It’s only been a year, but Newt Scamander has come a long way since he first backpacked through New York City in the year 1926 — and so has his film franchise.

Despite its title, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them wasn’t really about Newt’s efforts to write his book on magizoology. Instead, it set up the real premise of J.K. Rowling’s five-part film series: the rise and inevitable fall of dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald. Now, it’s the year 1927 and the typically shy wizard is about to embark on a new mission, this one for his old Hogwarts professor, Albus Dumbledore.

What happened after Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them? Where are the members of Team Newt now? Who are the new faces coming into the fold in the sequel? These questions and more are answered from Fandango’s visit to the London set.

(Psst! We also scrounged up some secrets on the film.)

 

Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne)

Newt isn’t super happy that he’s reached Gilderoy Lockhart status. He completed his book, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and it’s now the bestselling compendium of magical creatures in the wizarding world.

  • Secrets: According to Redmayne, a scene was cut from the script that involved Newt “trying to deal with fame” and “all these screaming girls.” The actors adds, “You definitely get a sense that he’s not thrilled with the fact that the response has been so huge because it’s had ramifications on how wizards are treating creatures.”

When we find Newt again, he’s desperate to get back to New York to see Tina Goldstein, but the Ministry of Magic (yes, we’re returning to the British Ministry) won’t let him because of his last trip to New York. He’s been living in South London in an apartment with a magically tricked out basement with a new assistant named Bunty, who may have a little attraction to her coworker. But soon Newt is contacted by his old Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, Albus Dumbledore, to go on a mission to thwart Gellert Grindelwald’s plans in Paris.

  • Secrets: Some of Newt’s old buddies, like Pickett and the niffler, are coming back — but there are also baby nifflers! One Redmayne’s “favorite scenes” to shoot involved these little tykes “causing havoc” and they reminded him of his own 15-month-old newborn at the time. “The baby nifflers retain many of the qualities of my 15-month-old,” he joked.

 

Tina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston)

Tina and Newt had a falling out that Redmayne would like to think of as a “misunderstanding.” Art director Martin Foley calls it a “miscommunication.” Tina doesn’t have too much time to think on the matter because she’s been reinstated as an Auror for MACUSA (Magical Congress of the United States of America). Of course, she loves her self-imposed unauthorized missions - and her latest is super unauthorized.

She heads to Paris because she knows Credence survived MACUSA’s attack and she hopes to close in on him before the rest of the wizarding world sees the young Obscurial as a threat. This mission puts her in the crosshairs of Newt’s mission for Dumbledore, as well as other forces on the hunt for Credence.

 

Queenie Goldstein (Alison Sudol) and Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler)

That look Queenie gave to the newly obliviated Jacob at the end of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them should give you a clue as to their future. Her love for Jacob is directly at odds with MACUSA’s laws and forms a rift between her and sister Tina, so the mind-reading Legilimens takes matters into her own hands by magically transporting them to England where magical laws around wizard and muggle relations are more lax.

Still, when Jacob wakes up in England with no memory of how he got there, his thoughts alone are enough to drive away Queenie in tears. So they, too, end up in Paris as Jacob seeks Newt’s help to find her.

  • Secrets: Director David Yates describes The Crimes of Grindelwald as “a very interesting synthesis between a political thriller and love story.” He says, “It’s a really rich meal. It's full of different textures and tones and the challenge always is to combine all of those textures into one.”

 

Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law)

This isn’t the Dumbledore we know from the Harry Potter movies, but he’s on his way to be. This Dumbledore is more of a “rebel,” says Yates.

“He’s quite complicated. He's far from perfect. He's a inspiring teacher, all the pupils love him. But as ever, being Dumbledore, he's a wonderful manipulator and he has this incredible ability to sort of maneuver people into situations that they may not want to be maneuvered into.”

For reasons only known by himself, Dumbledore can’t move against Grindelwald. So he needs the help of Newt, whose primary gift, Redmayne explains, is “to reach out to broken people.”

Dumbledore has a history with Grindelwald that goes back to when they were kids. Living in Godric’s Hollow, Dumbledore was seduced by Grindelwald and his mindset of magical domination. Their falling out lead to the death of Dumbledore’s sister Ariana, who may have been an Obscurial like Credence.

