Before Fantastic Beasts The Crimes of Grindelwald, here’s what you must know about Harry Potter spin-off

Get ready to plunge into the magical world again as the second instalment of Fantastic Beasts, titled The Crimes of Grindelwald, hits the screens this Friday. A spin-off of Harry Potter franchise and the tenth movie on Wizarding World by JK Rowling, the current iteration is the second part of the Fantastic Beasts film series.

The film stars Eddie Redmayne as Newt Scamander, Johnny Depp as Gellert Grindelwald and Jude Law as Dumbledore. The film hits theatres almost two years after Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Here is a quick primer on the franchise before you book your tickets for the David Yates film.

What have we seen in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them?

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them saw Eddie Redmayne’s as a British magizoologist who travels to 1920s New York to research for a book on magical creatures. He befriends a no-maj and misplaces an enchanted suitcase filled to brim with exotic creatures. The city has been laid siege by a whirlwind of dark magic, called obscurial.

The obscurus is an orphan Credence(Ezra Miller) who’s desperate to attend a wizarding world and learn to control his powers. He is promised by Percival Graves (Colin Farrell) that if he helps find a 10-year-old girl, he will help him get in a school. At the conclusion of the story, Newt uses a spell to reveals that Graves was Grindelwald all along.

Who is Gellert Grindelwald?

A dark wizard, he is to Fantastic Beasts what Harry Potter was to Harry Potter series. Grindelwald was a friend of Albus Dumbledore and the two of them planned to establish a new world, where wizards would rule over Muggles “for the greater good”, but Grindelwald chooses the wrong path and turns evil.

New Characters are coming up With Professor Albus Dumbledore

Jude Law plays the younger Dumbledore in The Crimes of Grindelwald. We have seen him as a mentor, a father figure in Harry Potter but Fantastic Beasts shows him in a different light. When Newt asks him why he doesn’t take action against Dumbledore, he answers, “I cannot move against Grindelwald”. It seems Dumbledore is in love with Grindelwald; in the Mirror of Erised, it is him that Albus sees.

Newt will also be joined by two characters from his past -- his brother Theseus, which played by Callum Turner, and Zoe Kravitz as Leta Lestrange, a mysterious figure who only appeared as a photograph in the first film.

Who is Nagini?

Nagini was Voldemort’s final and most closely protected horcrux in the Potter series. Horcruxes are fragments of a wizard’s soul that have been housed inside objects. Voldemort had separated his soul into seven horcruxes, which Harry had systematically destroyed in the final book in the series.

Relationship between Dumbledore and Grindelwald

Albus Dumbledore was a childhood friend of Gellert Grindelwald and they both grew up together in Godric’s Hollow. Dumbledore was sent to Howgarts while Grindelwald was sent to Drumstrang. Most importantly, they both intended to search for the Deathly Hallows and establish a new world order where wizards would rule over Muggles.

In 2007, JK Rowling reveals that Dumbledore was gay and he was in love.