Fantastic Beasts fans can rejoice: there is just one week left until the third instalment of the Harry Potter spin-off is out in the UK.
After production push-backs, including a six-month pause because of the pandemic and a change in some cast members, the film is finally set to arrive with an April 8 release date.
The Fantastic Beasts films have been wildly popular, with the first two films raking in something close to $1.5bn at the box office. Although these figures don’t come close to the Harry Potter franchise’s extraordinary gains – the denouement of which made $1.3bn by itself – the films were some of the most viewed movies of the year.
If you have missed the Wizarding World series, and are starting to wish you hadn’t, there’s still plenty of time to catch up. Here is our quick recap to bring you up to speed.
The films
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
The first spin-off was released in 2016, half a decade after the final Harry Potter film. It was based on JK Rowling’s 2001 book of the same name, and Rowling also wrote the screenplay. Directed by Harry Potter veteran David Yates, and produced by David Heyman, the story is a prequel to Potter’s world, and begins in 1926.
Fantastic Beasts follows a British zoologist and wizard called Newt Scamander, played by Eddie Redmayne. He’s passing through New York when his magically expanded suitcase – which contains a number of dangerous magical creatures – is disrupted by Jacob Kowalski, an American “no-maj” (a “non-magical” person or, as Potter fans say, muggle). The creatures escape into the city, and the film follows the ensuing drama as the tensions between magical and non-magical are tested.
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
The follow-up came out just two years later. It was also directed by David Yates, written by JK Rowling, and had a returning cast: Redmayne as Scamander, Katherine Waterson as witch Porpentina “Tina” Goldstein, Dan Fogler as Jacob Kowalski, a no-maj, Ezra Miller as Credence Barebone, a devious wizard and Alison Sudol as Queenie Goldstein, Tina’s younger sister.
There are also some new faces – well, new to the Potterverse, at least. Jude Law is Albus Dumbledore (no introduction needed), and Johnny Depp is Gellert Grindelwald, Dumbledore’s ex-lover who has now become a dark and powerful wizard. Potter fans might remember Grindelwald from all the Elder Wand/Deathly Hallows drama from the final Potter book.
Now it’s 1927, and Grindelwald has escaped from MACUSA custody (MACUSA is the magical body in charge of the wizarding community). He’s building a dark force and the only person who can match him is Dumbledore. Dumbledore asks his former student Scamander to help. Scamander agrees, without fully understanding all the dangers that lie before them.
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore
And so we come to next week’s release. Now it’s the 1930s and it’s the run up to World War Two. Grindelwald’s army is continuing to grow and once again Dumbledore, Scamander and friends move to stop him. This time, there looks to be some exploration of magical communities outside of the UK and US too – in Bhutan, Germany and China.
Johnny Depp has been replaced by Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen, whose past roles include Casino Royale, Hannibal, The Hunt and Another Round.
Depp wrote on his Instagram account back in November 2020 that he had been asked to resign from the film by Warner Bros. Although he didn’t go into further details, the whole thing coincided with the libel case Depp had been contesting in a UK court — the verdict for which had been given a few days earlier.
Once again, David Yates is behind the camera and Rowling has written the screenplay, but this time collaborating with Steve Kloves, who wrote the screenplays to all but one of the Harry Potter franchise.
The Characters
Newt Scamander
Scamander is a well-known “magizoologist” and author of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. He went to Hogwarts and was in Hufflepuff. Always a lover of magical creatures, he spent two years in the Office for House-Elf Relocation and then joined the Beast Division – a magical creatures department dealing with all things Beasts. It’s from this point that he learnt his craft and wrote the book that would make him famous.
English actor Eddie Redmayne, best known for playing Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything and Lili Elbe in The Danish Girl, takes the role of Scamander here.
Albus Dumbledore
Harry Potter fans will of course be familiar with Dumbledore, one of the magical world’s most powerful wizards and the headmaster of Hogwarts. But while the first Potter books and films showed Dumbledore as a more friendly, grandfatherly figure, as the series continued audiences were introduced to a more complex, darker character. He was the master of the Elder Wand – the most powerful wand in the world – for 50 years and has a complicated history with dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald.
In Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore Jude Law plays Dumbledore. Not only is the story about the professor’s battle against Grindelwald, but it’s also likely that the film will cover Dumbledore as he tries to destroy a blood pact he made with his old friend and lover. The blood pact is a magical oath – supposedly impossible to break. When they were young Grindelwald and Dumbledore swore to never fight each other, which is now a rather tricky hurdle for Dumbledore to overcome.
Credence Barebone (or Aurelius Dumbledore?)
Credence Barebone is a wizard who was adopted by Mary Lou Barebone – a leader of an anti-witchcraft group called New Salem Philanthropic Society. Because he had to repress his magical powers all his life, he developed a dark force known as an Obscurus. He becomes an Obscurial – he carries this dark force within him, which can break out at any time. Although Obscurial children usually die before their 10th birthday, Credence does not, suggesting that he has further magical capabilities, which Grindelwald tries to harness.
There are questions about his parentage – could he be Aurelius Dumbledore, a member of the Dumbledore family? Grindelwald certainly seems to think so and tells Credence in 1927. The truth of this mystery is yet to unravel. The danger will arise if Credence believes so, and is manipulated into using his powers nefariously. He’s is played by Ezra Miller who has previously acted in Suicide Squad and Justice League.
Porpentina "Tina" Goldstein
Played by British-American actress Katherine Waterston, Tina Goldstein is a half-blood witch and ex-Auror – a member of Department of Magical Law Enforcement tasked with investigating crimes related to the Dark Arts. She was dismissed from her position for assaulting Mary Lou Barebone, and becomes part of Scamander’s team of wizards who face Grindelwald. She later marries Scamander.
However, there was no sign of Tina Goldstein on the Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore posters released in February, causing a stir among fans. What this means for her character in the new film, we don’t know.
Jacob Kowalski
Played by Dan Fogler, who is also known for his roles in Kung Fu Panda, Horton Hears a Who!, and The Walking Dead, Jacob Kowalski is a no-maj who audiences meet in the first film. After being exposed to the wizarding world with Scamander and developing a close (but illegal, for magical folk) relationship with Tina’s sister Queenie, he gets his memory wiped and goes on to own a successful bakery.
But, the spell doesn’t stick. When he sees Queenie again, his memory is jolted. A complicated love story ensues, in which the insecure Queenie (needlessly) bewitches him, and then later joins Grindelwald’s dark forces.
But a Daily Prophet article shared on JK Rowling’s Pottermore in February suggests there is a future for the couple as it mentions a Quidditch keeper called Quentin Kowalski. Is this Kowalski’s son and will this all play out in the coming film?
Queenie Goldstein
Played by American actress Alison Sudol, Queenie is Tina Goldstein’s beautiful, trusting younger sister. Since, as he is a no-maj, her romance with Jacob is forbidden, she joins the team of the dark wizard motivated by the idea that a Grindelwald world will be one where she can love whomever she wants to openly. Rowling has said that this shocking development was intended to show audiences how plausible bad leaders could seem, and how easy it was for good people to be taken in by them.
Gellert Grindelwald
Now played by James Bond baddie Mads Mikkelsen, Grindelwald is the leading dark force of the Harry Potter spin-off series. He’s one of the most powerful wizards in the world, which is why someone like Dumbledore is required to match him.
He was a student at Durmstrang Institute, which Harry Potter fans will know from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, as one of the visiting schools. But even back then he wasn’t a good egg – he got expelled for dark experiments and attacks on students. It’s after this expulsion that he meets Dumbledore and the two begin an affair.
There’s a ton of subsequent drama, not least the fact that Albus Dumbledore, his brother Aberforth and Grindelwald have a three-way duel which ends in the death of Dumbledore’s sister Ariana. No wonder the two are at such loggerheads in the films.
