With the release of the second installment of the Fantastic Beasts series we finally get a good insight into the direction, this series is headed towards. The first movie was basically a setup for the series and tried to introduce all the important characters and stuff we needed to know for this whole new Potter franchise. The movie, Crimes Grindelwald released on 16 November 2018 worldwide and has received mixed reviews and has earned lesser than what was expected at the box office. It is true that the movie has a lot of flaws but the biggest is perhaps the flaws in the writing and some rather careless mistakes.
Even though this is not a review for the movie, it is important to say that the movie had numerous flaws in different areas that are basically the reason for the mixed reviews and confused Potterheads all around the world right now.
There are some instances in the movie that required some background and explanations and even more context for the audience to feel more engaged but instead, a lot was left unexplained and fans had to make do with what they got. Some plotholes seemed like they were intentionally put in to increase the excitement of the fans or for ‘fan-service’. However, there is one big plothole regarding the Elder wand that needs to be addressed.
As we all know Grindelwald has been obsessed with the Elder wand and according to the last Harry Potter book, he stole and won the wand from a wandmaker named Gregorovitch at an early age. Since then he has possessed the most powerful wand and has performed powerful magic with it.
In the first Fantastic Beasts movie, we saw Grindelwald in the body of Percival Graves who was played very well by actor Colin Farrell. Throughout the movie Grindelwald or shall we say Graves used another wand because obviously him using the Elder wand would not just have raised suspicion for him in the wizarding world but would also have given away such a big plot reveal of the film as the audience already knows how the Elder wand looks quite well.
So Graves uses an ordinary wand in the film and the Elder wand is not even shown in the first film. However, according to the Potterverse, a wand has a mind of its own and its allegiance is a pretty complicated concept. Even if a wizard uses another wand for the moment if he/she is defeated in a duel or merely disarmed they lose the allegiance of their original wand.
Now if you remember at the end of the first movie, Graves is disarmed by Tina and then bound by a beast called the Swooping evil. It is then revealed that it was Grindelwald all along but the fact that he was disarmed by Tina would mean that he lost the allegiance to the Elder wand right there.
At the beginning of Crimes of Grindelwald, we see how Grindelwald simply gets the Elder wand back and performs extraordinary magic with it throughout the movie.
This plothole is complicated and maybe the filmmakers simply didn’t pay attention to it but it is rather important seeing how the Elder wand and its allegiance are super important to the story and to the character of Grindelwald itself. It is known to be the most powerful among the three Hallows and has been possessed by the two most powerful wizards in the Potterverse that is Grindelwald and Albus Dumbledore.
