“Harry Potter” Meets “Fantastic Beasts”: Seven “Harry Potter” References in “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald”

The second trailer for Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald dropped recently. This trailer, more than the previous one, is full of nods to the Harry Potter series and I couldn’t help comparing the two trailers with the Potter series.

 

Dumbledore and Grindelwald

 

 

Obviously, this movie, and presumably the following films, will give further background on Dumbledore and Grindelwald’s relationship, something that was only briefly touched on in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and skipped in the films.

 

Boggart

 

 

The beginning of the second trailer reminded me so much of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban since both films have a line of students ready to face a boggart. It had the same lighthearted and whimsical feel that the scene in Prisoner of Azkaban had. I imagine that since Dumbledore was the Transfiguration teacher when Lupin was a student, Dumbledore must have given him some pointers. Either that or they were on a very similar wavelength.

 

Mirror of Erised

 

 

This scene showed the extent of his feelings toward Grindelwald. Of course, young and old Dumbledore might have seen something different when they looked in the mirror, but it’s still great to get some background on Dumbledore.

 

Nicolas Flamel

 

 

Even though we never saw him on-screen, Nicolas Flamel played such a large part in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Voldemort wanted the Sorcerer’s Stone to return to strength when he had to inhabit other people’s bodies to survive. I wonder why Flamel is in this movie.

 

Hogwarts

 

 

The trailers open with aerial views of Hogwarts followed with shots of the castle’s familiar corridors. It’s been too long since we’ve had new footage of Hogwarts and it’s great going back.

 

Deluminator

 

 

In both trailers, we someone using Dumbledore’s Deluminator to turn off streetlights. This was also how the very first Harry Potter film opened and I loved seeing this callback.

 

Deathly Hallows

 

 

At the very end of the trailer, there was a brief flash of the Deathly Hallows symbol, which, as the name suggests, played a huge part in Deathly Hallows. With the next four Fantastic Beasts movies, hopefully, we’ll explore Dumbledore’s and Grindelwald’s connections to them in further depth.

 

I can’t wait to learn what other nuggets and bits of information we’ll see when more footage gets released and in November when the movie comes out.