Upon a re-watch of the Twilight saga, the recasting of Victoria is an awkwardly handled plot point that derails the flow of the movie adaptations. The Twilight movie adaptations are by no means perfect. Despite Taylor Lautner’s insistence to the contrary, Twilight’s imprinting subplot is creepy and not particularly well justified by the movies, and the central love story between Bella and Edward isn’t substantial enough to sustain multiple movies (hence the frequent complaints from critics that the adaptations were lacking in incident).
However, one of the biggest problems with Twilight’s movie adaptations occurs in the two strongest movies of the series. While director Catherine Hardwicke’s original Twilight introduced a version of the villainous Victoria played by Rachelle Lefevre, 2010’s Eclipse recast this secondary villain with Bryce Dallas Howard. This results in Twilight’s sequel hook seeming like a non-sequitur upon a re-watch of the original movie, as Victoria vows to get revenge on Edward and Bella only for her to be a completely different person when she resurfaces later in the story. While Eclipse's changes to Twilight’s story mostly made sense, this poorly disguised recasting is a goofy misstep.
Twilight’s Sequel Hook Doesn’t Work
Twilight ends with its surviving villain Victoria surveying Bella and Edward’s romantic slow dance before vowing to get vengeance on the pair. She walks toward the camera in slow motion and the stage is set for the next Twilight movie to address Victoria’s rampage of revenge. Then New Moon drops this storyline for an unrelated plot about Edward leaving Bella, almost committing suicide, and eventually returning home without a scratch. The Victoria subplot is picked up again in 2010’s Eclipse but, by then, Victoria is played by Bryce Dallas Howard—a recasting that would not be so egregiously obvious if she was the only villain who survived the events of Twilight.
Edi Gathegi’s underrated Twilight villain Laurent is played by the same actor in both Twilight and Eclipse, and the fact that he hasn’t been recast makes it hard to ignore Victoria’s new face. Eclipse never addresses the fact that Victoria’s appearance has changed between movies and, while it is possible to pull off a recasting, the sequel only makes this issue more noticeable by keeping Laurent’s actor the same. To make matters worse, Lefevre’s original version of Victoria even has a brief appearance in New Moon, making her sudden change of appearance all the more noticeable and inexplicable. The transition is handled poorly, de-fanging one of the franchise’s best villains.
Why Victoria’s Role In Eclipse Failed
Victoria, the love interest of Twilight's villain James, is a potentially great villain. She is driven by anger and despair over losing her mate, something that both Edward and Bella can relate to, and has a tragic backstory that makes Victoria almost sympathetic. However, this is lost when her depiction is as inconstant as it is throughout the Twilight movies. In Twilight and New Moon, Lefevre’s version of Victoria is a smirking, cunning villainess who operates in the shadows while, in Eclipse, Bryce Dallas Howard’s take on the character is animalistic and wild-eyed. The two characters are too different to coexist, making this the Twilight saga’s most misguided recasting.