This year, Hollywood catches up with some of its COVID-19 backlog, as bigger budget, production-intensive movies whose filming became impacted by the pandemic’s early days are finally getting their days in the sun. Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore of the Harry Potter franchise starring Eddie Redmayne and Jude Law was delayed from a 2019 start to an early 2020, to a late 2020 commencement date. In February 2021, production was halted again due to COVD, before wrapping fully shortly after.

This is only the third film in the franchise, with the first debuting 6 years ago. That’s a long time for a profitable successor to the original Harry Potter franchise to lie dormant. Add to that the lack of source material, and it can be easy to forget not just who this story’s about, but what it’s about. So, let’s remember.

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What is Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore about?

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The third Fantastic Beasts film takes place in the 1930s, in the run-up to World War II. The dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald has grown in power and influence, amassing a devoted following around his belief that wizards are superior to muggles, and that the order of the world should reflect this. Hogwarts professor Albus Dumbledore is the only wizard who knows this villain well enough to stop him, and must recruit Magizoologist adventurer Newt Scamander in this fight.

Newton “Newt” Scamander (Eddie Redmayne)

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Image via Warner Bros.

Star of the stage and screen since 1998, London-born Eddie Redmayne toplines the ensemble cast as the charmingly idiosyncratic Hufflepuff alum. Before picking up his magic wand, the most high-profile work of the actor’s career was arguably 2014’s Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything, which earned the actor that film’s sole Academy Award. He was nominated the following year for his role in The Danish Girl. The year after that, he debuted in the role of Newt Scamander, a British wizard fascinated with magical creatures.

Daniel Radcliffe had many Harry Potter films to grow into the young man people picture when they think of that character. Redmayne had to step into the wizard world playing a fully formed man, one who many casual fans had of only in passing. The budding franchise’s success hinged, in part, on successfully selling Newt’s likability and the plausibility of his continued proximity to mortal peril. Having an Oscar caliber actor in such a role is an age-old cheat code when the stakes are that high, and Redmayne sells Scamander’s curiosity, awkwardness, and bravery with veteran ease. As the Beasts films worked to get their cultural footing, Newt proved to be one of the easier elements of them to embrace.

Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law)

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Image via Warner Bros. Pictures

Dumbledore (Jude Law) is one of the most famous characters in Harry Potter lore. In the 1990s-set Potter films, the Merlin-esque wizard serves as Hogwarts’ headmaster and one of the Chosen One’s many surrogate parents. The dashing, younger version of the character in Fantastic Beasts was introduced in the second film. This Dumbledore is teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts and gaining a reputation intellectual depth and magical skill. That he had a teenage connection with the franchise’s villain makes him a crucial ally in that villain’s hopeful defeat. As this third film spends more time at Hogwarts, that relationship is likely to play an even more important role.

Law’s most high-profile franchise work before this was in the Robert Downey Jr-starring Sherlock Holmes films. In that series, it is Law’s ability to generate chemistry with his scene partners that makes him an elevating presence and, so far, this is true of his turn as the legendary wizard.

Credence Barebone/Aurelius Dumbledore (Ezra Miller)

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Image via Warner Bros.

Credence Barebone (Ezra Miller) is an obscurial, which is a child possessing magic made latent through physical or psychological abuse and manifesting as a parasitic force. Such children typically die by the age of 10, but Credence managed to somehow live to adulthood. This implies the possession of great power, a gift very attractive to the manipulative, destructive Gellert Grindelwald, who begins grooming him for recruitment early on. One of the mysteries of the first two Fantastic Beasts films is just how exactly Credence — adopted into an abusive, anti-magic home — happened to have this gift. The going theory in the wizarding world is that he was born a Dumbledore, making him the inheritor of that family’s great magical strength, and perhaps an inheritor of that future headmaster’s moral compass.

Credence is early-modern emo, his face resting in a mood of enraged melancholy, his head often held down, his energy that of a ticking time bomb. Miller generally has two big acting modes — exuberant ball of light, and simmering volatility, and it is the latter he brings to Credence.

Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler)

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Image via Warner Bros.

Every hero needs a trusty, humble right hand, and Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler) is that for Newt. In the first film, he functioned as one of the audience surrogates, a smooth entry for those freshly jumping into this universe. His wide-eyed discovery of the wizarding world and its differing societal rules facilitated much groundwork-laying exposition. He is an American baker and war veteran whose loyalty steers him wherever Newt’s story leads. This is the most visible acting gig of Dan Foglers career. In the work he has done—61 acting credits spanning 24 years—he plays a rather diverse array of characters in a diverse array of genres. Here he is leaned on for his skill with comedic delivery, something he didn’t get to do a ton of during his biggest television role, that of a winsome, art-loving survivor on The Walking Dead.

Gellert Grindelwald (Mads Mikkelsen)

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Image via Warner Bros.

Before the wizarding world was terrorized by Lord Voldemort, its stability was threatened by Gellert Grindelwald (Mads Mikkelsen), a former student of Durmstrang Institute, one of the many schools depicted in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. The character’s ambitions started out noble. He wanted witches and wizards to no longer live in secret, to be proud equals in a world otherwise run by muggles. It’s a dream he shared with Dumbledore. When a tragedy ended their friendship, Grindelwald did not continue down a noble path, but one driven by a fascistic belief in the superiority of magical beings over all others. It was a belief that unsurprisingly struck a chord with other members of the magical community, and that guaranteed he would live out his life at odds with his former friend.

This will be Mads Mikkelsen’s first round in the role. It was previously filled by Johnny Depp — with an assist from Colin Farrell. Depp played the character like a calm but kooky and calculating vampire. Mikkelsen is a more naturalistic actor who often gets hired to bring some genuine threat to sinister roles. If The Secrets of Dumbledore gets even a fraction of the diabolical worldliness he brought to his turn as Hannibal Lecter, then fans should be pleased.

Porpentina "Tina" Goldstein (Katherine Waterston)

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Ostensibly the female lead of the series, and Newt’s primary love interest (especially now that Zoë Kravitz’s Leta Lestrange is out of the picture), Tina (Katherine Waterston) is an auror, which is the wizarding world’s version of law-enforcement. She’s a New Yorker and a graduate of America’s wizarding school. She is a character who decides for herself what is just, even if her bosses disagree, and it is this righteousness that makes her a valuable partner to the good guys of the story. Fans who have seen the trailers and promo materials for this third Fantastic Beasts film have noticed the character’s veritable absence, despite being officially listed as a cast member, and being an indispensable aspect of Newt’s life story. Waterston (another Londoner, for those keeping score) has been publicly critical of JK Rowling’s transphobic rhetoric, so fans are left to speculate if this has had an impact on how her slice of the story will be told going forward, or if it’s merely some spoiler-avoidant editing in service of some narrative surprise.

Queenie Goldstein (Alison Sudol)

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Image via Warner Bros.

Tina’s outgoing sister and fellow New Yorker, Queenie (Alison Sudol) is a half-blood witch who’s able to pull memories and feelings from the minds of others. This makes her a legilimens. Not as innately heroic as her sister, she gets swept up in the momentum of the good fight because of her abilities, and because of the bond she forms with Jacob Kowalski. This latter relationship is what allows her to be swayed to the side of Grindelwald, with his promises of a wizard-witch utopia, one granting the freedom to love—and befriend—whomever they please. To give her love a fighting chance, she must fight on the opposing side of its recipient. It is in this tough spot that the story of the third film finds her.