Previously: They came, they talked, it’s over.
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Catherine: Rather than write a compelling climax to the book, a scene in which every thread that she has been weaving together for four books seamlessly unite, a scene where the reader truly feels rewarded for sticking with the series this long, in the first sentence of the final chapter of the last book of the series, Meyer has Edward explain to us what happened during the confrontation we just read about.
“So it was combination of things there at the end, but what it really boiled down to was… Bella.”
I mean…okay? I don’t really remember Bella doing much but if it makes you feel better to pretend that she had some agency over her own plot than more power to you, Meyer.
Marines: I think what makes Meyer feel better are her buckets of money. Also, she never felt bad because she loves this crap.
Annie: Well, that and the fact that she has a patient, willing and thiiiirsty husband:
Bella’s narration explains that most of the vampire witnesses left pretty much right after the non-fight ended. Benjamin, Tia, Amun, Kebi, other people I don’t remember all bid goodbye and left. The Amazonian vamps were desperate to get back to their “beloved rain forest” (Good job Steph, you used up the single thing you know about the Amazon) and the Romanian vampires, Vladimir and Stefan– wait, did we seriously not notice that there’s a character in this mess who is almost named Stefon?
K: I remain unconvinced.
Mari: I can’t say I blame you, but you are really reaching for joy here.
Catherine: I do what I have to.
Anyway, the Romanian vampires peaced out immediately after they realized that there wasn’t gonna be an actual fight. Wish we could have done that, too. Before Siobhan leaves, she warns Carlisle that the Volturi are going to come after them again once they pick up their faces. Carlisle is basically like yeah, they’ll probably try to murder us in a few decades or something, nbd. Surprised Meyer didn’t try to tack on another 200 pages to show that. The Denali clan leave to mourn…whichever one it was that alerted the Volturi about the creepy baby and then got murdered. It’s too much effort to go back and look up her name. But Garrett goes with them now that he’s with… which ever one he’s with. I don’t know.
At the point that the chapter starts (which, confusingly, isn’t gotten back around to until the third page?) Edward is telling Huilen and Nahuel (the half vampire/half humans) about what actually happened during the non-fight when everyone spent several chapters in a field thinking at each other. Edward says that Alice gave Aro an excuse to get out of the fight but he only took it because he was “terrified” of Bella.
K: My page post-it says “Bella and her blank brain save the day.” Also, why do we need a recap of what happened LITERALLY A CHAPTER EARLIER??? Whatever. Who cares. We’re 10 pages from the end.
Mari: “Maybe the readers won’t have caught the way I had literally nothing happen. I KNOW. I’LL REPEAT IT!” Stephenie Meyer, probably.
Annie: To be fair, I forget what I read in this book the second I read it due to self-preservation, so. I guess this recap in the place of a epilogue works? Because it’s not like Meyer knew how to write an epilo– No, fuck it. I don’t care. Let’s finish this trash.
Catherine: Part of the reason Aro ended the battle was because he was apparently afraid of the wolves, many of whom are sex offenders.
Apparently Caius lost a fight with a “real” werewolf centuries ago and he’s been scared of them ever since. Is it just me or does it seem like the villains Meyer spent four books building up are complete wusses? But what’s this? “Real” werewolves? What does that mean? Apparently there are honest-to-God full moon, can turn anyone werewolves in the Twilight universe and Edward is just mentioning this now. Because if you remember, Jacob and the pack were revealed to actually be shape-shifters a few chapters ago and not “real” werewolves. And yes, before you ask, this IS something that’s being revealed 99% of the way through 1000+ pages of world building and we’re just supposed to accept it. Why is Edward mentioning this now, when there are less than 10 pages left in the book? “It never came up” apparently.
Mari: What is coming up is my dinner, though, so I hope Meyer is happy.
Catherine: I no longer even have the strength to vom.
Bella laughs it off and then explodes at Alice .03 seconds later for making them all think that she’d left. Alice tells her that she had to leave because she wasn’t sure if her plan was going to work or if everyone was going to die. If everyone died, Bella had to be prepared to get Renesmee her papers and shit so that Jacob could take her over state lines—oh shit, I mean “rescue” her (against her will). (M: AMBER ALERT.) Bella says that she gets why Edward couldn’t be told, so that Aro wouldn’t find out, but asks why Alice couldn’t have told her about the plan, since Aro can’t read her mind. Alice admits that she doesn’t think that Bella is that good of an actress. I see now why this scene was left out of the movie.
