The Death Eaters Attack on the Burrow(The Weasley Family Home) in Harry Potter 6 is one of the most pointless completely unnecessary additions in the franchise, especially when considering how much they had to cut out. Why add this?

I love the Potter films(and books). I’m fine and can live with most of the changes made for the sake of pacing, clarity, and runtime. But. One film in the saga has a change that really, REALLY triggers me. The Burrow(Ron’s home) attack in “The Half Blood Prince”(AKA Harry Potter 6).

Anyway you slice it this is a terrible addition. It’s not even a good action scene.

There is ZERO reason for this scene. There are ZERO consequences to it, it’s not referenced again, it’s edited very sloppily. It’s like they thought “we need an action scene” and added this. It has no bearing on the plot whatsoever. The Death Eaters plan was to…do what? Blow up the burrow? Ok. In the next movie it’s up and running again just fine, nobody was hurt. Nobody died. Nobody was kidnapped. Nothing.

But the real kick in the nuts is that this movie cut out some fairly major story beats since the book is so long. In the book when the Death Eaters enter Hogwarts, shit goes down. It’s a big sequence. It’s not a quick little in and out scene like the movie. At the time they did this because they didn’t want to have 2 films back to back with big fights in Hogwarts given that the last book, and next film, has the final climax as “The Battle of Hogwarts”. Only problem with that is…they ended up splitting the final movie into 2 parts. So when Half Blood Prince came out in 2009, Deathly Hallows PT 2 was still 2 years away(and would’ve been 3 years had Warner Bros not moved HP6 from 2008 to 2009 due to the success of The Dark Knight)

So they added an action scene with zero plot relevance, a scene if removed would change literally NOTHING instead of having: the opening chapter with the newly elected Prime Minister & Minister of Magic(a great moment in the book), OR we could’ve had extra Tom Riddle flashbacks & lore, OR we would’ve had the book climax with DE attack on Hogwarts, OR even the apparating lessons(there’s a million ways of transport in this world, broom, portkey, flue powder, hippogriff etc and adding what amounts to instant transport should be properly set up)

So what’s the deal? Why add this scene?