Ah, another notable character who is listed under the category, but has not been officially approved yet. Well unlike the last character I recently brought up, who I thought didn’t qualify, but was left unsure after those who had seen a TV series they were in provided additional facts, I’ve seen the only two movies/works this character has appeared in so far, so I have a more confident opinion on them. And this time, I’m advocating for an approval.
On a side note, due to changing my username since posting this, for some weird reason, you can't see the votes anymore. If you want to see them, and by extension, the proof that this was approved, follow the redirect here.
What’s the work?[]
The Fantastic Beasts film series is a more recent and original set of movies that act as both a spin-off and prequel to the highly popular Harry Potter movies, with the author of the original books, J.K. Rowling herself, both producing and writing them. In the first movie, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Newt Scamander, our topic here, is travelling through New York with a case full of magical creatures that he’s tasked himself with caring for and protecting to do a favor for a friend, but after an encounter with a “Muggle”/”No-Maj” where they get their cases mixed up, he ends up having to track down several magical creatures that end up escaping from it. Further complicated things is that, as he soon discovers, the city has recently been under attack by random incidents of magic-related violence, which makes his creatures easy scapegoats for pining the blame on, so he soon finds himself trying to discover the real source of the attacks to clear his creature’s names (with some help from a few others he meets along the way). In the second movie, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, the focus is on how numerous wizards, which eventually includes Newt, are attempting to stop a more evil one (the titular Grindelwald) from luring a young wizard into his fold and using him to control the world.
Who is he and what has he done?[]
Newt Scamander is the main protagonist of these movies, at least so far, and is a British wizard who has made it his personal mission to travel the world, collecting magical creatures of all shapes and sizes that he desires to rescue, nurture and protect. He keeps them in a magical suitcase, which is actually a portal of sorts to a workplace of his where he keeps them, nurses them back to health, etc.
However, after encountering Mary-Lou Barebone, a non-magical woman who heads the New Salem Philanthropic Society and listening to her publicly speak about how witches and wizards are real and dangerous, a small creature called a Niffler escapes from his suitcase, which leads to him chasing and trying to re-capture it. He eventually does so, but in the process, gets his suitcase mixed up with that of Jacob Kowalski, a regular human/muggle who aspires to open his own bakery and get a bank loan for it, as well as gets in trouble with Porpentina “Tina” Goldstein, a recently demoted Auror (hunter of dark wizards), who takes him to the Magical Congress of the United States of America, or MACUSA for short. However, after discovering the mix-up, Newt is off the hook (due to the suitcase only containing baked goods), and he and Tina resolve to find Jacob and his own suitcase. However, several of the creatures escape after he gets back to his apartment, with the resulting commotion leading them straight to him, after which the three of them go to Tina’s apartment where her sister Queenie is also staying.
Over the course of the movie, Newt gradually befriends Tina, Jacob and Queenie, and successfully manages to track down and re-capture the three creatures that escaped. He also manages to save both himself and Tina from the death penalty when they are arrested by MACUSA officials under the mistaken assumption that one of his creatures was responsible for killing a US senator.
After that, he follows the Obscurial down to the subway, which is a person infected by a parasite that infects those who are magically gifted at a young age when they suppress their abilities, and which turns out to be the real culprit behind the recent incidents. Their identity is Credence Barebone, a young man who’s been abused by his stepmother, the aforementioned Mary-Lou, whom he just killed after she threatened to beat his younger sister with his belt. Seeing that he is mentally distraught and unable to fully control his abilities, Newt sympathizes with and tries to calm him down by talking to him, but unfortunately, Aurors come along and seemingly destroy him to protect the magical society.
He then helps them apprehend Percival Graves, a high-ranking wizard with MACUSA who was really Gellert Grindelwald in disguise trying to find and use the Obscurial for his own purposes, namely to expose the magical community and frame Newt for it, angrily claiming that MACUSA’s rules protect No-Majs more than themselves. Although he initially has the upper hand on the Aurors when they try to apprehend him, Newt uses one of his magical creatures to bind his arms and uses a spell to reveal his disguise, after which he is taken into custody.
