If you had to choose the single biggest problem with Crimes of Grindelwald, the one thing that caused movie-goers to leave the theater saying “What just happened?” in frustration rather than curiosity, I think a good choice among too many options would be the Leta Lestrange story as told in the second Fantastic Beasts film. Go back and read the first ‘Crimes of Grindelwald: Deleted Scenes‘ post here at HogwartsProfessor. In that post you get Kelly Loomis’ initial look at the scenes we had been shown before the movie’s release that didn’t make the final cut, i.e., the shooting script elements that were edited out of the released film. As I wrote at the time:
Leta Lestrange is the Star of the Shooting Script: Go ahead and count the scenes about Leta’s character that don’t make it into the final cut.
- There’s the dance scene filmed in the same blue light as the Ampitheater finale (I assume where she meets Theseus or makes contact with Grindelwald’s gang, a parallel that explains Gellert’s conversation with her before she blasts his skull-hookah).
- And the pub scene with Newt and Theseus, in which I guess Theseus asks him to be his best man and they touch on their shared love for the same woman.
- And the Dumbledore conversation with Minerva McGonagall, in which I’m guessing they talk about Leta’s time at Hogwarts.
Leta and Theseus have a good talk at Hogwarts, too, but we miss out on that which empties their French Ministry exchange of context.
- And the battle scene with the Ministry cats.
- And her full flashback scene in the Mausoleum.
As it is, Leta’s story is truncated and her telling, “I love you” to both Newt and Theseus in the climactic battle leaves viewers saying, “Huh?” Her tale of the Corvus Lestrange death on the ship seems to come out of nowhere even with the boggart set-up — and we get hardly a clue about her supposed “wickedness” or relationship with Dumbledore or Grindelwald before she disappears in the Amphitheater flames (my guess is that she is the character to whom Rowling is referring when she says what you think you thought you saw ain’t what happened). Leta was robbed and we all suffered for her fate in the editing of the shooting script’s film.
Leta Lestrange, in brief, was robbed and every person who bought a ticket to see Crimes of Grindelwald was only given a part of the major back story of the film. If we had been given the Leta story in full, the Corvus-Credence-Aurelius mystery would be inviting rather than a senseless jumble. 
Frankly, I hope so and there are two or three encouraging signs in this regard. First, it looks like Zoe Kravitz may have been signed to film new scenes in Beasts 3: Zoe Kravitz Rumored to be Returning. That could, of course, just be for flashback scenes akin to the memories of Hogwarts we got in Crimes of Grindelwald. It could, though, mean that she didn’t die and the two David’s will have another shot at giving us Rowling’s story as written rather than “fitting the woman to the dress,” the corset of Warner Brothers blockbuster formula and time restrictions.
When Kravitz was first signed for the movies, she said she expected to be in more than one film:
Have they told you how much more you’ll get to be in?
KRAVITZ: I think there’s a few [movies] ahead. The relationship between Leta and Newt Scamander is a complex relationship, so I think there will be a lot of time for that to grow and develop, which will be fun.
Dan Fogler: Spoilers.. you get fuckin’ toasted by… you get Blue Fire Toasted.
Zoe Kravitz: Leta Go Bye Bye.
Fogler: Leta Go Bye Bye. Did they give you any idea you’d come back as a ghost or something?
Kravitz: It seems very unclear.
Fogler: I want you to haunt Jacob or something. Like you’ve got something to tell from beyond the grave.
Kravitz: I’d love to do that. A little haunting action would be cool. I don’t know. It was, I think it was a kind of a last minute change that she gets toasted.
Fogler: They’re going to have to bring you back somehow. I think they’re gonna have to.
Kravitz: It’d be cool if they did, but if they don’t, that’s fine.
Fogler: They brought Credence back! The Obscurus helped him. Maybe some kind of Lestrange thing where you reincarnate, like Gandalf.
Kravitz: I’m open to all possibilities.
Fogler: I’m gonna… Well who knows what’s gonna happen, but I’m gonna float that out there. I really want you to come back.
J. K. Rowling has the largest twitter following of any author, steady at 14.7 million, but she has — with one brief marketing note last month and two re-tweets in March — been silent on this mega social media platform since January 2019. In May I posted three reasons I thought credible as explanations for this silence: 
The theory is simply this: the bean counters employed by Rowling to maximize her income from her various interests and copyright material advise her to consolidate her property under one umbrella, ‘Wizarding World,’ and to monetize the PotterMore website. They urge her to desist from her posting on twitter because her acerbic and fiercely partisan political posts simultaneously offended millions who do not share her “progressive” views and gave away access to her writing and thinking to those who didn’t mind the bad language and uncharitable posturing. 
Considering the blows being delivered to her brand via over-exposure late last year, her commitment to her legacy charities, and the lack of any effectiveness of her tweets in moving those not already convinced to share her position, I doubt Rowling, if this ‘follow the money’ explanation of her departure from twitter has any relationship with reality, would have wept at the cost to her of following the advice. She gets her life as a writer back, her critics are effectively silenced for lack of new material, and there is the promise of a huge payday by the holidays.
And perhaps this is the best way to think about all this for those of us who find the $75 cost of access to Rowling’s Potter material more than a little galling, which is to say, make it a contribution to her charities rather than to Rowling, Inc.
The annual peak of Potter Punditry, at least with respect to gatherings, is this weekend in Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania, a suburb just north of Philadelphia, where Chestnut Hill College hosts
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