Some Thoughts on Dumbledore in Fantastic Beasts

(Dumbledore-related spoilers for The Deathly Hallows, if you don’t already know them.)

I loved the first Fantastic Beasts movie, but I’m admittedly a little apprehensive about the next installment in the new series.  The switch on Grindelwald definitely lessened my interest (I really wish we could have kept the one we had,) and I’m not a fan of the possibility of Newt and the other new characters having a decreasing presence as the plot goes on, which has been rumored – in particular, I adore Newt and want to keep him front and center.  However, I’m also all about expanding the wizarding world and seeing magic in new settings, and the casting of Jude Law as young Dumbledore seems like a neat move to me.

Then, along came David Yates.  In a recent interview, Yates said that the new film wouldn’t “explicitly” address Dumbledore’s sexuality, which presumably includes his past with Grindelwald.  In fact, Yates appeared to kind of shrug it off, saying that “all the fans are aware of” that history while suggesting this meant there was no reason to include it onscreen.  This sent the Internet into an uproar, with people understandably upset about erasure and invisible representation, and J.K. Rowling took to Twitter to suggest that people not send her abuse over something the director said; she reminded us that none of us have seen the script yet, and that there are three more movies after this one.

It’s true that we don’t yet know what’s in the movie, and it’s true that The Crimes of Grindelwald wouldn’t be the last opportunity to make an in-canon “explicit” acknowledgment that Dumbledore is gay and was once in love with Grindelwald.  However, there are a few thoughts I have on this subject.

We know that The Deathly Hallows (the book, at least) contains veiled references that Dumbledore had romantic feelings for Grindelwald in his youth, which Rowling confirmed when she announced after the book’s publication that she’d “always thought of Dumbledore as gay.”  We know that Dumbledore and Grindelwald ended up on different sides of the blood purity/magic supremacy question, and that Dumbledore eventually fought a duel with Grindelwald in which he (Dumbledore) took ownership of the Elder Wand.  Since we know the Fantastic Beasts series deals with efforts by the wizarding world to put a stop to Grindelwald, especially moving forward, and we know Law has been cast as Dumbledore, it’s reasonable to assume that Dumbledore will be involved in that plot and that we’ll likely see this duel at some point.

Given that information, here’s what I have to say.  If the circumstances were entirely the same but Grindelwald was a woman, all of the following would be true:

1. Fans wouldn’t still be debating whether Dumbledore and Grindelwald dated/Dumbledore’s feelings were unrequited/Grindelwald manipulated him/etc. because the book would have said so.
2. Rowling wouldn’t have had to tell us after the fact that Dumbledore was in love with Grindelwald because the book would have said so.
3. No interviewer would have asked Yates whether or not Dumbledore’s past feelings for Grindelwald would come up in The Crimes of Grindelwald because there would’ve been no reason to think they wouldn’t.
4. Even if someone had asked him that, Yates’s answer wouldn’t have been “all the fans are aware” that the big bad is someone Dumbledore used to be in love with and is now fighting against, so there’s no need to actually bring that up in the film, right?  At least, “not explicitly.”
5. Oh, and not a single person would be pointing out, “Well, there are still three movies after this one,” because this history would factor into all of them.

Seriously – if a witch Dumbledore once loved was evil and Dumbledore had to fight her years later, there’s no way in hell a movie would ignore that history.  To pretend otherwise, to act like this is a normal thing to do and has nothing to do with Dumbledore’s sexuality, is dismissive, cowardly, or both.  Again, I haven’t seen the film and don’t know what’s in it (if Yates’s comments are entirely off the mark here, I’ll gladly applaud the film for it,) but the remarks on the subject made by the production thus far don’t lead me to believe they get why this matters.