Emergency Issue: "Secrets of Dumbledore" Trailer Breakdown
Tired: Jacob is holding a wand. Wired: is Pickett holding a wand?
It’s been nearly four years since we last saw the first trailer for a new Fantastic Beasts movie, but the wait is over. The first trailer for Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore came out yesterday, and it’s a real barn burner. I’m always overcome by excitement when new material comes out, which leads me to think that it’s all good, but even so...don’t you think this was good?
I couldn’t possibly be more excited for this movie. With Steve Kloves on board to co-write the script with J.K. Rowling, I really don’t see how it could possibly fail. I loved Crimes of Grindelwald, so take that with a grain of salt if you want, but still...after seeing the new trailer, I absolutely can’t wait to see what Secrets of Dumbledore has in store. So let’s dive in.
Jacob
The biggest reveal of this trailer — the first of many in this film, one can only assume — is that Jacob is carrying a wand. We saw this in the teaser of the trailer — that’s some kind of innovation, a trailer trailer — but now we see the process in more detail.
Newt hands Jacob what looks like a twisted wooden wand as the core group travels on a train toward...wherever. Later, Jacob holds the wand as what look like the remnants of a dinner party swirl around him. It looks like he’s trying to use it, but we can’t really tell, since pretty much every shot of the trailer is a second long or less, and holding a wand doesn’t look that different from using a wand. Sitting in the Great Hall later, a few Hogwarts students (what look like a Ravenclaw and a Hufflepuff) ask if they can hold it, and Jacob declines.
So, of course, the biggest question of the trailer: what’s going on here?
I’m going to go out on a limb and put my position out there right off the bat: Jacob isn’t a wizard. He can’t do magic. We’ve seen the Fantastic Beasts series subvert canon before, but to suddenly turn a 30-something muggle into someone who can do magic as long as he’s holding a wand twists canon so strangely that it might as well not exist at all. The wand (if that’s what it is) must serve some other purpose: maybe it’s a decoy, or maybe it’s something that looks like a wand, but actually serves a completely different purpose.
Obviously, the trailer implies that Newt is handing Jacob a wand. But it doesn’t completely confirm it. We don’t get Newt, for instance, explaining to Jacob that this is how you hold a wand, and this is how you cast “Expelliarmus.” The one wand alternative I’m thinking of is that maybe this twisted piece of wood has some sort of magical creature application: maybe Jacob can use it to command Bowtruckles or hypnotize Acromantulas or something. If it’s not that, there’s still the possibility that it’s just a decoy wand: Dumbledore wants Grindelwald and Credence to think that Jacob has discovered a deeply hidden magical talent.
The simple fact, though, is that there’s absolutely no way that Jacob is a wizard. Wizarding abilities can lie dormant for a while, but Jacob is undeniably a muggle. He’s at least 30 years old, and has already served in World War I and gone on multiple wacky adventures with Newt. If his powers were going to reveal themselves, they already would have. And it’s similarly unlikely that Jacob is a muggle, but can still somehow use an ordinary wand: that would likewise subvert canon in an irreconcilable way. Magic would go from a rare gift to be nurtured and passed down to something that anybody can do as long as they’re holding a stick with a unicorn hair inside.
Here’s what it could be, though: a fake wand that Dumbledore enchanted to look real. It’s probably within Dumbledore’s magical capabilities to take a piece of wood and imbue it with energy, so that whenever whoever is holding it shouts “stupefy,” it sends out a stunning spell. This is definitely a loophole, and borderline cheating: if this is true, you can give what amounts to a “programmed wand” to a muggle, and they can use it as if they’re a wizard. But that, to me, subverts canon a little less than Jacob just turning out to be magical, so it’s a slightly more realistic possibility.
Of course, right off the bat, that means there’s no good outcome. You can sort of apply a meta-version of Chekhov’s Gun, the idea that if there’s a gun in a story, at some point, it has to go off. If there’s a wand in someone’s hand in a trailer, at some point, they have to use it. If Jacob doesn’t end up using the wand, and turns out to just be an ordinary muggle, the trailer is completely misleading. If he does, canon might as well not exist anymore, because Muggles just cannot use magic. The “Dumbledore-programmed wand” seems slightly likely to me. But so do the “decoy wand” theory and the “bowtruckle command” theory.
