Fantastic Beasts 3's Dumbledore Retcons Luckily Avoided 1 Fatal Mistake

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Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore retcons Albus Dumbledore’s (Jude Law) backstory from Harry Potter, but thankfully avoids going too far in that department. The Fantastic Beasts movies have increasingly been expanding Dumbledore’s history, both with his family — most notably brother Aberforth (Richard Coyle) — and his relationship with Gellert Grindelwald (previously Johnny Depp, now Mads Mikkelsen). Harry Potter only scratched the surface of the tragedies that lay in the Hogwarts Headmaster’s past, but the prequel spinoff series reveals more of its secrets, which inevitably means some changes as well.

The biggest of these was the reveal of Credence Barebone (Ezra Miller) as Dumbledore’s “brother,” Aurelius. Fantastic Beasts 3 instead confirmed he’s Albus’ nephew, the son of Aberforth, while fleshing out the brothers’ history in Godric’s Hollow alongside Grindelwald. This, of course, means revisiting the life and death of Ariana Dumbledore (Hebe Beardsall), whom The Secrets of Dumbledore confirms was an Obscurial, as many had expected.

Related: All Harry Potter & Fantastic Beasts Movies Ranked, Worst To Best

With that, there’s also discussion of the fateful duel that led to Ariana’s death. Previously, Harry Potter had established this as a three-way fight: Albus vs Aberforth vs Grindelwald, with Ariana killed in the chaos’ crossfire. Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore retcons this, however: in Albus’ telling, it was only he and Aberforth who duelled; Grindelwald merely stood by, watching and laughing as the two brothers fought. Still, though this does change the Dumbledores’ story, it fortunately doesn’t confirm exactly who killed Ariana, which would’ve been a Harry Potter retcon too far.

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