There is a particular kind of magic in watching a story get handed down. Those of us who grew up queueing at midnight for the books, or racing to the cinema the first weekend a Harry Potter film opened, know the feeling of a world being built brick by brick in front of us. Now HBO is doing it again, and this week the Harry Potter Season 2 cast grew by three more names as the show prepares to adapt Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
On September 17, HBO confirmed three new additions: Rafe Spall as Arthur Weasley, Molly Hewitt-Richards as Moaning Myrtle, and Jasper Ambrose as Colin Creevey. Small roles on paper. Enormous in the hearts of anyone who has ever loved this story.
A Weasley father with a family connection of his own
Rafe Spall taking on Arthur Weasley is the kind of casting that makes you pause and smile. Spall is the son of Timothy Spall, the Emmy-winning actor who played Peter Pettigrew in the original film series. Father played a traitor who betrayed the Potters. Son now plays a man who would give his life defending them. There is something quietly poetic about that, a torch passed not just between generations of actors but between two very different characters bound to the same story.
Spall, known for his work in The Big Short, steps into a role that carries real weight in Chamber of Secrets. Arthur Weasley is warmth, curiosity about the Muggle world, and the moral backbone of the Burrow. Getting him right matters as much as getting Harry or Hermione right.
Moaning Myrtle and Colin Creevey bring Hogwarts to life
Molly Hewitt-Richards, recently seen in Code of Silence, will play Moaning Myrtle, the melancholic ghost who haunts the second-floor girls’ bathroom and becomes an unlikely, crucial presence in the Chamber’s mystery. Jasper Ambrose, known for The Sheep Detectives, takes on Colin Creevey, the camera-toting Gryffindor first-year whose admiration for Harry is one of the book’s gentlest running jokes, and whose fate is one of its darkest turns.
These are not headline roles the way Harry or Voldemort are. But anyone who has read the books knows Hogwarts is built from characters exactly like these. Get Myrtle’s loneliness wrong, or Colin’s eagerness wrong, and the whole corridor feels less alive.
The full Harry Potter Season 2 cast so far
This announcement builds on a run of casting news through the summer. Here is where the Harry Potter Season 2 cast stands heading into filming:
- Kit Harington as Gilderoy Lockhart, stepping in after Nicholas Hoult had to step away due to a scheduling conflict
- Bonnie Hill as Ginny Weasley
- Lenny Rush as Dobby the house-elf
- Billy Barratt as a young Tom Riddle
- Rafe Spall as Arthur Weasley
- Molly Hewitt-Richards as Moaning Myrtle
- Jasper Ambrose as Colin Creevey
Worth pausing on Nicholas Hoult for a moment. Scheduling conflicts are an unglamorous, entirely ordinary part of this business, and it takes nothing away from him that the production had to move on without him. Harington stepping into Lockhart’s peacock-feathered robes is its own kind of casting coup, and it does not erase the fact that Hoult was the production’s first choice for good reason.
They return alongside the Season 1 core that carried Philosopher’s Stone to HBO Max on December 25: Dominic McLaughlin as Harry, Alastair Stout as Ron, Arabella Stanton as Hermione, John Lithgow as Dumbledore, Janet McTeer as McGonagall, Paapa Essiedu as Snape, and Nick Frost as Hagrid.
Filming is already underway
Season 2 is currently shooting at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden in the UK, under showrunner Francisca Gardini, with an expected release window of late 2027 or early 2028. That is a long wait by streaming standards, but this is a project built for the decade-long arc of seven books, not a single binge weekend, and the pace shows a studio treating the source material with patience rather than rushing it to market.
Why this casting run matters
Every new name attached to this show gets measured against the shadow of the original films, and that is a fair and difficult standard to live up to. Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson’s generation did not just play these characters, they defined how an entire generation of readers pictured them. This new cast is not trying to erase that. They are building something alongside it, for a new generation of children who will one day have their own midnight queues and their own opening-weekend races, just told in eight-episode seasons instead of two-and-a-half-hour films.
That is worth respecting, whichever version of Hogwarts you grew up with. The corridors are being rebuilt, brick by brick, cast member by cast member. And with the Chamber of Secrets now properly in motion, the next names to watch for are the Malfoys, and whoever draws the unenviable task of bringing the Basilisk to life.
Reporting via Daily Sabah and MovieWeb, on the latest additions to the Harry Potter Season 2 cast.
For more on how HBO is building out its next big fantasy world, see our coverage of House of the Dragon Season 2, and for another franchise wrestling with a big recasting decision, our take on Robert Downey Jr. as the MCU’s Doctor Doom. If awards season casting stories are more your speed, our guide to BAFTA 2025 is a good place to keep exploring.
Photo: Kit Harington, newly cast as Gilderoy Lockhart in Harry Potter Season 2, by Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
Photo: Kit Harington, newly cast in the Harry Potter Season 2 cast as Gilderoy Lockhart, by Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
