Jaap BuitendijkWhat just happened here?
Harry Potter grew up within a turn of the page at the end of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and then Daniel Radcliffe got a little salt-and-peppery at the end of the film saga. And now there's a sequel stage play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. But we'll forever think of the adolescent wizard and his schoolmates at Hogwarts as children.
Potter's the boy who lived, after all.
So while the series was unfolding, both in books and on the big screen, we had our grown-up crush-crushes on the elders of the franchise, whether a Lupin fan, a moody Mad-Eye girl, a Sirius Black groupie or a loyal disciple of Severus Snape.
But now Rowling has created a protagonist hero we can all crush-crush on right away:
That's right, Newt Scamander.
While he's just a mention as the author of the textbook Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them in the Harry Potter series, the magizoologist got his own tome in 2001 and will be on the big screen Nov. 18 in the form of Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne, an actor ripped from the pages of a J.K. Rowling story if we ever saw one.
So there was nothing to quibble with when that casting was announced. And the initial artwork and the trailer did nothing to dispel our excitement. But now, checking out the new image released early this morning in a social media post that also promised a "FANTASTIC" announcement in the near future...
Is it just us or is Newt a bit on the sexy side?!
This is hardly our first glimpse of Redmayne in full Scamander mode, but there's some sort of perfect storm of attractive attributes going on in this particular poster. Let's investigate, wizard-scientist-style:
There's the obvious: Redmayne himself. The Spring Awakening hair, the striped scarf, the coat, the case—he's got the disheveled scholar look down. Thinking-woman's dreamboat, check!
Then there's the subtle, you-almost-miss-it-then-can't-see-anything-else glow of the magic wand, at attention beside him as he surveys the cityscape. The unequivocal proof he's both someone special and at the ready in case the world—which is obviously going through some hard times—needs him.
Not to mention, we'll take the reminder that this is a Harry Potter-related tale any time Warner Bros. Pictures wants to impress that point upon us.
And then, there's the danger factor in this particular poster. There stands Newt, on the edge of the rooftop of a decrepit building (perhaps just old, perhaps damaged in the battle between good and evil) in 1920s-era New York City, darkness swirling in the distance as he looks broodingly in our direction.
He's practically giving the horizon Blue Steel.
Between this and Fantastic Beast's darker-than-Potter trailer full of adults (including Colin Farrell and Katherine Waterston), we've concluded that Newt Scamander, freckles aside, is not a boy wonder like his predecessor in this wonderful wizarding world. (Or, really, his successor, since this is a prequel, chronologically speaking.)
He's a grownup, ready to take the bull (or whatever magical creature he's got stashed in that suitcase of his) by the horns and save New York—while easily inspiring more than a few crushes along the way.
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them hits theaters Nov. 18, 2016.