‘Fantastic Beasts 2’: First Look at Jude Law’s Young Dumbledore

The Harry Potter prequel series Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them will continue with Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald in fall of next year. Today we got an official Fantastic Beasts 2 cast photo, and it featured our very first look at the young version of Albus Dumbledore, played by Jude Law.

Take a look for yourself:

Dumbledore is a crucial player in the next chapter(s) of the Fantastic Beasts story. It is, in fact, Dumbledore’s friendly (and possibly romantic) fallout with Johnny Depp’s Gellert Grindelwald that led to one of the darkest times (and epic duels) in Wizarding World history, during the muggle era of WWII.

In this photo, Law definitely channels the legacy of the elder Dumbledore from the main Harry Potter film series, who was played by both the late Richard Harris (Harry Potter 1 & 2) and Michael Gambon (Harry Potter 3 – 8). At the same time, there’s a shrewdness and edge in Law’s Dumbledore that we haven’t seen before from the character; just enough hint of darkness that Dumbledore’s temptation to join Grindelwald’s cause will seem like a believable conflict, despite viewers already knowing how it turns out. That’s about the best thing a prequel movie can hope for.

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindlewald hits theaters on November 16, 2018.