  • Secrets: In 2007, Rowling revealed Dumbledore to be gay and suggested his attraction to Grindelwald was what clouded his better judgement. As we see in the trailers for The Crimes of Grindelwald, Dumbeldore’s inner most desire in the Mirror of Erised is his former ally. However, producer David Heyman confirms this won’t be addressed in the film. “I don't think it's something we talk [about]. Again, see the film,” he says. “I think the film will answer that question.” When asked if this aspect drives the relationship between the two wizards, Heyman says, "Not driving it. But it might as well be a part of it. I mean, we all know that they've had a friendship, a very close friendship.”

 

Gellert Grindewald (Johnny Depp)

You’ve already seen hints at the opening scene of the film. Grindelwald is still in MACUSA custody, but he’s being transported back to Europe to face trial for his crimes. "He's a bit too hot to handle,” Foley says. Aurors plan on ferrying him off via thestral-pulled carriage at the top of New York’s Woolworth building (the top of MACUSA headquarters). That’s when Grindelwald makes his escape and flees to Paris, where he’s “hiding in plain sight” as he amasses followers, Foley notes.

  • Secrets: Heyman calls Grindelwald a “delicious villain” because “he has the power of persuasion.” Not a magical power of persuasion, but a more charismatic take on it. “He’s an absolutist,” Heyman says. “He sees only one path. He believes in superiority of wizard kind over human kind and makes a very persuasive case for that. Not one that I am prepared to follow. Not one I suspect you're prepared to follow. But you can understand why some people do, and that's really, really scary.”

The dark wizard has been “trying to advertise” his dogma of wizard domination to the magical community, and now we’ll meet some of his henchmen: Abernathy (Kevin Guthrie), Carrow (Maja Bloom), Krafft (Simon Meacock), Krall (David Sakurai), Nagel (Claudius Peters), and Rosier (Poppy Corby-Tuech) are his inner acolytes who would sacrifice anything to support their master.

Abernathy seems to be a secret informant for Grindelwald in MACUSA. Remember when he stopped Queenie as she tried to leave with Newt, Tina and Jacob tucked in the briefcase? Carrow, meanwhile, is a name mentioned in The Deathly Hallows; the Carrow twins used the Cruciatus Curse as punishment for students. Rosier is another name from Harry Potter; in Goblet of Fire, Harry gazes into the Pensieve and Durmstrang’s Igor Karkaroff revealed the name Rosier as a Death Eater.

  • Revelio!: Yates admits the current political climate in the world today has naturally “influenced” The Crimes of Grindelwald. He doesn’t see it as “a direct political counterpoint” to the discourse, but promoting the values of “tolerance,” “understanding” and the “celebration of diversity,” while warning of "the promotion of fear" and “the persecution of otherness.” He explains, “What’s slightly scary is they're becoming more relevant now. So what’s wonderful is that we're making a movie that will be seen by millions of people and millions of young people, and we're making a story that celebrates tolerance, acceptance of the other, and sort of be cynical when people pretend they have all the answers at a simplistic level, because they probably don’t."

 

Credence (Ezra Miller)

Clearly, Credence survived the MACUSA attack in the subway. After the battle, the Obscurial was able to reform himself and abscond to Paris, where he joins a traveling night circus in his pursuit to find his birth mother. Credence now has control over the Obscurus within him, which makes him a threat to most of the magical world.

His main ally is Maledictus (Claudia Kim), the star attraction at the Circus Arcanus for the blood curse that threatens to permanently transform her into a beast one day. The two escape the circus and its cruel ringmaster, Skender, but there’s someone after Credence: Yusuf Kama (William Nadylam). The French-African wizard says he’s the last surviving male of his pureblood family and he’s been searching for Credence obsessively for years.

 

Theseus Scamander (Callum Turner)

There’s a sort of awkward situation going on between the Scamander brothers. Newt fell in love with Leta Lestrange (Zoe Kravitz) at Hogwarts, but she grew up to be not only the assistant of the British Ministry’s head of Magical Law Enforcement, Torquil Travers, but also Theseus’ fiancé. Now, as a acclaimed war hero turned head of the Ministry’s Auror Office, he often finds himself at odds with Newt and his job.

  • Secrets: Turner “joked with the guys” that playing Theseus was “like doing a biopic,” since there’s so much stuff in online Harry Potter encyclopedias. The research paid off. Redmayne mentions that when Turner “mined that material” he ended up changing Rowling’s “opinion of where she might take [the character].”

“He's kind of the opposite of Newt,” Turner explains. "He’s gone through the same schooling, obviously, but once he got out he decided that the establishment was the way to fight the good fight. Theseus is, or may be, quite more rigid or just part of the establishment.”

Since Theseus and Tina are both Aurors, Turner teased there might be some fun interactions between them.