The Crimes of Grindelwald’s success hinged on a good villain — one of a completely different breed than Voldemort.

Villains in fantasy franchises can very easily become gimmicky, especially when they’re part of a revival. For many of us, Grindelwald (and his tense emotional relationship with Dumbledore) would either make or break the second Fantastic Beasts film. And while I’m still not happy about the Johnny Depp casting decision for ethical reasons, both his portrayal and Rowling’s script succeeded wonderfully in doing something fresh and fascinating.

In Harry Potter’s era, Grindelwald is mostly mentioned to set Dumbledore up as an extremely powerful wizard, and later set Voldemort up as an extremely dangerous Dark Wizard — the darkest since Grindelwald himself. It isn’t until Deathly Hallows that we start to learn more about him… and even witness his death by Voldemort’s hand, defiant to the last.

Until now, we didn’t really have any idea of what Grindelwald’s influence was like in the Wizarding World. And it’s fascinating to see how different he is from Voldemort.

While Grindelwald is heartless, his type of cruelty is different from Voldemort’s, which makes sense given what we know from the books. A young Dumbledore would never have fallen in love with haughty, hate-filled Tom Riddle if they had been of the same age; but an intellectual with well-thought-out reasoning that was willing to do the impossible “for the greater good”? That’s more in line with who Dumbledore is, and the person he eventually becomes.

Voldemort, on the other hand, relishes in his cruelty. He wants to be at the center of the violence more than anything else (and it’s this predictability that leads to his downfall). We see this contrast between Voldemort and Grindelwald particularly clearly in the scene where Grindelwald and his followers invade a French Muggle family’s home, killing the parents and finally killing their infant son.

Whereas we know from the Harry Potter series that Voldemort would have enjoyed the kill, Grindelwald steps away and lets one of his followers do it. He is, at his core, an enabler of evil, harnessing it for his own nefarious ends, rather than having it be the end goal in of itself. Grindelwald comes with a purpose, and the cruelty that happens is merely a side-effect of his plans.

While Voldemort wanted to rule the world first and foremost, with the subordination of Muggles being a convenient consequence, Grindelwald’s plans — so far, at least — seem to be more systematic. At the moment, he doesn’t seem to be quite as motivated by a desire for ultimate power for himself as he is by the idea of his prejudiced beliefs taking root throughout the world (although we shouldn’t put it past him).

A big consequence of this is that his followers come in a wider variety than Voldemort’s. While the Death Eaters were mostly motivated by greed, prejudice and fear, we’re beginning to see that some of Grindelwald’s followers aren’t necessarily the wizarding aristocracy we were used to seeing behind Voldemort: Queenie and Credence are probably among many others who were manipulated into following Grindelwald because of his promise of a better world — and might be blindsided by the fact that his plans are all based on prejudice and genocide.

In many ways, this makes Grindelwald more threatening. He makes people relate to him, and find protection in him — something no one ever felt about Voldemort (as evidenced by that awkward Draco hug in Deathly Hallows Part 2).

Voldemort may become more powerful than Grindelwald ever was because of his Horcruxes, but Grindelwald’s agenda and its relevance in today’s world, which is struggling with much of the same problems with prejudice, half-truths and fear of war that the characters in the Fantastic Beasts movies are, make him particularly threatening.

Exactly how his final battle with Dumbledore comes to pass remains to be seen, but it’s going to be a fascinating exploration of a new, more insidious kind of evil. He’s an entirely new breed of villain, made all the more terrifying because we have yet to defeat contemporary villains like him in real life.