Author: Kadeen Griffiths / Source: Bustle
Leta Lestrange deserved better. And I wish I only meant that in terms of her apparent fate at the end of Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindewald. Major spoilers for Crimes of Grindelwald ahead. When she was introduced with a cameo by Zoe Kravitz in the first movie, I fell in love with the idea of her, hoping that Leta Lestrange’s Fantastic Beasts character arc wouldn’t end in her being a mere footnote in Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) and Tina Goldstein’s (Katherine Waterston) love story.
But it turns out that I should have had bigger worries. For Leta to die at the end of the second film is one thing — a thing that can still be undone in the three movies to come — but for her arc leading up to that death to be so offensive that I wish she’d never been a character at all? That’s something I can’t look past.In the film, Leta finally appears as more than a photograph in Newt’s case when he heads to the British Ministry of Magic earlier in the movie. She works there alongside his brother Theseus (Callum Turner), to whom she is engaged. The first movie hints at Leta being a tragic and complicated character; here, it’s revealed that she’s defined by a past of neglect, pain, and guilt over something she did long ago. Her backstory is handed to the audience in one massive info dump near the end of the movie, shortly after which she sacrifices herself — though not before declaring “I love you” to one or both of the Scamanders. There’s certainly discourse that could be written about the handling of main female characters in Fantastic Beasts so far (at the moment, let’s be real, only Tina is coming off well). But the problem with Leta is a problem of intersectional feminism and, more specifically, the lack there of. J.K. Rowling’s screenplay fails to consider that Leta is a black woman, not just a woman, and thus the troubles she faces in her arc come across as particularly problematic.
Leta’s half-brother Yusuf Kama (William Nadylam) reveals that her father, Corvus Lestrange Sr. (Keith Chanter), coveted his Senegalese mother, Laurena (Isaura Barbé-Brown), and Imperiused her into leaving his family and sleeping with him in a union or unions that would eventually produce Leta. It’s not the first time the wizarding world has introduced such a thing: Voldemort was born of such a loveless coupling after his mother drugged his father with a love potion; Ron fell prey to a love potion meant for Harry that was sent by young admirer Romilda Vane; and Ron recommends that Harry’s son Albus brews one to help with his crush decades later in Cursed Child. The Imperius Curse is subbing in for the love potion, presumably to make Corvus Sr. seem more evil than your average teenager by throwing an Unforgivable Curse into the mix. But a white man magically taking control of a black woman and using that control, in part, to rape her is an uncomfortable slavery narrative, and one that the film uses to subsequently cast Leta in the role of the “tragic mulatto.”
As The Root’s Clay Cane explained in “Halle Berry and the Resurgence of the Tragic Mulatto,” the stereotype was a stock feature launched by 19th century American literature and treaded pretty similar emotional beats:
“Deeply troubled characters stumbled through life in a racially tortured turmoil. Were…
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