Is There A Link Between Fantastic Beasts and Cursed Child?

With Fantastic Beasts and Cursed Child both currently in the works, fans are abuzz with speculation on how the seemingly separate shows could be connected.

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Although taking place at opposite ends of Harry Potter’s own timeline, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child may have more in common than their mere inclusion in the Potterverse. While the same customs and laws likely stand in both stories, there is some speculation churning in the rumor mill that the two might share a link that could have some major narrative impact.

With Cursed Child running through its previews towards its official release on July 31, spoilers have already divulged the overall plot (we have our own breakdowns of Part 1 and Part 2). The same cannot be said for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which—as it doesn’t feature our favorite boy wizard or his friends—has inspired excitement, but not quite the same sort of intrigue. Personally, I’m looking forward to watching Newt Scamander flee from American magical law enforcement when his store of creatures escapes and runs rampant through 1920s New York, but on the whole that’s all we know about the movie so far.

There is little information on what creatures we’ll see hit the big screen, while the only ones confirmed have been the niffler and the bowtruckle, neither of which are particularly dangerous or likely to cause havoc upon the Muggle world. After the release of the first trailer, Pottermore revealed that the film will introduce a brand new entity, the Swooping Evil, of which we know virtually nothing.

But where there is new Harry Potter intel, there are rumors, one of which suggests that the Augurey will make an appearance in the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them film, as it does in Scamander’s textbook of the same name. As it turns out, this sinister “Irish Pheonix” also plays into some key symbolism of Cursed Child, reports Hypable.

The Augurey is a phoenix-like creature feared amongst wizards due to superstition that the bird’s cry foretells death.

The Augurey is a phoenix-like creature feared amongst wizards due to superstition that the bird’s cry foretells death. However, extensive research proved that this is not the case, and in fact the Augurey’s cry is merely a song sung at the approach of rain, and as such the bird received a low Ministry of Magic danger classification of XX. But like the thestral, the symbolism that paints the Augurey as a messenger of death is enough to inspire fear.

Such is the case, it seems, with the Augurey’s role in Cursed Child. While Hypable declines to name the character to whom the Augurey is significant, they do say that the character is a “newcomer” to the Potterverse, and a “sinister presence” who has “a lot in common with […] Lord Voldemort.” For those who have seen the production for themselves or who have read our spoilers here at Wizards&Whatnot, that character is a no-brainer.

Could the Augurey appear in Fantastic Beasts and, by extension, could it foreshadow the events of Cursed Child? The recently released featurette does, after all, reveal that one particular event of the Fantastic Beasts trilogy will have “implications for the whole Wizarding world.” If the Augurey is more important to the Potterverse than we’d imagined before, chances are it will show up on-screen, as it is catalogued in the textbook that inspired this spin-off franchise.

Hypable asks, “Would it be too out there to assume that Newt Scamander in fact discovers the Augurey over the course of his travels, thus starting the wave that will ripple through history all the way to Cursed Child?”

Next: Get a Look at the Bowtruckle We'll See In Fantastic Beasts

Stranger things have happened in the Potterverse. Perhaps we’ll have to wait for the end of the trilogy to know for sure, or if we’re lucky we’ll at least get a hint when the first Fantastic Beasts film hits theaters November 18.

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