What Happened To Dolores Umbridge After Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows

Not every villain in the "Harry Potter" franchise is an evil Death Eater — or, in "Muggle" terms, a follower of the evil Dark Lord Voldemort (played by Ralph Fiennes in the films). Take Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton), for example, who first shows up in "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" as a Ministry of Magic plant who comes to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry ostensibly to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts ... but who's really there to spy on and censor the leadership of Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon). Umbridge is unquestionably vile and evil, and as series author Joanne Kathleen Rowling explained in the Harry Potter encyclopedia Wizarding World, the character is firmly meant to show that "good" and "evil" aren't always what they seem.

After describing a woman with whom she once worked whom Rowling described as a "bigot" who also loved pictures of fluffy kittens (as well as a difficult schoolteacher from her past), the author continued, "So Dolores, who is one of the characters for whom I feel purest dislike, became an amalgam of traits taken from these, and a variety of sources. Her desire to control, to punish and to inflict pain, all in the name of law and order, are, I think, every bit as reprehensible as Lord Voldemort's unvarnished espousal of evil." (Rowling, in recent years, has faced accusations of bigotry in regards to her views on transgender women, occasionally earning her comparisons to Umbridge of her own.) So, what happens to Umbridge after "Order of the Phoenix" — and where does she end up after the final installment, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows?"

Upon Dolores Umbridge's arrival at Hogwarts, she immediately makes severe changes to the Defense Against the Dark Arts curriculum, basically declaring that students won't be able to practice spells in class anymore and will simply learn the techniques from books instead. Understandably outraged — particularly because the Ordinary Wizarding Levels, or "O.W.L.s," require the students to actually cast spells — Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) and his best friends Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) rebel against Umbridge's new policies, and they're summarily punished for it ... in a very gruesome way.

As it turns out, when Umbridge tells students that their punishment is to "write lines," she gives them a special quill that burns whatever they're writing into the skin on the back of their hand (in Harry's case, he must write "I must not tell lies" for declaring that Voldemort has, in fact, returned — something the Ministry doesn't want the general public to know). Umbridge is such a tyrant during her tenure at Hogwarts that, right under her nose, Harry and his friends start a secret society called Dumbledore's Army where they practice defensive and offensive spells on their own. When Umbridge catches them, they're very nearly held accountable until Hermione brilliantly tricks the Ministry official and professor into coming into the Forbidden Forest to see the "weapon" she says Dumbledore provided for his "army."

The weapon is simply Grawp, a very young and volatile giant who happens to be the half-brother of Harry's friend and parental figure, Hogwarts groundskeeper Rubeus Hagrid (the late Robbie Coltrane) — but while Harry and Hermione are in the forest with Umbridge, the woman runs afoul of a group of centaurs. After insulting and assaulting them, the centaurs carry Umbridge away; she's later seen traumatized with bits of twigs still stuck in her hair, recovering in the Hogwarts infirmary.

In the book version of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," Harry briefly gets a glimpse of Dolores Umbridge at Dumbledore's funeral — but in the films, Imelda Staunton doesn't reprise the role until "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1." After hunting for one of Voldemort's Horcruxes, an item that contains a fragment of his soul, Harry, Ron, and Hermione infiltrate the Ministry of Magic only to discover that Umbridge, unaware that one particular locket contains a bit of Voldemort's soul, is proudly wearing it during trials where she accuses Muggleborn wizards of "stealing" magic (which isn't possible). When Harry encounters her holding a trial of an innocent woman, he sees the locket and attacks Umbridge, stealing the necklace and freeing the innocent Muggleborn witch. So, what happens to Umbridge after that?

In the same article on Wizarding World, the encyclopedia states, "With the fall of Lord Voldemort, Dolores Umbridge was put on trial for her enthusiastic co-operation with his regime, and convicted of the torture, imprisonment and deaths of several people (some of the innocent Muggle-borns she sentenced to Azkaban did not survive their ordeal)." So there you have it: Umbridge eventually faced serious punishment for her crimes and likely lived out the rest of her life in Azkaban, the remote wizard prison guarded by the soul-sucking horrors known as Dementors.

As for Dame Imelda Staunton, she's kept working steadily since her final performance as Dolores Umbridge in 2011's "Deathly Hallows: Part 1" (the character is not seen in the eighth and final movie, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2"). In 2014, she stayed in the fantasy realm and played Knotgrass, one of the "good fairies," in the Disney villain origin story "Maleficent" (alongside Angelina Jolie as the lead), and that same year, she also joined the "Paddington" franchise, lending her voice to the charming films as the loving Aunt Lucy to the titular bear (voiced by Ben Whishaw). She then joined the original cast of the television series "Downton Abbey" as Lady Maud Bagshaw in the 2019 film of the same name — appearing with her real-life husband Jim Carter — as well as 2022's "Downton Abbey: A New Era."

Staunton's most high-profile role as of late, though, was certainly on the Netflix original series "The Crown," which chronicled the historically long reign of Queen Elizabeth II. After Claire Foy and Olivia Colman, Staunton played the "oldest" iteration of the queen from 2022 to 2023 for the show's fifth and sixth seasons; in a touching moment in the series finale, Staunton, Foy, and Colman all appear on screen together to honor Queen Elizabeth's journey and legacy.

As for Staunton's bone-chillingly evil performance in the "Harry Potter" films, you can watch the franchise on Peacock.