Newt Scamander: Who He Is, Who Plays Him and What Happens to Him

Newt Scamander is a British magizoologist, someone who studies and cares for magical creatures, and he is the central character of the Fantastic Beasts spinoffs. He first appears in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016), directed by David Yates, arriving in New York in 1926 with a case full of creatures. Eddie Redmayne plays him in all three films, and his casting was announced on June 1, 2015, with Yates directing from J.K. Rowling's first screenplay.

The credits give his name in slightly different forms: he is billed as Newt in the first film, and as Newt Scamander in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald and Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore.

How does he relate to Harry Potter himself? He belongs to the same wizarding world but to an earlier period, so he never shares a scene with Harry. The link between the two strands is Albus Dumbledore, who is headmaster in the main saga and, in the spinoffs, the man who recruits Newt for a secret mission. Because the Fantastic Beasts stories happen first, the chronological order on the Harry Potter movies in order page places all three Newt films ahead of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

What sets him apart from the fighters around Dumbledore? Newt tends to settle a crisis with patience and the contents of his case rather than a duel, and the trilogy is built around that habit.

Newt's story runs through three films, and each one pulls him deeper into the conflict between Albus Dumbledore and the dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald. He begins as a visitor chasing escaped animals and ends as the leader of Dumbledore's secret team.

In Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Newt reaches New York in 1926, and a chase after an escaped Niffler ends with his case swapped for that of the baker Jacob Kowalski, a man with no magic. Several creatures get loose in the city. Tina Goldstein arrests Newt, then joins him, along with her sister Queenie, to recapture the animals. The case also holds an Obscurus, a dangerous force that grows in magical children who hide their powers. The American wizarding authorities blame Newt for the damage, and Percival Graves has him and Tina sentenced to death. Queenie helps them escape. Newt then exposes Graves as Grindelwald in disguise, and his Thunderbird spreads a rain that wipes the memories of the city's ordinary people.

In Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, set in 1927, Newt wants his travel ban lifted. The Ministry of Magic offers a deal if he helps find Credence Barebone, who is thought to be in Paris. Newt turns the Ministry down, but Dumbledore asks him for the same favor, and he goes. In Paris, Yusuf Kama captures Tina, Newt and Jacob, and Newt later joins the fight against Grindelwald. Afterward he gives Dumbledore the vial holding the blood pact that stops Dumbledore and Grindelwald from fighting each other.

In Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, Newt helps a qilin give birth in China, then leads Dumbledore's team to Berlin, where Grindelwald is standing for leader of the wizarding world. He breaks his brother Theseus out of prison, and the team escapes with the living qilin hidden in one of several identical suitcases.

Newt's closest relationships are with one brother, three loyal friends and a mentor, set against two powerful enemies. Each is introduced with a different kind of tension.

Theseus Scamander, played by Callum Turner, is Newt's brother. He appears in The Crimes of Grindelwald and The Secrets of Dumbledore, and in the third film Newt gets him out of prison in Berlin. In that film Dumbledore explains the blood pact to both brothers and puts Newt in charge of the team.

Tina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston) first arrests Newt and then becomes his ally, and in the third film the two of them stand together in the wedding party. Her sister Queenie (Alison Sudol) is the mind reader who helps them escape in the first film, then falls under Grindelwald's influence in the second. Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler) is the ordinary baker who starts as an accident of the case swap and later belongs to the team Newt leads. The first film closes with Newt leaving him Occamy eggshells, which Jacob sells to open a bakery.

Newt is a former student of Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law), who asks him to find Credence in the second film and puts him at the head of the team in the third. Against them stand Gellert Grindelwald, who is disguised as Graves in the first film and is later played by Johnny Depp and then Mads Mikkelsen, and Credence Barebone (Ezra Miller), the Obscurus host Newt tries to protect rather than destroy.

Newt Scamander does not die in any of the three Fantastic Beasts films. He is alive and free at the end of The Secrets of Dumbledore, in the wedding party of Jacob Kowalski and Queenie Goldstein, with Tina Goldstein beside him.

That ending follows the breaking of the blood pact between Dumbledore and Grindelwald. The living qilin bows to Vicencia Santos instead of Grindelwald, and Dumbledore and Aberforth block Grindelwald's attempt to kill Credence, which breaks the pact. Grindelwald flees. Newt had carried the pact's vial to Dumbledore in the previous film and then led the team that stopped Grindelwald from taking power. The film leaves him with his case, his friends and a future it does not follow.

Is he still alive when Harry Potter arrives at Hogwarts? No film in the series states what became of Newt after the third spinoff, so the films leave that question open.

In my opinion, Newt is at his best when a film lets him solve a crisis with kindness instead of force, and the first film has most of those scenes.

My first pick is the case swap in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. It is a small piece of physical comedy that sets up the whole trilogy, and it gives Jacob Kowalski his way into the wizarding world. My second is the Obscurus sequence in the subway tunnel, where Newt tries to calm Credence while the Aurors close in. It could be argued that this is the one moment where his belief in gentleness is tested against the machinery of a government, and it is the scene that makes the later Credence plot matter. My third is the Thunderbird rain over New York at the end, a set piece that resolves a catastrophe with a creature rather than a spell duel.

From the sequels, the Berlin prison break for Theseus and the identical suitcases in The Secrets of Dumbledore are the sharpest uses of the case as a plot device.

The box office adds a footnote. According to The Numbers, the first film earned about $816 million worldwide, while Box Office Mojo puts The Crimes of Grindelwald at about $656 million and The Secrets of Dumbledore at about $407 million. Each film earned less than the last, which, in my view, makes the first the best place to start. The full figures are on the Harry Potter box office page.

For the two men who shape Newt's story, see Dumbledore and Grindelwald. The Harry Potter characters page lists everyone else, and how many Harry Potter movies there are is answered on the films page. No new film has been announced, so the new Harry Potter movie page explains why the HBO Harry Potter TV series is the focus.