A new trailer for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them introduces new hero Newt Scamander, and reveals something new about the Wizarding World!
Fantastic Beasts is more than just a new story about magic. J.K. Rowling is introducing a brand new area of Harry Potter’s Wizarding World, and revealing fascinating new details about the lives of wizards and witches.
Not only does Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne)’s story play out in New York, but it’s also taking place in the 1920s, which means a vastly different world than what we’re used to.
We already know that Wizard-Muggle (or No-Maj) tensions are running high during the time of Fantastic Beasts, and that the ‘Second Salemers‘ are out for magical blood.
But this featurette from Warner Bros. reveals something even more shocking: Wizards aren’t allowed to marry non-magic people! Watch:
In the featurette, which also uses John Williams’ “Hedwig’s Theme,” J.K. Rowling explains that the heroes of her stories are always those feeling “set apart, stigmatized, or othered.”
“That’s at the heart of most of what I write, and it’s certainly at the heart of this movie,” she says, while we see a clip of Newt and Porpentina (Katherine Waterston) clearly beginning to fall in love.
The featurette introduces us to ‘magizoologist’ Newt Scamander, the hero of Fantastic Beasts, and Rowling explains that she became interested in this character while still writing Harry Potter.
We see a lot of new footage of Newt interacting with his titular fantastic beasts, and Eddie Redmayne says that, “Newt feels more at home with creatures than he does with human beings.”
Then, Rowling gives us a little glimpse of the society Newt walks into, which he “doesn’t really understand.” A clip from the film reveals that Newt finds their laws about relations with non-magic people “backwards,” as they can neither befriend nor marry them. (“Who’d want to marry him?” Tina then says of Jacob. Ouch.)
Related: Fantastic Beasts to be re-released with new foreword by J.K. Rowling
Newt obviously does go on to befriend Jacob (Dan Fogler) — but does he marry him, too? Now that’d be a nice twist.
Clearly, the clampdown on Wizard-Muggle relations is in response to the Salem situation and the need for secrecy in the American Wizarding World. It seems a more extreme version of the ‘Mudblood’ prejudice during Harry’s years at Hogwarts, and we can only imagine how hard it must be for the magical children born into No-Maj families.
Are they taken away from their homes? What happens if a Squib is born into a magical family? Hopefully J.K. Rowling will reveal more about that at a later date!
Finally, we learn that in Fantastic Beasts, something will happen that will have “implications for the whole Wizarding World.” What could that be?! Your guess is as good as ours!