The Most Controversial Harry Potter Scene
There's been a lot of talk about how the upcoming TV series will immediately enter a minefield as soon as it gets to Book 4 / Season 4 and has to address the SPEW storyline head-on. But there's something else in that same book that I think is going to land much differently in the post-Epstein-Files era (and no, I'm not talking about Krum's attempt to seduce Hermione back to Bulgaria, but it is impressive how much problematic stuff JKR could fit in one book).
The scene in question is the one in which Moaning Myrtle peeps on Harry in the bathtub while he tries to solve the dragon's egg clue to learn the next task. (Conveniently enough, it just so happens that the next task revolves around teenagers wearing swimsuits.... Rowling really wanted to make sure that we saw Harry half-dressed and undressed throughout this book, didn't she?) Not only does Myrtle come off as creepy and predatory in the scene, she also implies that she did the same thing to Cedric off-page "until the bubbles were almost gone".
Now imagine how much different this is going to look in the modern day, even for an audience who already knows this scene and isn't aware of all of Rowling's obsessions (bathrooms, genitals, men in women's spaces but who cares if women barge into men's spaces) or the fact that she ended up on Epstein's contact list (granted, we do still need some more context for that one before we go so far as to claim she was one of his clients).
The scene is so central to the overall story that it's almost impossible to remove, unless the writers find another way for Harry to immerse the egg in water and discover its secret. Myrtle could, in theory, be removed from the scene entirely and Harry could solve the egg clue on his own through a sudden hunch, but it may just end up looking even creepier for the camera to be lingering on a naked teen boy alone in the bath.
Side note to the mods: just a suggestion that, based on how much it's been discussed here lately, we may want to add a new "CW: PEDOPHILIA" flair to accompany the ones for homophobia and transphobia. Depending on what we find out in the future, it may come in extremely handy later....