Is ‘Nagini’ the Name of the Maledictus in ‘Crimes of Grindelwald’? ‘Nagini Gaunt’?

Wayne asked me on the ‘Crimes of Grindelwald’ Ensemble Cast Photo post thread:

So, John, you’re suggesting that this Maledictus in this film becomes full-time snake and then animal familiar/horcrux for Voldemort about 70 years later. Did I get that right?

Great question, Wayne!

The ‘Nagini’ theory about the Beasts2 Maledictus is a fandom theory you can track down via this link that was also in the post. We were told months ago that the Claudia Kim character was a performer in the Circus Arcanus troupe.

It also sounds as if a wizarding circus will play a significant part in the plot: South Korean actress Claudia Kim has been cast as a young woman who stars in the circus as one of the attractions, while Ólafur Darri Ólafsson plays Skender, the circus boss.

The only character we know about in the Circus (from a poster) that are an obvious match with Kim is “the Enchanting Snake Girl.” Someone in global fandom, I do not know who, when it was announced last Thursday that Kim’s role was playing “a Maledictus, the carrier of a blood curse that destines her ultimately to transform into a beast,” posted a theory that the Maledictus is Nagini.

There are three steps from the information we have and that conclusion. What we know is:

• Kim’s character is a performer in the circus;
• There is an act in the circus according to the poster called ‘the Enchanting Snake Girl;’
• Kim’s character is a Maledictus who is cursed to become a beast.

To get from that information to ‘Kim’s character is Nagini,’ you have to connect these dots:

• The act Kim’s character plays is the Enchanting Snake Girl;
• The beast this Maledictus is cursed to become is a magical snake; and
• This magical snake is the snake who becomes Lord Voldemort’s familiar.

Which is quite a collection of jumps. I think the Nagini theory has legs for these reasons:

(1) The back story is that the Maledictus is turning into a beast, not as an Animagus does, but involuntarily, progressively, and irreversibly. It’s a curse, right? The Maledictus back-story doesn’t mean, of course, that this one turns into a snake or that this snake is Nagini, but it does mean she becomes a Fantastic Beast of some kind. Making the leap from Enchanted Snake Girl to Maledictus serpent was simplified by the anguine patterns on the character’s hose or legs in the Ensemble Cast picture. How many snakes with unusual intelligence do we know? 

(2) All the characters in the film have been given names — except the Maledictus. That suggests the name would be meaningful and a give-away to viewers. What other meaningful snake names do we know?

(3) Voldemort had a relationship with his familiar, Nagini, that was as creepy as everything else about the Dark Lord. That his pet was a Maledictus, i.e., formerly a person and a woman, seems consistent with his All Creepiness.

About Wayne’s implied objection that 70 years seems a long time for a snake to enjoy vitality, all I’ve got is that I don’t know anything about the longevity of Maledicti or Fantastic Serpents.

Is the Maledictus definitely our friend and Lord Thingy’s familiar, Nagini?

No, it’s a speculative theory. I call her ‘Nagini’ in this piece for lack of a name and to stir the pot. All we know for sure is that we’ll know in a year. If the Maledictus is not Nagini, hat’s off to Rowling or the Warner Brothers publicist who thought to leave her unnamed. That’s marketing genius.

On another HogPro post comment thread, a serious reader posted a link to a YouTube video which argues that the Maledictus is Merope Gaunt.

I have not watched the video. I think it’s fair to say, though, with some confidence that the Maledictus is not Merope Gaunt. Prof Louise Freeman told me that, by her calculations and timeline, the Dark Lord was born in the year of the first Fantastic Beasts film. Unless DumbleDore was lying to Harry in Prince about her back-story and her death after child-birth, Merope-Maledictus is just not possible.

I do like the Gaunt family connection, however, as an alternative to Maledictus-Nagini.

There’s the meaty irony, for one thing, of a Pure Blood family of Dark Wizards producing a Maledictus as off-spring (a Parseltongue magical-gene mutation? a Slytherin birth defect?). That’s right up Rowling’s alley about the devolution of aristocratic families into decadent, even evil character (see this connection between the Gaunt family and Thackeray’s Vanity Fair for some literary allusion intertextual fun). The corruption of the best is the worst, etc.

And the Gaunt name is as good an explanation as Nagini for why the studio would keep her name under wraps for now. Gaunt is the Dark Lord’s family name on his mother’s side and his connection with Salazar Slytherin, legendary Parseltongue. If the Maledictus is not Nagini, I think a Merope-cousin in the Salazar family line with the Gaunt name would explain why she is anonymous thus far.

Or how about, instead of an alternative to Nagini, the Gaunt family option being an additional element? What if her name is Nagini Gaunt? That would make the Dark Lord’s Familiar into family. Which man-snake relationship borders somehow on incest, perhaps the only ick factor and taboo the Dark Lord has not yet invoked or violated.

Yes, I know the Gaunts are old Anglo-Norman Pure Bloods not likely to produce a child, even an X-Men Maledictus, who has Asian facial features.  But still… imagine hearing her name in the theater, say, Credence introducing his friend to Tina. Chills, right?

So those are my three best guesses a year out from the movie release:

• she is Maledictus-Nagini as the popular fan theory has it
• or a Gaunt Family Maledictus-Mutant or, most distressing,
• the family-familiar cousin, Nagini Gaunt.

Let me know what I’m missing in the comment boxes below!