New Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them Featurette Promises a Familiar Foe

There’s still so much we don’t know about Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, but we’ve finally started to get some answers. In a new featurette for the film, we learn how different things are for wizards in 1920s America. In America, most people with magic are suppressing their abilities, and have gone into hiding. They’re afraid of the persecution that could come from being revealed.

This fear of persecution leads directly to the featurette’s other big reveal. While we don’t know who the villain of Fantastic Beasts will be, the featurette does reveal that Gellert Grindelwald will be lurking behind the scenes. We see headlines suggesting that Grindelwald has mounted attacks in Europe, and hear author J.K. Rowling explain that “they’re talking about the first time a wizard rose and threatened the world order.”

Grindelwald was mentioned multiple times in the original Harry Potter series. He’s one of the most famous dark wizards in history, a powerful man who became obsessed with the Deathly Hallows. Dumbledore eventually defeated him in a duel in 1945, but it looks like we’ll get to see his rise to prominence in the Fantastic Beasts films.

“He’s going to become a much more prominent part of the stories going forward,” said director David Yates during a fan event. “Any more than that, I really couldn’t say.” Rowling recently announced plans for four more Fantastic Beasts films, and now we know what they may be filled with.

The featurette also gave us more information on Colin Farrell’s head auror character, and his relationship with Ezra Miller’s Credence. As Miller puts it in the featurette, “We don’t really know who’s good and who’s bad until all the chips have fallen.”