In the aftermath, Newt helps MACUSA prevent their society from being exposed to muggles by unleashing a Thunderbird, which disperses magical rain over the city that makes them lose their recent memories of the incidents while the Aurors repair the damage. After Jacob supposedly has his memories wiped too, Newt, sympathizing with his plight, leaves him with a case of valuable silver Occamy eggshells to help him fund and open his bakery. Meanwhile, he leaves to go back to Europe, but not before seeing off Tina and delighting her by promising to visit her once he’s finished writing his book and give her a copy in-person.
In The Crimes of Grindelwald, despite everything he had done to help, he is introduced trying to appeal a travel ban at the Ministry of Magic for what happened in New York. During the meeting, they attempt to bribe him by agreeing to lift the ban if he helps his older brother Thessus track down Credence, who survived the Auror’s assault in the last film, and kill him before Grindelwald, who recently escaped custody and is still seeking to use him to lead an uprising against muggles and disrupt the peace they’ve been trying to maintain, gets to him first. However, Newt is appalled at the idea of killing him and working with another ruthless bounty hunter to do it and refuses, then tells his brother when he tries to convince him a war is coming and everyone will need to pick a side that “he doesn’t do sides” before leaving.
He is then approached by none other than Albus Dumbledore, who both trusts and favors him, to find and rescue Credence from both Grindelwald and the Ministry, to which he agrees, but reluctantly since he’s travel-banned and whatnot. He then gets an unexpected visit from Queenie and Jacob, the latter of whom didn’t forget what happened in the first movie due to it only getting rid of his bad memories, which he claims he didn’t have any of, and who is also under an enchantment that Queenie placed on him to convince him to go through with eloping, despite MACUSA forbidding marriages between wizards and muggles/non-magical humans. However Newt lifts the enchantment and convinces her it’s wrong for him to not have a proper say in the matter, which results in her leaving in disappointment when Jacob, in his normal state, claims he loves her but can’t marry her due to the trouble she would get into.
Queenie then leaves to search for Tina in Paris, who is also looking for Credence in order to protect him, after which Newt and Jacob take off to find both of them. Along the way, he singlehandedly tames and recruits a large cat-like creature that escaped from a circus and was wreaking havoc in the city, and saves another wizard named Yusef Kama from a water dragon parasite that had infected him through his tear duct, despite that fact that he temporarily locked him and Jacob up with Tina while pursuing Credence himself to exact vengeance on him for a perceived wrong to his family that he mistakenly holds him responsible for.
After catching up with Tina and clearing up a misunderstanding about being engaged to marry a childhood friend named Leta Lestrange, who is really engaged to his brother Theseus, but a tabloid mistakenly put his name instead, their search for Credence leads them to a tomb, where, after getting confirmation from Leta that he is not, in fact, her brother Corvus Lestrange like everyone suspected, they stumble upon a rally where Grindelwald is speaking to his followers. However, after some of the Aurors that accompany Theseus act too rashly in stopping it, Grindelwald incriminates them and the muggles as the provokers, and once his followers leave, he shows his true colors by using a blue magical fire to try killing the remaining Aurors, and which will only allow in his most loyal followers. Unfortunately, he manages to convince both Credence and Queenie to join his side, the former by promising him to help discover who he really is, and the later by appealing to her desire to be free to love and marry a muggle like Jacob. However, Newt, Theseus, Tina, Jacob, Yusuf and Nagna manage to escape thanks to Leta performing a heroic sacrifice by feigning loyalty to Grindelwald to distract him.
When Grindelwald departs, he leaves behind a spell that will incinerate all of Paris. However, with some help from the immortal alchemist Nicholas Flamel, Newt and the other wizards manage to subdue and extinguish the flame. Afterwards, he comforts his mourning brother and tells him he’s “chosen his side”, acknowledging that he can no longer stay neutral knowing what Grindelwald is trying to do. Finally, he goes back to Dumbledore and reveals that he had one of his creatures discreetly steal a vial from Grindelwald that contains a blood pact that prevents him from acting against him, which Dumbledore believes he can destroy to finally help them out.
