Scorpius/Rose was once the most popular next gen ship in the fandom, but the release of the play led many people to jump ship to Albus/Scorpius instead. Rose was revealed to be a bit of a Jerkass, at least in their first four years together, and some fans think Scorpius's crush on her is a cop-out for him not having romantic feelings for Albus.
Even the play writers gave up, plus attitudes about major gay couples in media were changing, and they updated the play. All Scorpius' ship tease with Rose, and any mentioning of the boys getting girlfriends are taken out. Plus, some more scenes with Scorpius are added or modified to be more romantic. There's now a scene where Albus tells his father Harry that Scorpius is "the most important person in my life" and "he might always be the most important".
Adaptation Displacement: The vast majority of fans are familiar with the story through the far more accessible script book, not the actual theatrical production at the Palace Theatre in London. Once the play ends its run, this will, naturally, increase even further.
Adorkable: Scorpius, in spades; especially in his introduction.
Scorpius: Hi Scorpius. I mean, I'm Scorpius. You're Albus. I'm Scorpius. And you must be...
Rose's face is growing colder by the minute.
Rose: Rose.
Scorpius: Hi Rose. Would you like some of my Fizzing Whizzbees?
Rose: I've just had breakfast, thanks.
Scorpius: I've also got some Shock-o-Choc, Pepper Imps and some Jelly Slugs. Mum's idea — she says (sings), 'Sweets they always help you make friends' (he realizes that singing was a mistake). Stupid idea probably.
Delphi: Is she really the daughter of Voldemort and Bellatrix, or just an insane woman who simply believes she's their daughter? Or, is she indeed the daughter of Bellatrix, but of Rodolphus, and believed herself to be the daughter of Voldemort?
How much of Amos Diggory's thought process was actually him and how much was Delphi's manipulations?
Did Cedric Diggory join Voldemort after his humiliating losses in the Triwizard Tournament drove him to bitterness, or was there a more sympathetic motive at play?
When Harry says, "Sometimes, I wish you weren't my son," was he truly just lashing out in anger? Did he feel in that moment that Albus was a burden? Or did Harry mean that he wished he and his fame weren't such a burden to Albus?
Awesome Music: Imogen Heap creates the right atmosphere for the Wizarding World. During Albus and Scorpius's first trip back in time to Hogwarts, a choral version of her hit song, "Hide and Seek", is heard.
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Act One, Scene Eleven, wherein the Trolley Witch confronts Albus and Scorpius on the roof of the Hogwarts Express, threatens them with exploding pumpkin pasties and spike hands, and is implied to be 190 years old, have some magical connection to the train, and perhaps even be some kind of Humanoid Abomination. It comes right out of nowhere, and is never mentioned again apart from a mention of the Trolley Witch a few scenes later.
Umbridge's comeuppance is extremely satisfying, regardless of how relevant it really is. It tends to get a lot of applause.
Harry finally letting Dumbledore (or at least his portrait) have it for all the misery he went through as part of the grand plan to take down Voldemort, which fans had been grumbling about for years.
Contested Sequel: Some Potterheads will tell you that the play has wonderful emotional beats and brings back all their old nostalgia, while others say it's a mess of cliches that breaks previously established canon. Interestingly, even many of its fans admit that it "feels like fanfic" and don't consider it (or at least large parts of it) canon. Adding to this is the fact the play wasn't written by Rowling, despite her official stamp of approval.
Alternate Universe Snape, while only present for part of Act III, for being a Deadpan Snarker and for knocking Umbridge down a peg.
Many fans humorously claim that Craig, who only gets three short scenes, was their favourite character.
The Trolley lady, who was made into a Memetic Badass by some people after reading the book. Even some critics admit that scene was funny.
Fanfic Fuel: Albus's first three years are glossed over through a Time Skip, despite the huge wealth of material in Albus himself and everyone else dealing with the oddity of Harry Potter's son being sorted into Slytherin. Also the alternate timelines Scorpius travels through, particularly the one where Voldemort succeeded.
Fanon Discontinuity: Some fans have declared it to be this, especially since J. K. Rowling didn't really write it and only wrote the story of the play, which was then adapted into a script that contains some more outlandish elements. Still others decry what they see as a Narm-filled mess of idiocy.
Originally, Scorpius/Rose was the most popular of the next-gen ships. This play does give him a crush on her, but it's drowned out by the mountains of Ho Yay that turned the majority of its readers into fans of Albus/Scorpius.
Even the new writers, along with changing attitudes about major gay couples in media, root for them and updated the play. All Scorpius' ship tease with Rose, and any mentioning of the boys getting girlfriends are taken out. Plus, some more scenes with Scorpius are added or modified to be more romantic. There's now a scene where Albus tells his father Harry that Scorpius is "the most important person in my life" and "he might always be the most important".
In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Hermione rejects Minister for Magic Rufus Scrimgeour's suggestion that she enter Magical Law, saying that she wants to do some good in the world. Fast forward nineteen years later, and she's become something even more horrifying than a lawyer - Minister for Magic.
