This summer I found myself in a strange predicament: I had the ridiculously strong urge to rewatch the Twilight movies. I had never considered this before. I was never really a fan–in fact, I’m pretty sure my first watch of the movies was to accompany my mom to the theaters since she had read the saga in her School Mom Book Club. That’s why the urge, or bloodlust, to watch 607 minutes of sparkly vampire angst truly caught me off guard. Still I did it, in three short nights. I probably would have watched it in one considering how engrossed I was if I hadn’t had work and class the next day every day. The question I ask now is why the hell did this happen? If you’re on the same side of social media as me, you probably know the answer. This is not the first nostalgic renaissance to hit. Earlier, this Corona summer many of us rewatched Avatar the Last Airbender. This month, all I see are Draco Malfoy and Cedric Diggory POVs (proof of a Robert Pattinson-specific renaissance) on my feed.
What amazes me most about this phenomenon is how I did not realize until after I began rewatching the serieses that I had been subconsciously tricked into doing so by my social media. I had for years vaguely considered rewatching ATLA and knew it was finally my time now that it had begun streaming on Netflix. It was no surprise to me that many others had the same feeling and began posting about it. Twilight, however, was another story.
Midnight Sun, Stephanie Meyer’s revisitation of Twilight from Edward’s point of view was released August 4th, most likely prompting a revamp in the Twihard community, but what I saw this summer was bigger than that. Not only did I, someone who used to make fun of the saga, rewatch and absolutely love it, so did several of my friends. Now, one of my friends and I, whose taste varies extraordinarily from mine, are fawning over RPatz. All forms of RPatz. Even Chav, “Willy Wonka Special” Robert Pattinson. Robert Pattinson, a celebrity just a few months ago I had firmly placed into the box of I just don’t see it. And if you look on social media, we are clearly not alone.
If you go through my recently liked TikToks, at least a quarter of them are now Twilight themed. I have chosen to enter the abyss. Now that the heyday of sparkly vampires is ending, I am trying desperately to force my algorithm to keep the Edward Cullen thirst trap videos coming. Unfortunately, most of my feed is now the aforementioned Harry Potter POVs. Despite being a self-admitted middle school fangirl, I never read this series, and I really, really do not have time to get tricked into falling down a rabbit hole again, so I am not liking any of these videos! (Despite the fact that they are ridiculously well-made and feature young Robert Pattinson.) Hopefully, this era of nostalgia renaissance will end soon so I do not fall back into my sixth grade personality and ruin my budding college social life, but this summer, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It brought us all back to a simpler time when young adult sagas dominated the box office and cardboard cutout celebrity crushes were the norm, and for that, dear TikTok algorithm, I am thankful.