Can an Obscurus (like the one Newt Scamander has) be transferred to someone else? May it be a child or adult?

Question

Can an Obscurus, like the one Newt Scamander has in his briefcase, be transferred to another host?

Answer 1

Graves clearly thought that this was possible, and Tina was frightened that Newt had an Obscurus in his possession - but Newt was the expert. He assured Graves that it could not hurt anyone and expected him to know it. He explained that it could not survive outside of the container that Newt had created.

NEWT: But it cannot survive outside that box, it could not hurt anyone, Tina!

And when Graves sentences him:

NEWT: You know that can't hurt anyone, you know that!

So it would seem that an Obscurus cannot survive without its host and that Newt, as an expert with knowledge that others didn't have, fashioned a way to keep this one going so that he could study it. But it seems like they cannot transfer hosts and be set free as Graves seemed to have in mind.

That said, I wouldn't be surprised if in subsequent films Grindelwald or one of his followers does succeed in weaponising one - but that would seem to require a new discovery in dark magic.

Answer 2

Not under normal circumstances.

From what we understand about how an Obscurus is formed, unless the Obscurus was altered in some way, I would think that it could only affect the person whose repressed magic created it. It doesn't seem to be a parasitic force that prefers to attach itself to children who are repressing their magic, and could therefore transfer hosts. It seems like the magic itself turns into the Obscurus after it's been repressed for long enough. It's possible that someone might find a way to transfer an Obscurus to another host, but this seems both unlikely and unnecessary.

Graves asked Newt "So, it's useless without a host?", and seemed displeased at finding out that it was. So I think what Graves was trying to do wasn't transfer the Obscurus to another host. (If that was what he wanted to do, who would he transfer it to? Himself?) It sounds like he just wanted to use it as a weapon without it being in a host.

Weaponizing an Obscurus doesn't have to mean transferring it to another host. Although Newt separated one from its host so he could study it, and not for any nefarious reason, what he did is proof that an Obscurus can be separated from its host. The one Newt has is incapable of hurting anyone or surviving outside of its confines, but Newt would be actively trying to make sure that it couldn't escape or harm anyone. If Grindelwald (or anyone else) was able to create something that could sustain the Obscurus without a host the same way Newt did, but without the bubble around it that Newt had it in, then he could use it as a weapon.

It's also possible that Grindelwald wanted to find a way to get an Obscurus to attach to another host, but this doesn't quite sound like what he was intending to do. For one thing, that would require finding a suitable host to put the Obscurus in once it was separated from the original host. This didn't seem to be his plan. When he was looking for the Obscurial, he didn't appear to have anyone to transfer it to, or any plan for transferring it from the Obscurial.

It looked like he was considering two different options - getting the Obscurial to be on his side so he could convince them to use their Obscurus in the way he wanted, or separating the Obscurus from the Obscurial so he would just have this powerful force to use however he chose.