- SNL aired a pretaped sketch, “Heated Wizardry,” that mashes up Harry Potter with the Heated Rivalry meme.
- Finn Wolfhard plays Harry Potter opposite Ben Marshall’s Ron Weasley in the spoof.
- The sketch blends wizarding world tropes with a modern hockey-romance satire drawn from Rachel Reid’s series.
- The sketch signals how fan culture and meme formats keep franchise characters alive in fresh ways.
How SNL mixed Hogwarts and the Heated Rivalry meme
Saturday Night Live’s recent pretaped sketch, titled “Heated Wizardry,” leaned fully into meme culture by combining J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter world with the streaming phenomenon known as the Heated Rivalry. The sketch staged an unlikely crossover: Hogwarts characters in a setup that echoed a hockey-set romance show popularized on streaming platforms.
Rosalind O’Connor / NBC — Finn Wolfhard and Ben Marshall in Saturday Night Live
Cast, concept, and the joke
Host Finn Wolfhard played a version of Harry Potter opposite SNL cast member Ben Marshall as Ron Weasley. The sketch reframed classic Hogwarts beats—a chance meeting, wandwork, and a sport played with sticks and a flying ball—through the tone and tropes of the Heated Rivalry format. The result was a deliberate, meme-ready mash-up that traded on fans’ familiarity with both sources.
Why the mash-up lands
The sketch works because it stitches together two highly recognizable cultural textures: the familiar characters and rituals of the Harry Potter universe and the contemporary, serialized melodrama of a streaming romance series. By blending them, SNL creates a form of shorthand comedy: viewers immediately understand the rules and can laugh at the collision.
Fan culture and the longevity of Harry Potter
Harry Potter has long been resilient in fan spaces, where mash-ups, parodies, and reimaginings keep the characters in circulation. “Heated Wizardry” is another example of how late-night TV mines those spaces for material—turning affectionate riffing into a sketch that feels both current and referential.
What to watch next
For viewers, the sketch is a quick, self-contained laugh that also points to a broader pattern: franchises survive in part because audiences continue to remix and reinterpret them. Whether you come for Harry Potter nostalgia or the modern meme format, the sketch offers a playful intersection of both.
Credit: Erik Adams/The Atlantic (coverage of SNL’s sketch). For the full sketch, check NBC’s Saturday Night Live channels and official uploads.
Image Referance: https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026/01/snl-heated-rivalry-harry-potter-spoof/685672/