Warning: This post contains spoilers for Secrets of Dumbledore.
More than 3 years after the release of the last Wizarding World movie, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore has rescued the divisive Harry Potter prequel series from a serious quality slump, but it is riddled with plot holes and problems. After the previous movie introduced the confusing Credence Dumbledore twist, Secrets of Dumbledore was faced with some serious narrative heavy lifting. And while the story works out and sets up a better Wizarding World future, the journey is deeply flawed.
Even before getting into Secrets of Dumbledore‘s story problems and plot holes, the question of how it would deal with Mads Mikkelsen replacing Johnny Depp as Grindelwald was simply side-stepped. While this may appear to be a plot hole, presenting the idea that Grindelwald still looks the same in-universe avoids the need to explain why Johnny Depp was replaced as Grindelwald. Mikkelsen is great as Grindelwald, so the change is an easy one to accept.
Secrets of Dumbledore‘s other plot holes and mistakes are significantly less simple to accept, ranging from terrible character decisions to complications to established Harry Potter lore. Here’s every plot hole, mistake, and confusing headscratcher moment in Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore.
Obviously, the Fantastic Beasts twist that Credence is a Dumbledore is still very important in Secrets of Dumbledore, even if Credence is pushed back as a character, but the narrative loops Crimes of Grindelwald jumped through for the twist now feel pointless. On the one hand, the Dumbledore family secret was retconned to Credence being Aberforth’s son, rather than Albus’ mysteriously forgotten brother, which fixed the plot-hole of Percival Dumbledore being in Azkaban when he was conceived. But the reveal that Aberforth had a summer fling with an unknown girl while Albus was falling in love with Grindelwald doesn’t really answer several other questions. Why did Grindelwald say Credence was Albus’ brother? How did Credence end up removed from the Lestrange family? Was the whole sinking cruise liner story a meaningless way of bringing Yusuf Kama in – only to ultimately sideline him too? Why couldn’t Aberforth’s lover have simply been killed off and Credence put up for adoption before finding his way to the US? That would have been a far more succinct way of avoiding all the unnecessary silliness.
In The Secrets of Dumbledore‘s opening, Credence and his fellow Grindelwald zealots steal the Qilin calf from Newt and slay the mother in order to set up Grindelwald’s plan to steal the International Confederation of Wizards election. Having succeeded in the difficult task of overpowering Newt, despite his access to his Swiss Army Bowtruckle and magical plot-armor-wearing Niffler, Credence just leaves him injured and goes back to Grindelwald. Despite being thoroughly evil Dark Wizards, his fellow baddies also depart, without casting a killing curse that would have ruined Dumbledore’s entire plan to stop Grindelwald. There’s obviously incompetence to take into account, but morally, it doesn’t fit with their previous actions at all.
In every Harry Potter and Wizarding world movie, when Avada Kedavra is used, it kills instantly, extinguishing life like a flame. The exception, of course, is Harry Potter, but that is by design. As Barty Crouch says when disguised as Alastor Moody, “…There’s no counter-curse. There’s no blocking it.” But Secrets of Dumbledore introduces two wrinkles to that: first, the Qilin mother takes two Avada Kedavra curses and doesn’t immediately die (she dies agonizingly slowly, in fact), and then at the end, Albus and Aberforth Dumbledore manage to conjure a counter-curse that blocks Grindelwald’s attempt to kill Credence. This could be said to be a version of the spell that protected Harry Potter, but it fundamentally undermines the magic of Harry Potter surviving Voldemort’s curse entirely.
Tina Goldstein’s absence from Secrets of Dumbledore is bad enough, but she’s explained away as being too busy in her new job as head of the US Auror’s Office, and does appear at the end. Nagini, on the other hand, who is presented as a hugely key figure in Crimes of Grindelwald and is basically Credence’s one friend, simply vanishes from existence and does not return for the sequel. Even if it’s done to make Credence more isolated, it would have been nice for a second of thought to go into why she isn’t involved.
In Fantastic Beasts‘ distant future, Albus Dumbledore has grown into a somewhat mischievous, rascally old wizard who thinks nothing of sending children into Forbidden Forests for detention or emotionally abusing a child for his own gains. He’s also needlessly awful about his brother Aberforth, who he obviously had history with, but for no reason at all, slandered as illiterate.
“My own brother, Aberforth, was prosecuted for practising inappropriate charms on a goat. It was all over the papers, but did Aberforth hide? No, he did not! He held his head high and went about his business as usual! Of course, I’m not entirely sure he can read, so that may not have been bravery …”
Only, Dumbledore knew his brother could read. He’d seen him communicating with his son by magic mirror during the time of Secrets of Dumbledore. So why the needless pot-shot at his brother who wasn’t there to defend himself those many years later? Is the real secret of Dumbledore just that he’s a bully?
As with Minerva McGonagall’s appearance in Crimes of Grindelwald, her subsequent appearance in the sequel still makes no sense. In her original Pottermore biography, McGonagall’s was said to have been born in October 4, 1935, eight years after the events of her first appearance in Fantastic Beasts 2 and (somehow) seven after the sequel’s events. After some housekeeping that was removed from Pottermore, but even then, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix confirms McGonagall has been teaching at Hogwarts for “thirty-nine years this December” in the 1990s. So how was she already teaching at Hogwarts two decades before then? It’s not like the cameo is even necessary.
