‘Crimes of Grindelwald on HBO: Jude Law is the Perfect Young Dumbledore

There are many things for Harry Potter fans to complain about when it comes to Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, which airs on HBO tonight. Yes, the plot was weird. Yes, it ret-conned several very odd details from the original series. And yes, worst of all, Johnny Depp—who was accused of domestic violence in 2016, though he denies all allegations—is playing the film’s main villain, Gellert Grindelwald. But there is one thing fans can agree is decidedly good: Jude Law as Young Dumbledore.

In the decade since Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows hit shelves, fans have been picturing, drawing, and writing fanfiction about Young Dumbledore. From that, I have gathered a few qualities that any actor playing Young Dumbledore simply must have. Requirement Number 1: The actor must be hot. Obviously, Jude Law has had this covered since he wore that black button-up out to sea in 1999’s The Talented Mr. Ripley. Requirement Number 2: He must have the ability to make his eyes twinkle in a fun-loving manner. That’s an old hat for Law, who was all smiles and eye-twinkles in The Holiday (not to mention, great with children—another Dumbledore-esque quality.) Requirement Number 3: He must exude an aura of being infuriatingly smart and, more importantly, infuriatingly smug. This was the part I was less sure about: Is Law smart and smug? I mean, smart, yes, surely—didn’t you see him rock those glasses and that pipe in The Grand Budapest Hotel—but smug?

I needn’t have worried. Law flawlessly delivered Dumbledore’s signature cheeky advice—the kind that’s profound enough to be reassuring but vague enough to be essentially useless—with just the right amount of smug superiority. Face it, the man is great at playing Young characters. If only the whole film could have been one glorious Hogwarts flashback with Dumbledore as a Transfiguration professor and Newt (Eddie Redmayne) as his student, instead of that weird, messy plot of whatever it is that happened in that film.

Now some of you so-called fans have called out Young Dumbledore’s three-piece suit as not true to the character. To this I say: Please refer to Requirement Number 1. Obviously, Dumbledore grew more eccentric in old age. The exact age of Dumbledore has varied in the books, given that J.K. Rowling is famously terrible with numbers and that this movie doesn’t seem to care about fitting into any timeline, but he’s roughly 60 years younger in Crimes of Grindelwald than he is when we meet him in The Sorcerer’s Stone. You can’t expect the man to wear sparkly purple robes and pointed wizard hats his whole life! Just sit back, relax and enjoy this hot Young Dumbledore while you can, before you get distracted by the awfulness of, well, pretty much everything else.

Where to watch Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald