If Harry Potter screenwriter Steve Kloves had gotten his way, we could have been seeing a whole different side to Harry in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. In a recent interview, Kloves was asked if he had ever created his own characters within the Potter-universe, to which he replied that yes, in fact, he did — but because he never made it into the film, we now will never know what his deleted character Alistair the spider would have looked like on the big screen. Kloves shared the regrettable axing of his character with io9:
It was a spider in the closet, in the cupboard in the beginning, who he [Harry Potter] had befriended and talked to. My vision of the first movie was quite different in terms of how you first perceived him [Harry]. There was a spider in there and all these broken soldiers that he had filched from the rubbish bin of Dudley's [bedroom]. And he had this broken army and he would talk to Alastair.
Pause for tears, please. I know there are some references to Harry's only friends being the spiders under the stairs, but this is just a twist of Gryffindor's sword, right in the feelings. What makes this even weirder to me is that I vividly remember imagining this same type of scenario as a kid, back when 90 percent of my thoughts were spared for musings on Harry Potter (now it's a respectable 89.9 percent, because adulthood and all).
So why was Alistair cut from the movie? I'm guessing there just wasn't enough time in allotted in a movie where the whole freaking magical universe was brought to life — but then again, I have a few theories of my own ...
Aragog's Lawyers Would Have Sued
Little did we know, he signed an exclusive featured spider contract. Nobody upstages this diva. HE'LL BE IN HIS TRAILER.
Alistair Was Busy Training All The Recruits For The Infinitieth Spider-Man Reboot
And with a third one within a decade right on the horizon, it doesn't look like his schedule will be freeing up anytime soon.
People Would Have Flooded The Theater With Their Tears
I transitioned into a ~real adult~ somewhere in the time I stopped wanting to be Harry's BFF and started wanting to adopt him into the brood of unruly redheaded children I'm pretty sure I'm destined to have.
In any case, sorry 'bout it, Alistair. But the good news is that we have such a thirst for rebooting perfectly good things that I'm sure you'll have the chance to make your movie debut again in 2030.
Images: Warner Bros; Giphy
