Author Stephenie Meyer released Midnight Sun on Tuesday, Aug. 4, a companion novel to 2005’s Twilight. Scroll on to see the cast of the film franchise then and now.
Midnight Sun is finally here!
Stephenie Meyer has officially released the companion novel to 2005’s Twilight after years of anticipation from fans around the world. Midnight Sun, which became available for purchase on Tuesday, Aug. 4, is told from the perspective of character Edward Cullen. So this time around, Twihards will get to experience the same events but through his eye instead of Bella Swan.
In 2008, Meyer pressed pause on writing Midnight Sun after her unfinished manuscript was leaked online. The author later released her 12-chapter tease on her website, but didn’t officially continue writing until years later. In May 2020, the 46-year-old novelist delighted fans when she announced the book was complete.
“It’s a crazy time right now and I wasn’t sure if it was the right time to put this book out, but some of you have been waiting for just so, so long,” Meyer said on Good Morning America. “It didn’t seem fair to make you wait anymore.”
Twilight, Edward, Bella
There is more to celebrate, too. This October will mark 15 years since the release of Meyer’s first Twilight novel, which follows the love story of 17-year-old Bella and classmate Edward, who she later learns is a vampire. The popular series went on to be adapted into five Twilight movies, starring Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson. Like Edward and Bella, the duo dated off-camera for about three years before calling it quits in 2013.
In honor of Midnight Sun’s release, let’s take a look back at the cast of Twilight, then and now:
Kristen Stewart
We’ll just start with the 2022 Oscar nomination she received for her portrayal of Princess Diana in Spencer. But back in the ’00s, in between making five blockbuster Twilight films, Stewart starred in smaller projects such as Adventureland and The Runaways, in which she played rocker Joan Jett.
Before the saga concluded with Breaking Dawn—Part 2 in 2012, Stewart was another force to be reckoned with in Snow White and the Huntsman, playing an armor-clad version of the Brothers Grimm-and-Disney heroine. A photograph of her sharing a tender moment (and nothing beyond that, she has since said) with her married director Rupert Sanders broke the Robsten-shipping hearts of the world (and preceded Sanders’ divorce). But years after making up and breaking up again with Twilight co-star Robert Pattinson, she still thinks he’s the greatest.
“We were together for years, that was my first [love],” she told Howard Stern in 2019.
Now, she’s engaged to longtime girlfriend Dylan Meyer.
Robert Pattinson
Perhaps even more so than Stewart, Pattinson has worked to distance himself from his star-making turn as the brooding vampire Edward Cullen—though he told E! News he would “always appreciate” what the Twilight franchise did for his career.
He was the romantic lead in 2010’s Remember Me and 2011’s Water for Elephants, but after that he primarily stuck to the down-and-dirty depths of the human soul in the likes of Maps to The Stars, The Rover, Good Time and 2019’s The Lighthouse, in which it’s just Pattinson, Willem Dafoe and some really sordid nightmares.
Then, of course, came The Batman, in which he played billionaire Bruce Wayne (albeit a moody, Kurt Cobain-influenced one) and the Caped Crusader himself.
Following his notoriously public split from Stewart, Pattinson was engaged for awhile to FKA twigs. However, they broke up in 2017. Pattinson is now reportedly engaged to Suki Waterhouse, and they welcomed a baby girl in the spring of 2024. However, the couple keeps much of their relationship private.
“If you let people in, it devalues what love is,” Pattinson explained his approach to dating as far out of the public eye as possible to the Sunday Times in 2019.
Taylor Lautner
After captivating the hearts of Team Jacob, the actor went the action hero route in the John Singleton-directed Abduction and showed off his comedic chops in Grown Ups 2 and the Netflix movie The Ridiculous 6, both with Adam Sandler.
On TV he starred in BBC Three’s Cuckoo and the second season of Ryan Murphy’s horror-comedy Scream Queens—where he met Billie Lourd, whom he dated until 2017.
Lautner made it Instagram official with girlfriend Taylor Dome in 2018, and the pair announced their engagement in November. They then said “I do” during a stunning California wedding in November 2022.
