New Fantastic Beasts 2 Trailer Is Thankfully Light on Grindelwald

This is our most detailed look yet at the world of Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, and it’s stunning.

The aesthetics of the 1920s-set Wizarding world have been on point since the first movie, and this trailer continues the trend, with gorgeous costumes, atmospheric sets, and splendid magical beasties. Crimes takes place in 1927; the backdrop will be switching this time around from New York City to Paris. Our favorite paragon of gentle masculinity, Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne), is in Europe and working with his old Hogwarts professor Albus Dumbledore (though Dumbledore does a charming job of denying it here).

And we return to Hogwarts! Try not to get shivers as the camera swoops toward that Scottish castle.

If you recall from the first movie, Newt was expelled from the school of witchcraft and wizardry after he took the blame for an experiment gone wrong perpetrated by his best friend Leta Lestrange. But because of Transfiguration professor Dumbledore’s intervention on Newt’s behalf, Newt got to keep his wand. In Beasts 2 we’ll likely learn more about this incident, as we’ll also be meeting Leta (Zoe Kravitz), who is now romantically involved with Newt’s brother, Theseus Scamander (Callum Turner).

There’s a glimpse of Leta, who Queenie Goldstein described as “a taker” after reading Newt’s thoughts about her in the first Beasts. I’m really intrigued to see what they do with the mysterious Leta. Speaking of Queenie (Alison Sudol), she’ll return with her muggle beau Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler) and her sister, Newt’s potential love interest Tina (Katherine Waterston).

What was I especially thrilled to see here? A few brief flashes of our young friend, the excellently named Credence Barebone (Ezra Miller), a powerful wizard who developed a dark force known as an Obscurus because of the lifelong repression of his magic. He had appeared to die at the end of Beasts via Grindelwald’s machinations, but is clearly back in some form and not looking too thrilled about it.

The undeniable star of this trailer is Jude Law’s Dumbledore, who already seems winking and cleverly sly in a way that makes me want to forgive him for all the ways he’ll mess up Harry Potter’s life fifty-four years later. Dumbledore clearly needs Newt’s assistance because something’s preventing him from taking on bad guy Gellert Grindelwald himself (the youthful infatuation Dumbledore and Grindelwald shared? Or just plain politics? We’ll see). “I can’t move against Grindelwald. It has to be you,” Dumbledore says to Newt while wearing an assortment of fabulously fitted vests and overcoats.

For a trailer for a movie about his crimes, Grindelwald (Johnny Depp) is mercifully mostly absent. Really wishing he was just arraigned for those crimes in the first scene and then spends the rest of the movie in Azkaban while everyone else goes off to discover where Colin Farrell went.

What’d you spot in the trailer?

(image: Warner Bros./screengrab)

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