Harry Potter's Killing Curse Rules Were Just Retconned In 2 Ways
Warning: Spoilers for Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore.
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore deepens the mythology of the Wizarding World movies, but at the same time also retcons the rules of the Avada Kedavra killing curse. The Harry Potter movies and books have a well-established set of rules that the filmmakers take great care to stay true to. While there are instances of the Harry Potter rules being bent previously in service of the story, Fantastic Beasts 3 takes this a step further by retconning the rules for one of the most powerful spells in the Wizarding World.
In the world of Harry Potter, the killing curse, Avada Kedavra, is dark magic, and one of the three unforgivable curses (the others being the Imperius (loss of free will), and Cruciatus (torture)). When cast successfully, Avada Kedavra causes instantaneous death, with the punishment for the witch or wizard using it being life imprisonment in Azkaban Prison. Both the Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts movies have used the killing curse, and Harry's survival of it and the resultant scar is what makes him so famous in the Wizarding World. The killing curse crops up twice in Fantastic Beasts 3, and in both cases, the movie retcons part of the established rules of Avada Kedavra.
Related: Fantastic Beasts 3: Biggest Unanswered Questions
At the start of Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, magizoologist Newt Scamander is assisting a Qilin (a magical beast from Chinese mythology) give birth when they are attacked by Grindelwald's forces, and the mother is hit twice with the killing curse. The mother Qilin doesn't die immediately, though, and there is a whole chase sequence with Newt and the newborn Qilin that follows while the mother is
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