The first Fantastic Beasts movie ended on the big twist that Colin Farrell’s villainous auror Graves was actually Johnny Depp’s Gellert Grindelwald in disguise. It turns out the sequel, The Crimes of Grindelwald, features another character who has a secret, shocking true identity as well, and we must say, we certainly didn’t see it coming.
The big mystery at the center of Crimes is the truth of Credence Barebones’ heritage. As we know from Where to Find Them, Ezra Miller’s Obscurial was adopted – and abused – by the religious, witch-hating nut Mary Barebone. For the majority of the sequel, it’s assumed that Credence is really Corvus Lestrange, the brother of Leta Lestange who went missing as a baby. This option’s ruled out, though, when Leta shares her dark secret: she was arguably responsible for the real Corvus’ death.
By the final scene of the movie, Credence has aligned himself with Grindelwald and the dark wizard finally unveils who his new protege really is. The villain produces a wand and a phoenix as gifts for Credence, telling him he’s giving the boy back his “birthright.” What he means is that Credence truly belongs to the Dumbledore clan. His birth name? Aurelius Dumbledore.
This is a big shock for fans, as it’s previously been established that there were just three Dumbledore siblings – Albus, the eldest, his brother Aberforth and their late sister Ariana, who died as a teen. Aurelius would have to be much younger than his brothers and sisters as he’s said to be 18 in the first film – which is set in 1926 – as opposed to Albus who was born in 1888, for example.
That’s not too big of a deal, of course, but what is a conundrum is that Albus’ mother Kendra died in 1899, while his father Percival was locked up in Azkaban in 1900. Perhaps Percival had Aurelius with another woman following his release from prison, then? If not, this is another example of Rowling ignoring the continuity she set out in the books for the Fantastic Beasts movies (see: the confusion surrounding Professor McGonagall).
It’ll certainly be interesting to see how this twist impacts things moving forward, but tell us, were you shocked by the revelation in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald? Let us know by commenting down below.
