McGonagall: Who She Is and Who Plays Her in Harry Potter

McGonagall is a professor at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the school where Harry Potter learns that he is a wizard, and Maggie Smith plays her in every credited appearance. The films credit her under two names: Professor McGonagall in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001), directed by Chris Columbus, and Minerva McGonagall in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), directed by Alfonso Cuarón, and in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009), directed by David Yates. Professor McGonagall and Minerva McGonagall are the same woman, so a search for either name leads to the same actress.

She belongs to the ensemble of Hogwarts staff around Albus Dumbledore rather than leading the story. Her billing still carries weight: in the first film she is eighth, ahead of Richard Griffiths and Fiona Shaw, who play the Dursleys. In the later two credits she sits at fifteenth and fourteenth.

The series is also being remade for television, and the Harry Potter TV series has its own page, separate from the films described here.

McGonagall is credited in three films and named in the plot of a fourth, and her story runs from Harry's first year to the battle for the school. The plots place her in the staff around each year's events rather than at the center of them.

In Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Harry arrives at Hogwarts after Hagrid tells him he is a wizard, boards the Hogwarts Express and is sorted into Gryffindor. The film ends with Gryffindor winning the House Cup after a last-minute award of points.

In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Dementors have been posted to guard the school because Sirius Black has escaped from Azkaban, and Harry is affected badly by them. Buckbeak is sentenced to death, Lupin teaches Harry the Patronus charm, and Lupin resigns once his condition becomes public.

In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Death Eaters enter the school through a magical cabinet that Draco repaired, Snape kills Dumbledore and the school mourns its headmaster. Her credit, billed fourteenth, sits among a staff cast that also includes Jim Broadbent as Slughorn and Michael Gambon as Dumbledore.

In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, the plot has her drive Snape out of Hogwarts, after which the school prepares for battle with Voldemort's army.

McGonagall's relationships are the working ones of a school: with the headmaster, with a colleague she eventually confronts, and with the students she teaches. Three of them are clear in the films.

The first is Dumbledore, the headmaster. He is played by Richard Harris in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and by Michael Gambon in Prisoner of Azkaban and Half-Blood Prince.

The second is Snape, played by Alan Rickman. In Deathly Hallows: Part 2 she is the one who drives him out of the school. See Snape for his side of that scene and what the film later reveals about him.

The third is Harry Potter himself, along with Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, the students whose school years the films follow.

McGonagall's decisive moment in the final film is driving Snape out of Hogwarts as the school prepares for Voldemort's army, and that is the last scene in which the plot names her.

The battle that follows ends with Voldemort killed by his own rebounding curse, after Harry disarms him. Neville draws the Sword of Gryffindor and kills Nagini, and Molly Weasley kills Bellatrix. The film closes nineteen years later at King's Cross, where Harry, Ginny, Ron, Hermione and Draco watch their children board the Hogwarts Express.

So, to answer the "McGonagall death" search directly: nothing in the plots of the films has her dying. The deaths in the final story are those of Snape, Bellatrix, Nagini and Voldemort, and earlier those of Dumbledore, Sirius and Dobby.

The best McGonagall moment, in my opinion, is the one in Deathly Hallows: Part 2 where she drives Snape out of the school. It could be argued that it matters more than any other scene, because it is the one point where the plot names her acting directly as the school prepares for battle.

Second, I would pick her place in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, the film in which Harry meets the teachers who will shape his life and in which Gryffindor's last-minute House Cup win closes the year. Her billing (eighth, above the Dursleys) suggests the production gave her weight from the first film.

Third comes Prisoner of Azkaban, the one with the Dementors, the Marauder's Map and the Time-Turner, where she is credited as Minerva McGonagall and billed fifteenth.

If you want her best material in one sitting, watch the first film and then jump to the final one. The Harry Potter movies in order page sets out the full viewing sequence.