Hey everyone,
Welcome to another installment of Harry Potter Theory. In this video, we’re going to be
discussing none other than Gellert Grindelwald. Grindelwald terrorized the wizarding world
for years and he was one of the darkest and most powerful wizards of all time. While he
does show up in the Deathly Hallows film (briefly) - the first time we see him properly is on
screen in the Fantastic Beasts films. Played by Johnny Depp, Grindelwald has quite an interesting
look, and when the actor was preparing for the role he is reported to have expressed
that people kept asking him if he was “ok”. He has spiky pale blonde hair that shoots
straight up, extremely pale milky-coloured skin, a blonde moustache (half of the time),
and perhaps most notable of all- two different coloured yes.
The condition of having two different coloured eyes also exists in the muggle world and is
called heterochromia. Heterochromia refers to a variation in colour, and when it refers
to the eye specifically it’s called heterochromia iridium. It basically means that one iris
is a different colour from the other. But, provided that the Harry Potter universe is
a world rich with magic, I’m hoping that there’s more of an interesting explanation
than that.
Now, in my quest to figure out why on earth Grindelwald has differently coloured eyes,
I started to think about other characters that also have special traits in the ocular
region. The first character that comes to my mind when I think of ‘wonky’ eyes is
none other than Mad-Eye Moody, and the clue there that he has an unusual eye is in his
name. It’s in plain sight. (dad joke)
From the Order of the Phoenix:
“Mad-Eye Moody, who had long grizzled grey hair and a large chunk missing from his nose,
was squinting suspiciously at Harry through his mismatched eyes. One eye was small, dark
and beady, the other large, round and electric blue – the magical eye that could see through
walls, doors and the back of Moody’s own head.”
Moody’s eye definitely provides a certain level of shock value, but, Moody didn’t
always have one magical eye, once upon a time Moody actually had two matching regular eyes-
just like the rest of us.
From the Goblet of Fire:
“Mad-Eye Moody was sitting there – though there was a very noticeable difference in
his appearance. He did not have his magical eye, but two normal ones.”
However, Moody’s ‘magical’ eye, though quite functional, definitely doesn’t appear
to resemble an ordinary eye in any way. It sort of looks like a botched job, and given
that Moody got his magical eye many many years after Grindelwald’s time, I can’t imagine
that Grindelwald’s eye is artificial in any way. It looks too natural, and while I
didn’t think that it was artificial anyway, it’s good to cross that option off of the
list.
One theory that I have for Grindelwald’s multi-coloured eyes is that it is somehow
linked to him being a seer. In Harry Potter, a seer, as defined the magical world is “a
gifted wizard or witch who has the ability to see into the future with their Inner Eye.
Seers predict prophecies, which are then recorded and stored in the Hall of Prophecy in the
Ministry of Magic's Department of Mysteries.”
When we hear ‘seer’ we most commonly think of Professor Sybill Trelawney, a british half-blood
witch that worked at Hogwarts and came from a long line of ‘seers’. She famously predicted
the prophecy concerning Voldemort and the ‘one with the power to vanquish him’,
and though she gets a bad rap as a seer, she has actually been proven to be quite accurate.
Minerva McGonagall was quite open about her skepticism surrounding Trelawney and her abilities
as a seer, and once expressed that ‘true’ seers are extremely rare. By ‘true’ I
think she means seers that are able to see visions intentionally, when they want to,
rather than in the sporadic way that Trelawney functions. And it just so happens that Grindelwald
could do this.
From the Fantastic Beasts Screenplay:
“Grindelwald exhales vapor from a glowing skull-shaped hookah. His acolytes watch as
the smoke forms a vision of the Obscurus, a swirl of black and flashing red, then resolves
into an image of Credence”
So, what does being a seer have to do with Grindelwald’s eyes? Well, we know that when
Trelawney has visions, on occasion, her eyes have a tendency to do some crazy things. And
since ‘vision’ relates to ‘sight’, I feel that it’s only natural that visions
would be connected to the eyes in someway. To me, it would make sense that you’d have
an ordinary set of eyes for ordinary things, and when a vision comes through, your eyes
would adjust accordingly, as you are no longer focused on the things in the physical world
before you, but rather, focused on the ethereal aspects of your ‘vision’. This is not
a confirmed thing, just a theory of mine, but I think that it bears some merit. As Grindelwald
is certainly more of a ‘seer’ in the traditional sense than Trelawney, I think that it would
make sense that, of the two of them, he would be the one with unusual eyes.
My next theory for Grindelwald’s different eye colours is that each eye is representative
of one aspect of his personality. He had two different coloured eyes because he wasn’t
all evil, one represented his ‘dark’ side and the other represented his ‘light side’.
Unlike Voldemort, Grindelwald had a certain element of humanity surrounding his character-
he was capable of things like love and empathy- and so it sort of makes sense that this division
of character would manifest itself in the form of two different coloured eyes. Each
representing one ‘side’ of himself. And though I feel as though each eye represents
one aspect of his personality, I think that the eye colour itself has an inverse relationship
with the characteristic that it is meant to represent. His brown eye, which is ‘darker’
than the other, represents the side of Grindelwald with more humanity, and, in contrast, his
‘light eye’, which is visibly more jarring, represents the darker side of Grindelwald.
Grindelwald began experimenting with dark magic at a very young age, and was even expelled
because of it. He tyrannized both the wizarding and muggle worlds, and did some truly terrible
things, but from his perspective, it was all ‘for the greater good’. ‘For the greater
good’ was a slogan that Grindelwald adopted at the beginning of his regime - he developed
the expression with Dumbledore, and it was meant to say ‘Hey, in the end, this will
all work out for everyone, but for now, expect some chaos’.
However, Grindelwald used his slogan to justify some truly horrific actions- it was engraved
on the entrance of Nurmengard, and it quickly became more of a symbol of hate than anything
else. He truly believed that his actions would be of eventual benefit to everyone, which
is why I don’t think that Grindelwald was pure evil, only very disillusioned. He simply
wanted wizards to rule over muggles. Wizards were his people, and he felt that they should
be in power- it’s as simple as that. The more you deep dive in to Grindelwald’s character,
the more it seems to make sense that his contrasting emotions would be manifested in his physical
appearance in some way. Furthermore, experimenting with dark magic has been proven to alter your
physical appearance, as we’ve seen with Voldemort, and though Grindelwald didn’t
create a horcrux, he is said to have experimented with some ‘twisted’ magic, so I can see
how this might have effected him physically.
We haven’t yet received a proper explanation for Grindelwald’s different eye colours,
which means that we can only speculate, however, the following interview with Johnny Depp,
who plays Grindelwald, does help to give us some clarification.
Referring to Depp’s character, Grindelwald, he is asked the following:
“He now has, as one of your costars referred to, a “Scary Eye,” one eye rather different
from the other. Does that have a backstory, is that just creepy?”
To which he responds:
“It’s a character choice. I saw Grindelwald as more than one, if you know what I mean.
I almost felt like he’s maybe two people. He’s twins in one body. So a gamey eye is
more like the other side of him. Sort of like a brain for each eye, an albino twin, and
he’s somewhere in the middle.”
What this confirms is that his eyes are connected to the internal duality of his character.
We don’t have any further information on how this was actually achieved, but perhaps
we’ll get some answers in the upcoming Fantastic Beasts films, of which 3 are still on the
way.
And that’s it for this video! If you guys enjoy the content, please like the video and
subscribe to the channel. Until next time,
YER A WIZARD ARRY