Wonder how JK Rowling will explain this error.
We’re only a few weeks away from the release of Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them: The Crimes of Grindelwald, so it goes without saying that Harry Potter fans (aka Potterheads) are super excited right now.
But in the midst of all the hype, some Potterheads have discovered what they perceive as a major plot error that threatens the very fabric of Harry Potter‘s magic universe.
Okay, maybe not quite that big but it is a biggie.
The cast list for the upcoming movie recently dropped and eagle-eyed Potterheads noticed that it featured a very surprising name: Professor McGonagall.
While the character is beloved within the fandom (her animagus is a cat, which scores big points with us), fans aren’t particularly happy that she’s in the new Fantastic Beasts movie because it makes no sense in the Potter canon.
Okay, let us explain.
In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which is set in the 1990s, McGonagall reveals that she’s been a teacher at Hogwarts for “39 years”, which means she’s been at the school since the mid-1950s.
Now JK Rowling also wrote an official backstory for McGonagall that goes into her schooling days and career. From there, Potterheads worked out that she must’ve been born somewhere around 1935.
HOWEVER!
The upcoming Crimes of Grindelwald is set in 1927 and features a young McGonagall in her mid-30s. Doing some rough napkin math based on what we know about McGonagall’s age, that means that she would’ve been around -8 years of age.
Needless to say, it makes no sense and fans are a bit weirded out about it.
JK Rowling has yet to respond to this apparent major continuity error and all the calls from fans asking her to explain what’s going on.
We’re going to take a crack at an explanation and say that someone in the movie has a vision of the future, hence McGonagall’s appearance.
Yeah, it’s not a good explanation, but hey, we tried.
Hopefully it will all be explained when Crimes of Grindelwald comes out in a few weeks time and this big mistake turns out to be just a nothingburger of some kind.
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Image: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban/Warner Bros.
Written by Alexandar Pan