While joking about revealing potential Not His Sled spoilers in his review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Roger Ebert wrote, "I dare not reveal a single crucial detail about the story itself, lest I offend the Spoiler Police, who have been on my case lately. Besides, you never know. Maybe they've completely rewritten J. K. Rowling's final book in the series. Maybe Harry dies, Voldemort is triumphant, and evil reigns." This turns out to be the exact premise of the main Bad Future in Part II of Cursed Child.
J. K. Rowling once joked that, after finishing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, she would maybe return to the series and write something like "Harry Potter and the Midlife Crisis." This joke proved prophetic.
Ho Yay: Lots between Albus and Scorpius. Many think the writers did this on purpose, though the lack of follow through has been called a missed opportunity. Scorpius is Albus's only real friend, and they help each other overcome grief, evil and death throughout The Cursed Child. They share several moments of intimacy and "romantic" moments, most notably when they meet on the moving staircases. This became more pronounced in the revised one-act version, when all mention of them getting girlfriends was removed and Albus says that Scorpius is the most important person in his life.
It Was His Sled: Delphi is the daughter of Voldemort and Bellatrix. What was meant to be a shocking twist is now very well-known, even to people who have only heard of the play in passing. Mostly because many felt it makes no sense and carries some horrifying implications.
Just Here for Godzilla: The tremendous amount of special effects involved, none of which are given instructions in the script book, has quite a few people interested in seeing the play just to get a look at them.
Some also seem to be more interested in the developing friendship/relationship between Albus and Scorpius rather than the story at large.
Memetic Molester: Ron giving Albus a love potion as a going-to-Hogwarts gift got jumped on by quite a few people as implying he used them regularly himself. Disgruntled Harry/Hermione shippers especially ran wild with accusations that he must have been regularly dosing Hermione with them (and that's also why she's so uncharacteristically incompetent throughout most of the play).
A large amount of online criticism during the preview period was directed solely at J. K. Rowling. While it's true that Rowling had a significant hand in the play's development, few complaints have been directed at Jack Thorne (the playwright) and John Tiffany (the director).
Some fans who complain about the use of bad futures and temporal paradoxes in the play point to the use of You Already Changed the Past in the Potter canon, specifically Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which is only really true of the film. The book canon's rules of time travel appear to be some sort of combination of stable time loops and temporal paradoxes - for instance, while Harry was able to see himself cast the Patronus that made the Dementors flee, Hermione mentions when explaining the mechanics of the Time Turner that there had been historical precedent of wizards going back in time and killing their past selves, which was the whole reason why the Ministry created such strict rules regarding the use of Time Turners in the first place.
The in-universe rumor that Scorpius is actually Voldemort's son. We never have any hint of how it developed or who may have started it, and it's given far too much attention in the play to be regarded as a background detail. Even pinned against a family like the Malfoys, the rumor itself is way too convoluted and ridiculous to accept that so many people are apparently buying into it, and while it does turn out to be a Red Herring, that doesn't change how unlikely the core concept is.
"For Voldemort and valor!" has apparently replaced "goodbye" in the bad timeline. It's so unwieldy and flowery compared to a simple "goodbye" that it just comes off as silly.
One term used by the villains come Act III is just too on the nose to be taken seriously: Voldemort Day.
The line "I don't know what game you're playing, but you're upsetting the Dementors and entirely ruining Voldemort Day." Between the quote itself and the sudden scenery change, it's enough to make one imagine the Dementors sobbing into their sleeves like kids at a birthday party.
Never Live It Down: Harry saying to Albus "sometimes I wish you weren't my son."
One-Scene Wonder: Moaning Myrtle is only in one scene, and her part is entirely played for comedy, but she typically gets some of the biggest laughs and several reviewers have named her as one of the highlights of the play.
Pandering to the Base: Many of the fan base's hopes for the future going on from the epilogue, what with Albus and Scorpius becoming friends, Draco and Harry addressing their differences, and Severus Snape appearing again, have been included in the play.
Some have taken a degree of surprise over the play's Race Lift of having a black actress being cast as Hermione, since the character has consistently been portrayed as being white in the illustrations for the books and in the film adaptations for the greater part of two decades. Others, however, believe that it's simply an instance of Colourblind Casting at work (itself a common trope employed in theatrical productions) and won't affect the story (or Harry Potter canon in general) otherwise. It should be noted that JK Rowling is in complete support of a black Hermione in general, for both the play and the novels, and noted she had never specified Hermione's race in canon, only her brown bushy hair and eyes (a claim that a good part of the fandom heavily contests note mainly because Rowling personally illustrated her as white, causing her comment to only add more fuel to the fire). And for what it's worth, they doubled down when they recast the play for a second run, and again for its third cast.