The remarks Jacob makes to the Hogwarts students at the end of the trailer imply that it’s not just an ordinary wand. Jacob knows that wizards all carry wands, but he describes the one he’s holding as “very dangerous…if it got in the wrong hands…mess you up.” This piece of wood — I hesitate to even call it a wand — must do something different than ordinary wands. Why Jacob is the one to hold it, though, is still a complete mystery. It’s important to take a step back and realize that we have absolutely no idea. There’s a Muggle holding a wand. Things are going in directions that no one understands.
Hogwarts
There’s another issue related to Jacob that some people think is screwing with canon: Jacob is fully engaging with Hogwarts. Not only can he see it, he’s walking through the hallways, entering the Room of Requirement, eating breakfast, etc. But honestly, to me, this isn’t a problem at all.
Here’s the thing: the only time (within the seven books) we hear that Muggles can’t see Hogwarts is when Hermione announces that she read in “Hogwarts, A History” that if Muggles encounter Hogwarts, they see it as a moldering ruin with a sign that says “danger, do not enter, unsafe.” But Hermione doesn’t give any context for that at all. Maybe that’s what a muggle would see if they just wandered up out of the woods and happened to be by Hogwarts, but clearly, that’s not what’s happened with Jacob.
The spell that hides Hogwarts from Muggles might be like the spells that protect it from wizarding attack: removable by those within. In book six, we see Dumbledore lift the spells that prevent entering at speed as he and Harry are flying back to the castle after they’ve seen the Dark Mark. Maybe at first, Jacob does see an old ruin — but then Dumbledore mutters a few words, the spell is lifted, Jacob says “holy cow!” and he’s free to wander about the castle as he likes.
As a few astute MuggleCast listeners pointed out, in book two, Tom Riddle tells Hagrid that Moaning Myrtle’s parents are on their way to the castle. Moaning Myrtle was muggle-born, so her parents were both Muggles, but they could enter Hogwarts. The headmaster, or sufficiently powerful teachers like Dumbledore, can probably just lift the spell. Nice and easy. There are obviously some genuine canonical issues, but at least for now, this isn’t one of them.
Grindelwald
Everyone probably knows the whole story of the Fantastic Beasts 3 casting nightmare: Johnny Depp sued Amber Heard in the U.K. for defamation (which is notoriously easy to prove in the U.K.), a judge found that she was not liable since the statements she made about Johnny Depp being abusive (the judge found) were substantially true, Warner Brothers dropped Johnny Depp from the series and replaced him with Mads Mikkelsen. In a vacuum, I think Mikkelsen is a fine choice to play Grindelwald. He’s definitely experienced at playing villains of a similar type.
But we get a few glimpses of Grindelwald in the trailer, and he looks conspicuously different. The filmmakers haven’t changed Mikkelsen’s appearance at all. They haven’t given him the spiked hair or mustache that Depp wore; he’s very obviously a completely different person.
(For the record, this is why I advocated for Pedro Pascal to get the part: he looks a tad like Johnny Depp, and could definitely pull off the character while looking similar, plus he’s just an excellent actor. But never mind).
The best path forward for the filmmakers, I think, is to pretend that Depp never existed: to shove Grindelwald into an early scene looking completely different, have someone say “hi Grindelwald!” so the audience who’s not quite sure knows exactly who it is, and to go from there as if nothing has happened. If they wanted to, they could come up with some nonsense to explain the change in appearance: “Grindelwald’s soul entered a new plane of amorality, so he got less good-looking and his mustache disappeared!” But that would just draw attention to the change, and highlight the differences. If I had to guess, I’d say that they just have Mikkelsen do his own interpretation of Grindelwald, and go on as if nothing has changed.
Here’s another thing that stands out about Grindelwald: his rhetoric is completely different. In Crimes of Grindelwald, his climactic speech is all about how muggles (“no-maj’s” back then) aren’t worthless, and he doesn’t hate them; they’re just different, and they have different worth. He’s not trying to harm the muggles, he seems to be saying: he just wants wizards to be safe and free. But this trailer is literally the opposite. Here’s a line we hear him say: “Our war with the muggles begins today!”
