Twilight’s Breaking Dawn has one of the most underwhelming and surprising endings as it teased a battle that never happened, but why?
The Twilight Saga came to an end with Breaking Dawn – Part 2, which made the novel’s bad ending even worse, as both promised a big and exciting battle that never happened, but why did Stephenie Meyer go for an ending like that? Vampires and werewolves are some of the most popular and beloved creatures in pop culture, and as such have gone through various adaptations and versions, but none like what Stephenie Meyer did in her 2005 novel Twilight. The book was the first in a series of four that chronicled the romance between vampire Edward Cullen and mortal Bella Swan, who came across different obstacles: from other vampire covens such as the Volturi to a pack of werewolves, among those Bella’s best friend Jacob Black .
The Twilight novels were a big success, even if critics weren’t fully on board with them, and this made it possible for them to make the jump to the big screen. Twilight was released a couple of months after Breaking Dawn was published and put a face to those characters readers already knew well, with Robert Pattinson playing Edward, Kristen Stewart as Bella, and Taylor Lautner as Jacob. The Twilight Saga was quite loyal to the novels, but that also highlighted many of the book series’ problems, and it made the big mistake of bringing the controversial and underwhelming ending of Breaking Dawn to the big screen.
Breaking Dawn saw Bella and Edward getting married and becoming parents to a girl they named Renesmee and who was a human/vampire hybrid, which caught the attention of the Volturi, the equivalent of royalty in the vampire world. This led to the Cullens asking other covens to back them up in what could have become a massive battle against the Volturi and their allies as they were convinced Renesmee was a threat because they thought she was an immortal child. The Volturi tried to instigate a fight but failed, as Alice and Jasper arrived with Nahuel, a 150-year-old half-vampire half-mortal who proved to them that hybrids are no threat. The Volturi then agreed to leave, and in Breaking Dawn – Part 2, this part of the story happened the same way except that they went as far as to show the battle that never was, and just when Aro’s head was about to be burned, viewers learned it was all a vision that Alice shared with Aro.
This underwhelming ending and tease of a big battle between covens has been endlessly criticized and questioned by Twilight fans, and Meyer has already given an answer to why she chose to do it that way, though it isn’t exactly a satisfying one. Meyer shared her answer on her website, explaining that she’s “not the kind of person who writes a Hamlet ending” and that if the fight had happened, it “would have ended with 90% of the combatants”. Meyer went on to explain that she would have never finished Bella’s story on “such a downer” where those closest to her died (in the movie, for example, Carlisle and Jasper died during the battle), so the battle had to be “mental ”. Meyer tried to justify this by adding that it was a “game of maneuvering, with the champion winning not by destroying the other side but by being able to walk away”, and compared it to that of The Merchant of Venice.
The “battle that never happened” wasn’t well-received when Breaking Dawn was published, but the crew behind The Twilight Saga didn’t do anything to fix it and only made it worse by having a 10-minute long battle, with lots of action and heartbreaking losses, only to be revealed as a vision. Stephenie Meyer had her reasons for doing what she did, but that doesn’t make Breaking Dawn’s underwhelming ending any less controversial and surprising.