People are rather annoyed that the actor cast for Ron is not a redhead, since while Hermione's white or pale complexion is rarely mentioned in the books compared to her brown bushy hair, being a redhead is a very distinctive part of Ron's appearance, as well as his family's. However, original Ron actor Paul Thornley is, in fact, naturally ginger - his color, like many redheads', simply faded with age.
Albus has gained many detractors for his perceived Wangsty, entitled behaviour through much of the play, not to mention one of the biggest, if not the biggest, cases of Idiot Ball moments in the story with the whole Time-Turner mess.
Rose Granger-Weasley. Many fans are upset that instead of taking after her parents and becoming the third in a Power Trio with Albus and Scorpius, she is a snobby, prejudiced Jerkass, shunning Scorpius from the get-go because of his parentage and then turning on her own cousin when he gets sorted into Slytherin and befriends Scorpius.
Squick: Albus kissing Hermione (his own aunt) five times! Granted, this happened under the Polyjuice Potion, but that doesn't make it any less gross.
Astoria Malfoy, née Greengrass. Never seen in the books (except in the epilogue of Deathly Hallows where she was unnamed), in the play she's built up as this wonderful woman who always saw the best in her husband... and she's dead very early on. An opportunity to see Draco have his Heel–Face Turn reinforced and his Character Development encouraged — not to mention a chance to see how she reacted to the rumors of Scorpius's parentage — came to nothing. The creators did initially include her, but in an already lengthy story there wasn't enough time to do her justice.
Delphi. We never get to really know her as a character because almost all her page-time is spent with her seemingly putting on a front — first as a friendly Manic Pixie Dream Girl type, then as an idealized Daddy's Little Villain. While we're meant to pity her in the end when she shows her true pitiful self, it's difficult to do when we haven't spent any time with said true pitiful self beforehand.
James and Lily, Albus's siblings. It would have been interesting to see what it's like for him to grow up with them, especially in contrast to Harry's upbringing with the Dursleys. But James's only significance is when Albus decides to compare himself to him, and Lily doesn't factor into the plot at all.
Many of the characters from the first seven books in general either have minuscule roles, or are absent altogether. In particular, Teddy and Hugo are nowhere to be seen. Granted, it would have been hard to comfortably fit so many characters into a play, but it still would've been nice to see some of them more.
Hagrid and Neville are never seen interacting with Albus at Hogwarts despite being members of the staff. It would've been interesting to see how Hagrid reacted to Albus's struggles and whether he would try to provide emotional support as he did with Harry or Neville having to act as both Albus's teacher and godfather.
Despite the fact that the play is set post-Wizarding War, the time travel plot means that much of the focus of the show concerns the same events, settings, and characters seen in the original books. Some fans were disappointed by the lack of focus on the postwar Wizarding World, and the lack of time spent exploring postwar (and post-Harry) Hogwarts.
Because of the timeskip immediately following Albus' sorting into Slytherin, there is also little focus on the Slytherin experience, which would have been novel for the series given the focus on Gryffindor in the original Harry Potter series.
Voldemort rules the UK as a fascist dictator in the main Bad Future; however, there is hardly any information given as to how the Muggles fought back. Further exploration of this would have allowed readers to see a war between Muggles and wizards.
Uncertain Audience: On one hand, the play mainly focuses on Albus and Scorpius rather than the original golden trio, and this and its nature as a Sequel in Another Medium alienates established Potter fanatics. On the other hand, the play is marketed as an officially-sanctioned eighth story of the Harry Potter series and requires familiarity with how the events of the series played out, alienating potential newcomers to the play and even fans who want to see a different side of the Potter universe. This conflict has played a role in its highly divisive reception.
Harry's inability to bring himself to read the files on werewolves, giants, and trolls going on the move is meant to show how his strained relationship with Albus is distracting him. But he's the Head of Magical Law Enforcement. Remaining apprised of potential threats to the Wizarding World is his job. If he isn't doing his paperwork, he isn't doing his job — which could have potentially disastrous consequences for innocents.
Albus's struggle with living in Harry's shadow and failing to meet everyone's expectations is supposed to be sympathetic, but most of the time he comes across as a Wangsty, entitled brat, especially since Harry tries to fix their relationship while Albus continually rebukes him.
Delphi as well. The end tries to paint her as a sympathetic villain who wanted to meet the father she never knew. Trouble is, this revelation is coming directly off the heels of her manipulating a heartbroken old man and a smitten young teenager, murdering an innocent boy just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and knowingly trying to bring about a Bad Future, so any attempts to humanize her as a character are jarring, to say the least. Harry may feel some pity, but readers and viewers don't because the play hadn't given them any reason to beforehand.
Amos Diggory. Being broken up over his son Cedric's death? Completely understandable. Chewing out and blaming Harry for it, who was even younger than Cedric when he saw Peter Pettigrew murder him during Goblet of Fire, and who suffered major PTSD for the majority of Order of the Phoenix? Not so much.
production based on Harry Potter became this after Cursed Child's announcement.
