Bella cuts her father Charlie Swan out of her life when she marries Edward and joins the Cullen family in the Twilight saga, but the series never fully justified this decision. The Twilight movies, like the bestselling books they were based on, received an inordinate amount of flack from critics. A substantial amount of Twilight criticism amounted to cheap shots that mocked the young fan base of the franchise for their obsessive fandom, which was a shame since there were both merits to the movies and plenty of meaningful problems that merited discussion in terms of pacing, character development, and plot mechanics.
For example, Twilight’s movie adaptations lacked a consistent central villain, with the first movie focusing on James’s coven, the second and fourth foregrounding the Volturi, and the third bringing back a recast Victoria. Twilight’s rewrites cut a great villain, leaving the franchise without a compelling singular antagonist. Similarly, Bella’s insistence that she couldn’t tell her father Charlie about her new life as a vampire was never justified, outside of the obvious problems with informing Charlie that vampires exist. This weakened Bella’s relationship with her father and made their eventual farewell a lot less dramatically impactful.
Bella Definitely Could Have Told Charlie About Vampires
In both the Twilight novels and the movie adaptations, Bella doesn’t tell Charlie about vampires because she says this would pose a risk to his life and wellbeing. However, this reasoning doesn’t really add up under any modicum of scrutiny. After all, thanks to Carlisle Cullen, Twilight’s vampires (or, at least, the Cullen coven) are non-dangerous beings who don’t drink human blood. Not only that, but Bella survived learning about them just fine, and, while it could be argued that she had Edward to protect her, Jacob and his entire tribe also all know about the vampires and are no worse off for this knowledge.
Not only that, but Charlie Swan is arguably the Forks local with the most vested interest in learning about vampires. He was the sheriff who investigated the gruesome, bizarre death of Waylon Forge, and he never learned why his friend’s body showed up drained of its blood. As such, explaining to him that vampires and werewolves make up a significant portion of the local population could help him a lot with his investigations. However, while Bella keeping in touch with Charlie would have made the ending of Breaking Dawn less creepy, there is another reason that she didn’t keep her father in the loop.
Why Bella Really Cut Charlie Out Of Her Life
Bella was never really close with Charlie throughout the Twilight saga, despite the character’s best attempts to connect with his daughter. Charlie is awkward and stiff when he interacts with her and, for her part, Bella isn’t overly invested in helping him out. The pair have a poor relationship throughout the saga, thus justifying Bella’s choice to keep her father in the dark about the true nature of the Cullens. After the family accepts her as one of them, Bella doesn’t want to jeopardize the stable home she has found, leading her to instead leave behind her father, since the Twilight supporting star was never much of a support to her in the first place.