They Should Have Made Grindelwald a Metamorphmagus in the Fantastic Beasts Movies
23d 5h ago by literature.cafe/u/Teknevra in harrypotter@literature.cafe
Okay, I know that this is all kind of moot now, given the upcoming HBO reboot, but hear me out, this is something that's been living rent-free in my head and I need to get it off my chest.
In the Fantastic Beasts films, they should have made Gellert Grindelwald a Metamorphmagus.
The most obvious practical benefit is that it would have retroactively fixed the Depp-to-Mikkelsen recasting problem. Instead of just hoping audiences would handwave the switch, the story could have leaned into it.
Grindelwald deliberately adopting a new face, maybe as part of going deeper underground or evading aurors after the events of Crimes of Grindelwald.
What could have been an awkward production footnote becomes an in-universe power flex.
But beyond the damage control angle, I think it would have genuinely enriched the character.
Think about what Metamorphmagi represent thematically.
We only really know one in canon, Tonks, and she's fundamentally defined by warmth and authenticity.
She changes her appearance playfully, openly, for fun. Her shapeshifting is an expression of who she is, not a mask over it.
Now flip that. A Dark wizard with the same ability, using it for infiltration, manipulation, and political theater.
Grindelwald's whole ideology is about Wizarding supremacy and the "right" of magical people to rule: there's something genuinely unsettling about a man preaching purity and identity politics who can literally be anyone at will.
The hypocrisy almost writes itself. Who is the "real" Grindelwald? Does even he know anymore?
It would also have given him a power set that felt distinct from Voldemort.
They're often compared as the two great Dark Lords, but their methods and aesthetics are quite different: and a Metamorphmagus Grindelwald would have leaned further into that contrast.
Voldemort is about domination through terror and direct confrontation. Grindelwald is about persuasion, charisma, and ideology.
Shape-shifting fits his whole thing in a way it never would have suited Voldemort.