Corrupting Factors[]
So far, I don’t think he’s displayed any at all. The worst you can really say about him is that he’s socially awkward with other people (to the point that as someone who both has a similar condition and has spent a lot of time with others who have it, I can confidently declare he more than slightly comes off as someone with Autism), but he’s not angry, aggressive or hostile by any stretch. He may have a slightly cynical view towards them, as evidenced by him describing humans as “the most vicious creatures on the planet” in the first movie when explaining things from the creatures’ view, but even that’s likely because, as someone who is constantly trying to rescue creatures and help people understand him, he has seen what the worst of them are capable of. This is especially evidenced by another of his quotes; “I’m sorry, but I can’t admire people whose answer to everything that they fear or misunderstand is “kill it”!” Plus, he demonstrates on numerous occasions that he cares just as much for other people as he does for magical creatures, which I’ll cover in the next section.
Oh, and he does also have a somewhat strained relationship with his brother, but it’s clear that they truly love each other, and by the end of the second movie, they pretty much reconcile their differences over what happened to Leta. They simply had opposing viewpoints for a while.
Goodness Zone/Admirable Standard[]
I’d say he stands out quite a bit here. While the Harry Potter universe has a number of pretty admirable characters, Newt is still among the most admirable of them all, at least in my opinion. Unlike Harry, nobody tasked him with some destiny or expectations to live up to. Yet, he has actively chosen to dedicate his life to rescuing, nurturing and protecting magical creatures of all different kinds, and acts as a constant voice for understanding them. In fact, he cares about them so much that the only time he’s truly gotten upset in the movies so far is when MACUSA confiscated his suitcase with the likely intent of destroying it, urging them to not hurt any of the creatures and to not believe that they can be dangerous enough to kill someone like they think. And remember, this was when he and Tina were being sentenced to death. That’s right; he was far more worried about them than he was about his own wellbeing.
Other than that, there’s also plenty more that deserves mentioning. He may have trouble showing it, but he’s just as caring towards other people as is he to creatures. For example, he cared enough about Leta during his time at Hogwarts that he got himself expelled from the school by taking the blame for an accident she was responsible for. Also, despite only meeting and befriending Jacob very recently, he left him those silver Occamy eggshells to help him accomplish his dream of opening a bakery and get out of his crummy factory job. Plus, he’s one of the few so far, along with Tina and Nagini, to sympathize with Credence and try convincing him that he’s not a monster like he thinks. He’s done some good deeds on a larger scale too, like helping stop Grindelwald’s spell, which would have destroyed Paris, and released the Thunderbird to prevent MACUSA’s society from being exposed to the “muggle world”. So far, He has also shown to be averse to using real violence, even when combatting those like Percival Graves/Grindelwald, whom he simply stopped by binding him and removing his disguise, which even many other heroic characters up to Harry Potter himself, who has temporarily given in to anger to the point of briefly using the torture curse on Bellatrix, can’t claim.
Finally, and tellingly enough, this is someone who even Dumbledore himself has a lot of respect for and trusts entirely; as he puts it, “he doesn’t seek power”, unlike some of the other characters who are technically on the side of the law in this spin-off/prequel series. Newt does everything he does simply because it’s the right thing to do, not for any personal gain, or even recognition, which, again, is something that not even other generally heroic characters in the series can claim.
Final Verdict[]
Well, the Fantastic Beasts series is ongoing with 3 more movies planned, but so far, and based on all available information about him in supplementary material, I see no issues with him qualifying. He’s shown the most care and sympathy for magical creatures of anyone in the “Potterverse” (apart from maybe Hagrid), has been noticeably averse to conflict and using any real violence so far, even in the most intense circumstances, is just as caring towards other people, even if he has difficulty showing it, and is only disgusted and/or disillusioned with people and traits that I think any person with strong morals would be. In some ways, I dare say he’s even more heroic than Harry Potter himself, due to lacking his impulsiveness and occasional volatile temper, as well as doing what he does simply because it’s right. However, if anyone has an different opinion, I’m open to and interested in reading your thoughts. Thanks for reading!