Every serious Harry Potter fan will have seen yesterday’s atmospheric cast photo that introduces the major players of Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. There’s a lot of information jammed into the pic, too, notably the confirmation that Johnny Depp will continue to play the titular dark wizard after his cameo at the end of Fantastic Beasts and our first proper look at Jude Law as a young (well, middle-aged) Albus Dumbledore.
But there’s more to this cast photo than meets the eye, and eagle-eyed fans have done a bit of detective work and concluded some very interesting things about Claudia Kim’s character, seen snuggling up to Ezra Miller’s Credence in the photo below. Billed as a ‘Maledictus,’ the press release describes her as “the carrier of a blood curse that destines her ultimately to transform into a beast.”
A previous announcement also explained that the character was teased in Fantastic Beasts as a member of the ‘Circus Arcanus,’ seen on this background poster. Said poster also billed an appearance by the ‘enchanting Snake Girl.’ Can you see where we’re going with this?
It seems clear that Claudia Kim’s character will at some point be trapped in serpentine form, and it’s only a tiny logical jump from there to theorize that she could eventually become Voldemort’s pet (and Horcrux) Nagini. How Voldemort first encountered Nagini is as yet unknown, so it could provide a nice and subtle linking point between Newt Scamander and the Harry Potter stories.
Or, of course, this could be a bunch of baloney cooked up by fans with way too much time on their hands. The only way to find out is to keep your ears to the ground for the latest on Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, which is scheduled for release in one year from now, on November 16th, 2018.
