Thoughts on the Obscurial in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

(There be spoilers ahead.)

While Fantastic Beasts is definitely branded as a movie where some of the aforementioned fantastic beasts slip the leash and cause problems in the city – and that is a major part of the plot – it’s no mere lighthearted romp.  In the midst of the frantic creature-collecting is a new look at an insidious piece of magic that, to me, is might be the most disturbing thing I’ve seen in the Potterverse (that title had previously belonged to the graveyard scene in The Goblet of Fire – even though the later books/films get way darker, that one is just terrible every time – but I think this trumps that.)

An Obscurus/Obscurial.  Technically speaking, we probably got our first glimpse of this with the description of Dumbledore’s sister Ariana in The Deathly Hallows, but here, we see it, learn its name, and understand how the phenomenon works.  And it’s horrible.  A holdover from the days when Muggles burned suspected witches/wizards, the American wizards assume that Obscurials aren’t a thing anymore.  Newt knows better; he’s traveled the world and seen things that many assume no longer exist.  And really, with the paranoia about Muggles (nope – still not gonna say No-Maj) that runs through the wizarding society in the U.S., that desperate urgency for complete and total secrecy, it’s only natural that you could find an Obscurial somewhere like New York.

When the barest suggestion of witchcraft is enough to make others persecute you, you may feel that your only option is to persecute yourself for what you can feel stirring inside of you.  You hate it and fear it the way you know they would, you call it evil and try to clamp it down.  You take the hate others would have for you if they knew, and you swallow it.  Magic is like a spark, and you let it burn inside you because you’re too afraid to let it out and risk having anyone see its light.  So the spark smolders in your gut, in your heart, and you hate everything you are, which only makes you hate them for making you hate yourself.  When the hate saturates your skin and floods your vision, that’s when you can’t hold the magic inside you anymore.  It explodes out, raging like a forest fire, burning everything around you.  Then, when the wave of your destruction has blasted through everything, it soaks back into you, and you’re left standing in the ruin of what you’ve done.  More fear, more hate, and the cycle continues again and again until it eats your heart and there’s nothing left of you.

I mean… holy crap.  That is some seriously dark stuff, but it’s fascinating writing, too.  The first thing that came to mind was internalized homophobia, the darkness that can fester inside a person when they’re taught to believe that what they are is evil or unclean, a self-loathing that can lash out at others as well as themselves when it can no longer be contained.  Given the somewhat-unsure nature of this new series, I have no idea where we’re heading in the coming movies, but if they explore this incredible idea further – or give us others with the same complexity – the series has a definite chance of surpassing Harry Potter in my estimation.  Nothing but the most sincere props to Ms. Rowling.