In the Harry Potter movies, Azkaban is established as the most fearsome wizarding prison of all time, where the very worst Dark Wizards are locked away forever. While at the warden’s pleasure, the only crime that will see an Azkaban prisoner – including mass murderers like Bellatrix Lestrange – subjected to the Dementor’s kiss is attempting to escape. Otherwise, the strongest punishment is life imprisonment. In the German prison introduced in Secrets of Dumbledore, every prisoner, no matter what their crime is brutally murdered by a giant scorpion monster with no trial. Clearly, there is corruption involved, but the prison also clearly predates Grindelwald’s rise, suggesting the German wizarding community had a zero tolerance policy on human rights.
After William Nadylam’s Yusuf Kama was introduced as a secondary antagonist initially in Crimes of Dumbledore, the sequel largely runs out of things to do with him. His part in Dumbledore’s plan sees him infiltrate Grindelwald’s followers and seemingly betray Dumbledore for no obvious advantage other than misdirection. The cost to Yusuf is monumental as Grindelwald takes away the memory of his sister Leta Lestrange to stop him from seeking revenge, and begs several questions. For one, why doesn’t Grindelwald expand the charm to remove memories of Yusuf’s loyalty to Dumbledore? If he even remotely suspects Yusuf retains any, that is – which he does. It also changes the whole nature of the memory extraction spell, which previously seemed to rely on the memory being willingly given up, rather than just stolen. And as for Yusuf, he willingly gives up all memory of his sister Leta and it’s just never mentioned again.
During Secrets of Dumbledore’s ending, the Qilin infant that replaces its undead sibling in the election ceremony unwittingly chooses Dumbledore as the next leader of the Wizarding World, thanks to his supposedly pure heart. This is a lovely endorsement of a great character, but it makes precisely no sense and misunderstands Dumbledore entirely. He is the same wizard who coined the “For The Greater Good” motto, which he didn’t just employ while aligned with Grindelwald, but throughout his life. He happily put Severus Snape, Draco Malfoy, and Harry Potter in grave danger for the greater good of defeating Voldemort, not to mention putting his very poorly-suited Fantastic Beasts crew in danger without a believable plan. By his every action, Dumbledore was a man defined by taking dangerous risks, balancing morally grey decisions against the endgame, and who had been partly responsible for the death of his own sister. No amount of circumstantial virtue can wash that many crimes away.
Even if you accept that Jacob Kowalski’s role in Dumbledore’s plot against Grindelwald is designed as either pure misdirection, a nod to his shifted stance on Muggle value, or his faith in him as an individual, he still puts a bumbling baker with a fake wand in the line of fire of a Muggle-hating mass murderer. The plan to have Jacob implicated in an assassination attempt against Mads Mikkelsen’s charismatic villain is a step beyond complex and is even more dangerous than putting Harry Potter in harm’s warm to take down Dumbledore. The fact that Jacob gets out at all is pure luck, but it’s preposterously presented as by Dumbledore’s design. In reality, he can’t possibly have known how that would play out.
In the Harry Potter movies, Xenophilius Lovegood (Rhys Ifans) introduces the history of the Deathly Hallows, telling the story of the Three Brothers, but also confirming that the Sign of the Deathly Hallows was adopted by Gellert Grindelwald as a symbol of his power. It was effectively adopted as the Wizarding World’s version of the swastika, with Grindelwald’s followers proudly displaying it as an indication of their superiority over Muggles. For some reason though, Secrets of Dumbledore ends with Grindelwald introducing a new symbol of power – a sign that feels more like a political logo, which draws from the Deathly Hallows and includes his initials. So are we to believe he rebranded at some point, perhaps after his new logo turned out not to be as successful? Or is this another retcon, perhaps designed to help Harry Potter fans who chose to tattoo themselves with the Deathly Hallows reconcile the history of the logo?
It’s nitpicky perhaps, but when the heartwarming finale of Secrets of Dumbledore sees Jacob and a redeemed Queenie married in the former’s bakery, they invite all of their close friends other than Dumbledore. He sits outside the bakery as the ceremony goes on and then just walks away, presumably not invited, despite that being absolute nonsense. Or Dumbledore decides he has something better to do?
The magic that stopped Grindelwald and Dumbledore fighting one another was a smart narrative device for a while, but Secrets of Dumbledore proved the problem with writing in such rigid rules. Because in undoing Fantastic Beasts 2‘s blood pact, Secrets of Dumbledore had to break its own narrative rules entirely. Dumbledore’s blood oath was supposed to stop him from even thinking about moving against Grindelwald, but apparently planning an entire elaborate heist (or at the very least facilitating the plans by Newt and co) is fine? And the blood oath is unbreakable, but just trying to save someone Grindelwald was trying to kill is enough to break it? Why would such strong, supposedly unbreakable magic have such a ridiculously weak loophole?
The Fantastic Beasts timeline suggests Secrets of Dumbledore is set in the late 1920s, and there’s a confirmation that the events happen just a year after than the first Fantastic Beasts movie, when Jacob says he’s only known Newt for a year. That contradicts the suggestion that Secrets of Dumbledore is set in 1932. Even taking that into account, Secrets of Dumbledore‘s ending would be no later than 1933, leaving 12 years between Dumbledore breaking the blood oath and his final defeat of Grindelwald. What exactly did he do for more than a decade knowing his former lover was intent on mass murder and Dark wizard supremacy? Shouldn’t he be held somewhat accountable for allowing Grindelwald’s rise?