K: Sick burn, Alice. “Your brain is blank but your poker face is shit”, basically.
Catherine: Edward goes back to Monday-morning-quarterbacking the non-fight and Bella gets uncomfortable with everyone calling her a hero. Especially Nahuel, who is looking at her in awe. Then she starts to wonder if Nahuel might actually be looking at Renesmee, who she’s holding.
“He couldn’t be oblivious to the fact that Nessie was the only female of his kind that wasn’t his half-sister.”
Ah come on, Meyer! You couldn’t end the series without one more pedo reference? REALLY? You couldn’t just let this thing go without another grown man hitting on this small child. Allow me to ask, maybe even for the last time on this blog: What the hell is wrong with you?
K: It also super weirds me out that Bella’s basically sexualising her infant daughter by coming to that conclusion. He can’t just be looking at a baby because she’s a baby and they do weird shit. Nope, it has to be because he wants to fuck marry her someday. Cool. Thanks for that, Steph.
Mari: It’s almost like Meyer doesn’t know how to assign worth to females apart from someone’s desire to marry them and didn’t see how creepy it was to do that IN THE CONTEXT OF A BABY. It’s almost exactly like that.
Catherine: Bella hopes that Jacob doesn’t notice the other grown man eye-fucking her toddler, because she doesn’t want them to fight. (A: WHAT THE FUUUUUCK.) Right. That’s the thing to focus on here. Finally, Bella eventually remembers that her child needs to sleep and asks Edward if they can go back to their cottage to put her to bed. Edward points out that R didn’t get much sleep the night before since Jacob was snoring and they all laugh.
K: BYE, BOY, BYEEEEEEE. (I just came to the sudden realisation that after being reasonably significant back there during Bella’s pregnancy, Leah essentially disappears from the page the second Renesmee is born. I hope Leah fled to somewhere sunny and found a hottie to bang who didn’t fucking suck.)
Mari: Someone of consenting age who wasn’t soul-magic bound to her. The dream.
Catherine: Before Edward and Bella leave, Bella asks Jasper why J. Jenks is terrified of him. Jasper laughs and says:
“It’s been my experience that some kinds of working relationships are better motivated by fear than by monetary gain.”
Bella makes a mental note to take over that working relationship to spare J. Jonah any heartattacks. I wonder why this part was put in here? To remind us that the Cullens are still dicks one last time? Because Meyer’s editor had gone into a coma by this point?
Mari: Most of this series has been useless but it’s really highlighted in the final few pages. That is SUCH A WEIRD THING TO JUST THROW IN THERE. WHY? Especially because it seems like we’re getting goodbyes from the characters and Jasper’s is just LOL, BEING MEAN IS USEFUL BYE.
Annie: Meyer has proven book after book that she has no idea what the purpose of an epilogue is. This feels more like a screenplay of a series finale than a book. Are. We. Done. Yet.
Catherine: Not yet but almost!
Bella and Edward leave to go to their house and Bella notices that Nahuel looks “intently” after them “as if he wished he could follow.” Literally what the fuck is this little addendum about this other guy wanting to fuck this kid. Or is it that he wants to have a threeway with Bedward? What IS this?
Mari: One final pedo-alert.
Annie: I love that this book makes me wish for things like “I hope that character is hot for a threesome and not a toddler.” Thanks, Meyer.
Catherine: Nevermind I can still vom.
Bella and Edward head back to their house, walking slowly and talking. Edward says that he’s proud of Jacob for not immediately thinking about fucking his daughter when Nahuel said that R would be fully grown in six years. Gold star for basic decency, Jacob. Edward accepts Jacob now and feels that his toddler could do worse than being trapped into marriage with a guy whose 20 years older than her. But he laughs when he mentions that Nahuel was also giving their baby daughter the sex eyes. Hilarious! TWO grown men acting like a toddler is a piece of meat with no bodily autonomy. OKAY. SURE. FINE.
K: Literally everything about this page is a goddamn hot mess. Like… this is a super popular young adult series in which two characters are having a jokey conversation about grown men fucking their infant daughter in seven years’ time. WHAT. WHY. WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS MESS?
Mari: I should’ve known better than to call that final pedo-alert so early?
Catherine: There is always room for another pedo alert. But Edward explains to Bella that Nahuel actually was staring at her and not Renesmee. He’s fascinated because, unlike his own father, Edward had the self restraint to hit that but not murder that. Let me tell you, Nahuel, you would not be impressed if you’d read the rest of this series. Edward almost killed her like 800 times. But this makes Bella realize that she can’t hate Nahuel (even if he creepy stares at her and plans to marry her tiny baby daughter against her will) because she feels bad for him. IS THIS SERIES OVER YET?
