"Fantastic Beasts" colors the world of magic in a way Harry Potter's adventures couldn't by taking us to a time well before "Sorcerer's Stone," far from the dorms of Hogwarts. The third entry in the franchise will premiere in theaters on April 15. The first two entries of the spin-off series, "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" and "Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald," are available to stream on HBO Max and Peacock. The "Fantastic Beasts" series keeps the franchise going with prequel films set in the 1920s. Considering Bellatrix goes on to have Voldemort's only child in Cursed Child, could Leta be a future mother-in-law-ish figure to the Dark Lord himself? Could she be a key figure in his rise, too? With four more films to go, we're sure to see more from her, especially now that Gellert Grindelwald is ready to stake his claim for a new world order.The world of " Harry Potter" continues to grow with more stories that build on the original books and films. There's no doubt Leta will have some familial connection with Bellatrix and Narcissa, but what exactly that relationship is has yet to be explored. Newt keeps a picture of her at his desk, but even he knows "people change"-whatever that means. Leta LeStrange doesn't get much love in the first Fantastic Beasts movie, but we find out she was a former friend/flame of Newt's who betrayed him somehow and exists as "a taker," according to Queenie and her legilimency gifts. Before Bellatrix and Narcissa carried the family into complete nefariousness under the Dark Lord's direction, there was Leta. The Lestrange family became a major part of the mayhem that arose at Lord Voldemort's end, but Fantastic Beasts proves there was more to their backstory than we might've guessed. There's a lot to unpack with their history, so his introduction seems like a beginning, rather than an end. His eventual duel with Dumbledore would be his undoing after he committed unthinkable acts with Dark Arts. In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the character was presented in retrospect, as he and Dumbledore had fostered a friendship and shared plans to recover the Deathly Hallows (the Elder Wand, the Cloak of Invisibility, and the Resurrection Stone) to make the world safer and freer for wizards before Grindelwald broke bad and killed Dumbledore's little sister Ariana. However, the reintroduction of Grindelwald certainly sets the stage for some interesting character history deep dives to come (which is likely, considering there are four more movies planned for this new series), especially when it comes to Professor Dumbledore. Polyjuice Potion impersonations ran rampant throughout the Harry Potter series, so perhaps the big twist in Fantastic Beasts-that is, that Gellert Grindelwald had disguised himself as Auror Percival Graves throughout most of the events of the movie-shouldn't have been a surprise. Even the clock that measures danger at the Magical Congress of the United States of America might be a nod to the Weasleys' location monitor, and the floating apple that eats itself in front of the boy is a callback to the scene when Harry used the invisibility cloak to sneak into Hogsmeade and walk around with a red lollipop. It was just one of several callbacks to the cheekier bits from the Potter-verse-the chaotic highway sequence was also a lot like what went down with the Knight Bus, the newspaper images floating around with a wanted criminal on display (might this wanted wizard Alberto Macellarius might be the new Sirius Black?), the use of the "Alohomora" spell, the tiny doorways to the wizarding community lurking around muggledom/no-maj space. although, sadly, the Weasleys' colorful adaptations of the phrase didn't make it into the new movie. Even though American muggles are called "no-majs" and there's plenty of other new terminology to take in during Fantastic Beasts, there's one utterance that's a direct replica of something said back in the Harry Potter days: "Merlin's beard!" You might recall hearing that at least twice from Cedric Diggory's dad Amos and Horace Slughorn in the prior films, but the expression's popularity as a colloquialism for surprise in the Wizarding World has obviously lasted through several generations.
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