Note: Contains major spoilers for Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.
Much of Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald turns around one particular mystery: who is Credence Barebone and where did he come from?
We met Ezra Miller's tortured young man in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, where we learned that he is an Obscurial – a young wizard who suppresses their power and becomes host to a dark magical entity – and that he was a key ingredient in Gellert Grindelwald's sinister plans.
The film hints that he is the long-lost Corvus Lestrange, the younger half-brother of Leta Lestrange (Zoë Kravitz), who was apparently sent to America to Credence's shady adoptive mother Mary Lou Barebone.
Leta's maternal half-brother Yusuf Kama (William Nadylam) was also on Credence's trail, having sworn to his late father to kill the thing that Corvus Lestrange Sr (Leta's dad) loved most in the world – his first-born son.
But Leta insists that Credence isn't her brother. She explains that, as a young girl, she was on the ship taking Corvus to America. The baby wouldn't stop crying, so she swapped it with another, better-behaved child. Unfortunately, the ship sank before anyone could discover what she did. Corvus drowned and the other baby was taken to the US, where he was raised as Credence.
So, if Credence isn't Corvus Lestrange, then, who is he?
Grindelwald claims that he is Aurelius Dumbledore, a hitherto-unknown relative of everyone's favourite evasive (future) Hogwarts headmaster, Albus Dumbledore. The dark wizard presents a phoenix – a magical creature closely associated with the Dumbledore family – as proof of Credence's lineage.
(Interestingly, a well-established fan theory is that Albus' sister Ariana, who was killed while her two older brothers Albus and Aberforth duelled Grindelwald, was also an Obscurial. Crimes of Grindelwald neither refutes nor affirms this theory.)
From what we know of Grindelwald's plans, he hopes to use this information to make Credence feel abandoned by Dumbledore, and therefore strike out at Albus with his deadly Obscurial powers.
But is that the final word on Credence's origin? Grindelwald is certainly not above lying in order to further his objectives. Could the revelation that Credence is a Dumbledore be a deception to place him on the path to killing Albus? Or would revealing that it's a second fakeout be one case of mistaken identity too many for poor Credence?
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is out now.
Want up-to-the-minute entertainment news and features? Just hit 'Like' on our Digital Spy Facebook page and 'Follow' on our @digitalspy Instagram and Twitter account.
