10 Best 2016 Movie Fan Theories

Since the last outing of the Harry Potter franchise in 2011, fans have been clamouring for something to fill the Hogwarts shaped hole in their lives and that came this year in the form of a Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Based on J. K. Rowling’s 2001 book of the same name, the film follows British wizard Newt Scamander and his adventures in 1920s New York’s secret wizarding community.

Those who have seen the film (warning: huge spoilers incoming!) will be aware of one major connection between Fantastic Beasts and the Wizarding World. Gellert Grindelwald, who made his first major appearance in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, is revealed to have been hiding in plain sight throughout Fantastic Beasts as his alter ego Percival Graves, played by Colin Farrell.

Some Harry Potter experts think that there’s more than just the Grindelwald connection going on in Fantastic Beasts, however. The idea of an Obscurus, a magical parasite that develops when witches and wizards attempt to suppress their powers, is introduced in the film and described by witch Porpentina Goldstein as ‘an unstable, uncontrollable dark force that bursts out and attacks’. Jackson Bird, a staff member of non-profit organisation the Harry Potter Alliance whose official title is Director of Wizard-Muggle Relations and is basically the go-to for all things boy wizard related, points out there’s a connection between the Obscurus and one of Rowling’s Harry Potter books. In the Deathly Hallows novel, Aberforth Dumbledore explains that he and Albus’ sister Ariana refused to use her magic but could never rid herself of it and it gradually drove her mad.

You wouldn’t be insane for thinking whatever happened to Ariana Dumbledore sounds suspiciously like an Obscurus. Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait until the Fantastic Beasts sequel is released in 2018 to find out if this will be expanded on, but that leaves plenty of room for more theorising and postulating in the meantime.