Bella loops back around to thinking about how happy she is with everything in her perfect life (M: This is a little soon after a big murder showdown with rival vampires, no?) and that she plans to go see Charlie the next day and reassure him with her eyes that she’s totally fine. Suddenly she realizes that Charlie is probably dating Sue Clearwater. Like, literally out of nowhere she comes to this conclusion and then assumes Sue will be there tomorrow. I guess Bella also got some latent psychic and relationship sensing powers, too.
“But most significant in this tidal wave of happiness was the surest fact of all: I was with Edward. Forever.”
Also nothing she was thinking about was even related to that. She went from “I bet Charlie is dating Sue” to “But regardless, Edward, Khaki Skirt and I will be 2gether 5ever.” Lazy transition, Meyer.
Back at the cabin, they put Renesmee to sleep and Edward starts to get monogomously freaky with Bella but she pulls away. He’s confused because apparently “as a general rule” she doesn’t pull away. What a creepy way to put that. Bella tells him that she wants to try something and puts her hands on either side of his face. She does some more endless, incomprehensible explaining about her shield as she mentally shoves it off herself and opens up her mind to Edward’s… plundering…
Mari: Untz, untz, untz. (That was my sexy music, fyi.)
Annie: Hot. Like, if this isn’t the sexiest, most erotic foreplay…
Catherine: She focuses on memories of their life together, “dim” memories from her sad, weak, human eyes. Bella is mentally picturing the day they met, they day they got married, the sparkle meadow, all while recalling how she felt about it so that Edward can see it in her mind. He breaks her concentration by kissing her and her shield snaps back into place again like strong, protective granny panties.
He says that he “heard” her (which, no you didn’t, you “saw” her, stupid) and Bella says that she and Zafrina practiced it at some point when we, the reader, weren’t spending every mind-numbing second going through Bella’s day with her. When? That’s what I’m asking. But we literally have 1 page left so I need to shut the fuck up and stop asking questions that might potentially prolong this joint nightmare we’ve been having for four books.
“Now you know.” I said, lightly and shrugged. “No one’s ever loved anyone as much as I love you.”
SERIOUSLY SOMEONE HANG UP.
K: Can it be me? Please let it be me.
Mari: I will hang up so hard.
Annie: Over my dead body. I WILL BE THE FIRST TO HANG UP.
Catherine: Nope! Still more (somehow??) Edward asks if she can do it again. It comes across dirty for some reason to me. I wanna spray Lysol on this whole book. Bella agrees but tells him that she needs to concentrate and he breaks her concentration by kissing her again. They both laugh and she says they have a long time to work on it.
“Forever and forever and forever,’ he murmured.”
Luckily we don’t have to read about it anymore. And, just like that, after literally a kajillion pages of utter nonsense and shameless word count padding, the series ends with:
“And then we continued blissfully into this small but perfect piece of our forever.”
I think there’s supposed to be a comma in there. What a fitting end. Everyone start erasing this from your mind, immediately.
K: And to celebrate, I’mma literally throw my copy of this book in the trash. Fuckity bye, book. Catch you never.
Annie: I can’t feel my face. Are we dooooone? We’re DONE! Huzzah, we survived the thing.
Mari: We always end up in this place where at the end of these huge projects, I’m so burnt out that I can’t even think of how to send it off properly. It’s been a long road, dear friends, and chances are we may just let this one die right here, right now. So, I’ll take this opportunity to thank you all for reading and commenting and making what we do worth it. I’m not trying to sound super heroic or fall on sword-y here, but a little bit.
Because in case you didn’t catch it: this was AWFUL.
But now it is over, at least book-wise. I’m going to try and convince the girls to watch the two movies for a #snarkathon. Perhaps that will be our official sendoff.
See you around the site and thanks again!
It’s over, folks. Who knows what our next bookish adventure will be?
I am a 30-something year-old human woman who lives in Maine. I'm a freelance writer who mostly spends time that I should be doing that, watching T.V. I also love reading and comic books way too much.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
Fuchsia-haired, caffeine enthusiast, dog person, Raptors fan, sometimes blogger, music & social media geek, freelancer, human being. She/her.
I'm a 30-something librarian and I still live with my parents because I'm super broke. Leader of Team Heartless Cow. I have an inexplicable love for 90s television, eat too much chocolate, and read more than is good for me.