Grindelwald is a master manipulator, and he’s willing to say whatever it takes to make his audience happy. That might be what’s going on here: maybe he’s just speaking to a different crowd, and he knows that it takes different material to rile them up. But this is certainly a stark contrast to his prior speeches.
The upshot of all this (as if anyone needed to be told) is that Grindelwald doesn’t have any principles. He’ll say whatever it takes to make people obey him. He’s not some kind of principled wizard advocate: he’s just a guy who wants people to root for him because he likes people rooting for him.
Tina
It’s weird to have a section on Tina in here, because she seems not to appear at all? I mean, there are a few blurry dark shots that might be her; she might be the one on the left at 0:39, or the person in the background at 1:07 (probably not, looks more like Bunty, or dare I say it, a young Professor McGonagall), or the person running up the stairs ahead of Newt at 1:41, but if she’s in the trailer, we don’t see her face or hear her voice. She’s conspicuously not on the train when Theseus gives his list of the people who are going to stop Grindelwald, which doesn’t include her.
We know that Tina makes it through the series and ends up with Newt. So it’s strange — and annoying — to see that at least based on the trailer, there’s still either tension between them after movie two, which was nothing but tension between them, or Tina has gone off on yet another side mission. Tina seemed to take Newt’s side pretty decisively toward the end of Crimes of Grindelwald, so maybe she just has a separate job that the trailer doesn’t want to reveal yet…but is it not strange how little we’ve seen of her after the first movie? Isn’t she supposed to be a main character? You know, hanging around with the other main characters?
I’ve heard some crackpot-type theories about polyjuice potion and Tina being there all along…but let’s not even start down that road. Tina is conspicuously absent. That means one of two things: either the filmmakers want to keep what she’s doing in the movie a complete secret, or she just doesn’t appear that much. You figure she has to show up at some point, so this feels like maybe the trailer is trying to lull us into forgetting about Tina. Then, at a pivotal moment, she’ll jump out of nowhere and save the day. It’s either that or she’s still annoyed at Newt for comparing her to a salamander.
Politics
Behind the action sequences, this trailer has a few indications that the movie will feature some kind of important political element. At 0:21, we see what looks like some sort of rally or political gathering. On the left are signs with Asian writing; on the right are signs that say “chefe suprema, confederacao internacional de bruxos,” which translates roughly from Portugese to “Supreme Leader, international confederation of wizards.” Several times, we see what look like campaign flags flying. Some yellow flags at 0:44 look like they might say “Vicente Santos.” A flag at 0:46 that appears to feature the same portrait — I can’t 100% vouch for this, but they sure look similar — as the ones at 0:21 appears to say “vote.” The “Vicente Santos” poster also has some half-visible letters above the name; they might be “vote” (or “voto,” the Portugese translation of “vote”), but the trailer doesn’t show enough to be sure.
Whatever the specifics of the candidates and their posters, though, one things obvious: there will be some important political plot lines in the movie. J.K. Rowling loves using political upheaval as a backdrop to her main story — see Deathly Hallows, both the movie and the book — so it wouldn’t be a surprise at all to see it again here. Perhaps Vicente Santos is one candidate for Supreme Leader of the International Confederation of Wizards, and the woman in the portrait at 0:21 and 0:46 is the other. It wouldn’t be all that surprising if one candidate supports tolerance and kindness towards muggles, while the other favors wizards taking over by force. Populism is having a moment all around the world right now, and the films are set in the lead-up to World War II, so it would almost be a surprise if that kind of political disagreement didn’t feature in the film.
Right off the bat, let me speculate that the steps in the clouds that we see Newt climbing are probably part of some sort of Brazilian wizarding government building. That’s the kind of structure — steps in the sky — that seems like it might take a government to build, and we’ve seen the governments of the countries in which the first two movies take place, so there’s no reason we won’t see the Brazilian Ministry of Magic as well.
On the other hand, though, when we see the sign that says “chefe suprema, confederacao internacional de bruxos,” we also see what looks like a spell — similar to the spells the Death Eaters cast on the protective barrier around Hogwarts — flying towards what looks like, well, a protective barrier. So maybe some political violence is going to break out. At the very least, the political atmosphere seems quite fraught, which is not surprising at all.
Time
We see several moments in this trailer that don’t seem to fit in with the timeline. Secrets of Dumbledore, it seems, is going to rely at least somewhat on either flashbacks or dreams.
Obviously, one moment comes at the very start of the trailer: we see Michael Gambon as Dumbledore. That came out of absolutely nowhere, and seems almost entirely like trailer fan service. I really just don’t see them blending the core series together with the prequel in that way; it goes far beyond any kind of crossover that’s taken place so far. Michael Gambon will be a trailer exclusive, and you may quote me on that.
On the other hand, we see a scene in Jacob’s bakery at 1:14. He’s hugging Queenie; behind him, backwards because it’s facing the outside, you can see “fancy confections” written out on the window. We’re definitely not going to see Jacob in his bakery in real time in the movie, which means this is either a flashback, probably to the moment between movies one and two when Jacob regained his memory and remembered that he loved Queenie, or a dream or vision or wish or something like that. If it’s just part of a dream, or something like that, it could happen at any time. But if it’s a flashback, why would we see that kind of flashback? Probably because at some point in movie three, there’s a climactic moment between Jacob and Queenie, or at least a climactic moment where Jacob remembers his time with Queenie, and we look back on how the whole love story has played out.
So, Queenie/Jacob shippers, be happy: there’s hope! Now, I don’t think the relationship has any chance of lasting, but at least it does seem overwhelmingly likely that the two of them are going to meet up and confront each other at some point in movie three. At 1:35, we see back-to-back shots of Jacob and Queenie (this is the one where Jacob looks like he’s trying to cast a spell, but really, who the hell knows) the same dinner party; Queenie is wearing a black dress and doing that creepy squint that characters do when they want to look all-knowing or Russian. If Queenie and Jacob are in the same place (and that may be an understatement; based on the placement of the shots, it looks like they’re staring at each other), it would almost be another Chekhov’s Gun violation if they didn’t meet up and talk. They’ll exchange words. We just don’t know what those words will be.
Fan Service
Speaking of Michael Gambon being fan service, there’s more in this trailer that I don’t think will end up mattering at all.
For one, Quidditch. The trailer starts with a golden snitch, and at 1:05, we see what looks like a quidditch player fly between two Hogwarts towers (I know I say “what looks like” a lot, but it’s only because this is a trailer with one-second scenes, and we really have no idea what most things actually are). But this is an action movie, and the most dangerous wizard in a century is trying to tear the world apart, so I just don’t see the main characters having time to sit and watch a quidditch match. There’s also the fact that the Snitch and the quidditch player appear from very similar angles. That might imply that there’s only one quidditch shot, lasting maybe a few seconds, in which we see the snitch and then a seeker chasing it, and that scene is stretched out over the trailer only to imply that there’s more.
Here’s another bit of fan service: Aberforth. At 0:12, we see Newt say “we’re here to see Albus Dumbledore,” and Aberforth respond “that would be my brother.” Now, when I say “fan service,” I should clarify: Aberforth might have valuable information, especially about “Aurelius Dumbledore,” if that’s even his real name. But will he show up at a key moment later in the movie and cast the pivotal spell? Probably not. But who knows? I can’t stress this enough — two key roles in movie two were played by Nicolas Flamel and some guy named “Yusuf Kama.” No one has any idea what’s going on here.
Finally, there’s the Room of Requirement, or as Newt calls it, “the room we require.” While I usually have no problem with fan service — isn’t part of the point of a piece of art to service the fans? — I don’t like what this looks like. From what we can see, it seems like the Room of Requirement somehow holds a device that can transport the characters out of Hogwarts (maybe even to Brazil). That has to be some kind of violation of Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfiguration. There’s simply no way that the Room of Requirement can do what amounts to automatic apparition, especially for a muggle.
