes. The listing also includes date of upload to YouTube and basic episode info and descriptions.

Reception and Reviews

Fan Reception

"This trailer shows Hermione with friends, at parties, and working out, and in the first episode, we see her wade through roommate troubles, awkward run-ins with Draco Malfoy, and a breakup with Ron. This is the magical world reinvented to put Hermione and friends in situations with which millennials, who have grown up with the series, are familiar. Again, her Hermione displays canonical characteristics while offering an alternative take on what is often considered her canonical appearance."[3]

Excerpt from a 2017 a semi-academic wordpress blog devoted to Black Hermione

"lmao i googled ashely romans’ name to get it right and i just noticed she’s in something called “Hermione Granger and the Quarter Life Crisis” which is apparently a youtube series and it sounds insane but i applaud the audacity"[4]

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Media and Blogosphere Reception

The webseries has been covered by a variety of media outlets and blogs. Notably, the series was covered in an article by ELLE magazine under the life and culture section. The article was largely a combination of commentary by Yisrael, the creator, and a summary of the early episodes.[5]

A sample of reviews:

"Ever wonder what Hermione would act like as a 25 year-old? Ever wonder what Hermione would look like if suddenly she didn’t want to be on a specific path with everything planned out? Me too. I have to be honest that is what caught my eye about this web series."[6]

A 2017 review from starrymag

Thank heavens I clicked “play,” on episode 1 because I quickly fell in love with Hermione Granger and the Quarter Life Crisis, and am so thankful that Harry Potter fan and professional filmmaker Eliyannah Amira Yisrael conjured it up and brought it to life. The plot is fairly straightforward. It’s six years post-Hogwarts/Voldemort, and 25-year-old Hermione is trying to figure out just what she really wants. Is it a life with Ron in England, or something else? She ends up skipping out on her organized life and makes her way to the U.S. to crash with Parvati Patel, see her cousin Laquita, and figure out just what the heck she’s doing with her life. [...]

Blending her favorite book series and characters with ones that speak to her own identity as a Black woman in this country is something Yisrael holds close. “The idea that I was able to put a ‘ghetto’ name in the Harry Potter universe is probably one of the things I’m most proud of,” she says. “My girl ‘Quita.”[7]

2018 groknation article by Avital Norman Nathman.

Fanworks

Further Reading/External Links

Articles and Interviews:

Notes

  1. ^ The penultimate episode aired late 2018; however, the next episode did not come until nearly a year later.
  2. ^ She is not alone in disatisfaction with the epilogue, to the point where Epilogue? What Epilogue? is a noteworthy trope in fanfiction and other fanworks

References