Nothing instills faith in the future of film fandom quite like the Twilight saga. Nearly a decade after the franchise’s final installment (2012’s Breaking Dawn—Part 2), fans still share an unflappable commitment to making the movies trend.
For the uninitiated, all five of the supernatural epics—Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, Breaking Dawn Parts 1 and 2—hit Netflix on Friday. Twitter reacted with as much shock and awe as Bella beholding Edward’s sparkly vampire skin for the very first time.
Just as long-running comfort series like Friends and The Office went dark for several months before finding new streaming homes on HBO Max and Peacock, respectively, the Twilight movies had a similar hiatus. Shortly after Stephanie Meyers’s long-awaited Twilight continuation Midnight Sun was released last August, the franchise transferred from Amazon Prime to Hulu. Alas, all five of the films left Hulu at the end of October, forcing fans to sit through a Freeform marathon (those pesky commercials!) or dust off their DVD box sets if they wanted a rewatch.
A spot on an American Film Institute list or a Criterion Collection release, Twilight does not have. But in an increasingly fickle pop culture landscape, the saga continues to enrapture its diehard fans. A scroll through Twitter, where “twilight saga” has been steadily trending, offers a glimpse into the solace these chaotic films offer, time and time again. For some, the series best complements a rainy weekend inside—the kind where you swaddle yourself in a weighted blanket and play 2010s indie music on repeat. Others use them as an opportunity to get nostalgic for pained Kristen Stewart interviews and gifs of the frightening CGI baby known as Renesmee.