The final two movies in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, were missing a character from Draco Malfoy’s group: Crabbe, and here’s why he was absent from those movies. Back in 1997, J.K. Rowling introduced readers to the Wizarding World through the novel Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the first in a series of seven books chronicling the story of “the boy who lived” and Lord Voldemort, the darkest and most dangerous wizard there was.
The success of the Harry Potter book series made it possible for it to make the jump to the big screen, with the movies being released between 2001 and 2011. The seventh and final book in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, was split into two movies, and brought the saga to an end but with a couple of changes to the book. As happens with most book adaptations, the Harry Potter movies made a lot of changes to the source material, changing events, characters, and either replacing or cutting characters out for different reasons, but there’s a special case in the final movies of the saga, and it was all about one of Draco Malfoy’s closest friends.
In Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Harry and viewers met his classmates not only from Gryffindor but from other houses as well. The most memorable introduction was that of Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton), who arrived with his friends Vincent Crabbe (Jamie Waylett) and Gregory Goyle (Josuha Herdman), who were only minor characters through the whole saga. However, fans couldn’t help but notice that Crabbe was absent from both Deathly Hallows movies even though he does appear in the book, and even has a slightly more prominent role in that book when he defies Malfoy’s order to not kill Harry, as he has sided with the Death Eaters and wasn’t following Malfoy’s orders as he had done before.
Crabbe’s absence from the Deathly Hallows movies wasn’t a narrative decision but one that was made for behind-the-scenes reasons involving the actor. In 2009, just a few months before the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Waylett and a friend were arrested after police found a knife and eight bags of cannabis in their car, which then led them to Waylett’s mother’s house where more cannabis plants were found. Waylett later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 120 hours of community service. Following his arrest, Warner Bros. decided to not include Waylett in the final movies and Crabbe was replaced by another Slytherin student: Blaise Zabini, played by Louis Cordice. However, it was Goyle who took Crabbe’s place in the movie and was the one who was killed by Fiendfyre.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of Waylett’s problems, as he was arrested again in 2011 for his participation in the 2011 England riots, and was sentenced to two years in prison in 2012. Although it was a minor change in the movie compared to many other bigger changes to the books, fans familiar with the story were quick to notice Crabbe’s absence, and even though it doesn’t significantly change the Harry Potter saga, it did make fans of the books wonder what happened to good old Vincent Crabbe.