That’s been the unfortunate part of the Fantastic Beasts series so far: fan service, rather than being thrown in for fun, has become a plot element, which transforms it from fan service to confusing canon detail. Professor McGonagall would have been fun to encounter at Hogwarts, but maybe not if it means we have to figure out how she’s 50 years older than she’s supposed to be. The same thing is at work here. If the Room of Requirement can just teleport people out with whatever the spinning device that Newt and Jacob jump into is, then why didn’t Harry and the rest of the trio use it to go save Sirius? Why didn’t Neville and Dumbledore’s Army use it when they were trapped in the room in book seven?
Maybe the answer is that only Dumbledore knows the true secrets of the room, in which case...sure? That would actually be pretty cool. Especially if we look at it in the context of that scene in book four at the Yule Ball, in which Dumbledore “accidentally” reveals the existence of the Room of Requirement to Harry, it would be nice to see some old-fashioned Dumbledore intellectual bad-assery.
But still...bringing in the Room of Requirement just seems like fan service shoe-horned into the plot. Dumbledore should have whatever that device is in his office. The Room of Requirement doesn’t really fit as a plot device, but it does draw viewers, which seems to be what the filmmakers were going for.
Loose Ends
Dumbledore is in New York. It looks like he’s in Brooklyn, right by the Brooklyn Bridge. What in the world is he doing there? Meeting with Eulalie Hicks? Bringing back Graves?
Several of the scenes from the trailer look like they take place in Germany. 0:38, 0:44,
On Newt’s upside down newspaper at 1:08, you can see the letters “MURD MUG,” with the right half of the page cut off. Has Grindelwald been murdering muggles? Seems like the kind of thing he would do.
At 1:36, we see a guy who looks awfully like Yusuf Kama standing behind Queenie with no sign of alarm. We also see Grindelwald extracting a memory — or something like that — and Yusuf doesn’t look like he’s struggling at all. Later on, we see him looking pretty blank, as if he’s no longer in control of his mind. Does he go over to the dark side? And if so, does he do it voluntarily?
At 1:59, is Pickett carrying a wand as he runs? Tired: Jacob with a wand. Wired: Pickett with a wand.
Starting at 2:11, Jacob is sitting next to three Hogwarts-age girls. I’ll bet one of them has a recognizable name, just to connect the series to the core seven books, because that seems to be the kind of thing this franchise is up to these days. You know, something like:
“What’s your name?”
“Oh, I’m Eloise Midgen the first. My acne is bad too.”
The secret
“The war of the worlds,” the trailer says at 1:39, “starts with a secret.” But there’s nothing in the trailer even alluding to what that secret is. Not only do we not know the answer, we don’t even know the question.
Hopefully, the secret the trailer is talking about is “the secret(s) of Dumbledore,” otherwise that would really be the ultimate Chekhov’s Gun. But what can we learn about the secret itself?
Not much, because again, the trailer doesn’t mention it besides those words. But it has to be something big. You don’t write “the war of the worlds starts with a secret” if the secret is, like, what day you’re planning a surprise party. Clearly (hopefully!), the secret of Dumbledore is a big secret, and not just some amorphous concept like “the crimes of Grindelwald.” Based on what we’ve seen so far, it almost certainly has to do with Credence’s identity or Ariana Dumbledore’s death. Maybe they’re the same thing. Either way, movie three is shaping up to be a pivotal moment in the series.
Whatever “the secret” is, it seems overwhelmingly likely that it will figure into the climax or plot twist of the movie. So far, this series seems committed to one “wow!” moment per movie. At the end of the first film, Graves turned out to be Grindelwald; at the end of the second, we learned Credence’s real name. At the end of the third…I’d be shocked if we don’t learn the truth behind whatever the secret of Dumbledore is. And that sounds like a pretty cool likely ending.
You might not like the Fantastic Beasts franchise, and you might not be J.K. Rowling’s biggest fan right now...but isn’t this cool? New trailers, new theories, wild speculation, frantic analysis, lightning-fast theorizing? This is what the fandom used to be like, and Fantastic Beasts has brought it back, not quite on the same level, but pretty close. Enjoy it while it lasts, people, because soon there won’t be new stories to guess at. Soon we’ll be watching “Cursed Child: Part 2” on film, and longing for the days when Newt Scamander graced the silver screen and no one knew what was coming next.
I’m kidding. I hope. But this movie really does seem exciting and fun and full of wizarding nonsense that’s going to be cool to see. Get excited.