The trailer for the second installment of Harry Potter’s new iteration Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindelwald just dropped, and with it quite a few jaws when it appeared Dumbledore’s sexuality was referenced on screen for the first time.
The new saga fated to span over five films is set in the 1920s, 70 years before the events of Harry Potter. Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law), later to become Harry Potter’s headmaster, will play a major role alongside the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them magizoologist, Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne).
Amongst the shots of Paris, explosions, circuses, stylish coats and some weird CGI cats, the trailer also gave us a glimpse of Dumbledore looking into the Mirror of Erised to see the principal antagonist, Gellert Grindelwald (played by Johnny Depp) standing beside him.
The Mirror of Erised shows “the deepest and most desperate desires of our hearts.” In Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone it was the mirror that showed Harry a world in which his parents were still alive. As Dumbledore says at the time: “Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen, or been driven mad, not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible.”
This shot suggests Dumbledore, despite fighting against Grindelwald’s vision that wizards should come out of the shadows and subjugate the non-magical world, still loves Grindelwald. So it looks like his sexuality, famously outed by author J.K. Rowling in 2007 as being gay, is going to be made unambiguous in the new movie. On the whole LGBTQI+ fans seem to be cautiously excited.
Back in January, David Yates, director of the final four Harry Potter movies and the first Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them movie, may have hinted at this, but landed himself in hot water.
with Entertainment Weekly that Dumbledore’s sexuality in Crimes of Grindelwald is referenced in the movie, but “not explicitly.” He went on to say that "I think all the fans are aware of [Dumbledore’s sexuality]. He had a very intense relationship with Grindelwald when they were young men. They fell in love with each other's ideas, and ideology and each other."
The backlash from fans at the time was significant, the general feeling being that once again the Harry Potter franchise was taking credit for championing diversity without doing anything within book or movie canon to warrant it.
Post-facto, J.K. Rowling has not only announced Dumbledore as gay, but Anthony Goldstein (a side character in the books) as Jewish, while also commending the stage play The Cursed Child’s interpretation of Hermione as black saying she had never made Hermione’s race explicit.
Coming from the person who not only was consulted on every Harry Potter movie but co-produced two of them, and therefore witnessed and is partially responsible for the decisions that led to their diversity issues (for example, 99.53 per cent of the dialogue is said by white cast members, the films only just pass the , and there is no explicit queer representation at all) it did seem to some too little too late.
Although it is possible the shot may mean something different in context (or may not even be in the movie at all), the trailer implied the reason Dumbledore couldn’t take on Grindelwald himself and was instructing Eddie Redmayne’s character, Newt Scamander, to do so in his stead was because presumably Dumbledore is so intoxicated by Grindelwald he doesn’t trust himself near him.
This way of unveiling the sexuality of the puppet master behind the Harry Potter saga may not be as explicit as Dumbledore saying on screen ‘I am gay,’ but it is perfect for the character. Dumbledore was a man of secrets and lies, having his deepest and most desperate desire spoken boldly on film would be incongruous, showing this to the audience through the mirror that only Dumbledore himself can see makes perfect sense.
But J.K. Rowling and Warner Brothers aren’t out of the woods yet, as even though this would bring the LGBTQI+ representation up to one in the Harry Potter franchise, that representation is still of a highly toxic relationship that J.K. Rowling herself has said is a “great tragedy”.
Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindelwald comes out on 16 November.
