Twilight Timeline: Every Event in Order, Film by Film

The timeline begins in Twilight (2008), directed by Catherine Hardwicke, when Bella Swan leaves sunny Phoenix, Arizona, for the rainy town of Forks, Washington, where her father Charlie Swan is the police chief. She is seventeen, and within her first days at school she notices the Cullens, a group of unusually pale adopted siblings. Edward Cullen seems to avoid her, then saves her from a van skidding across the parking lot, and Bella works out that he is a vampire.

The two fall in love anyway, and Edward introduces her to his adoptive family, led by Carlisle Cullen and Esme. A nomadic vampire named James, traveling with Victoria and Laurent, fixes on Bella as prey. She is sent back to Phoenix to hide, but James tricks her into a ballet studio by faking the kidnapping of her mother. The Cullens arrive in time to kill James, and Edward draws the venom out of Bella's blood before it can change her. Victoria survives, and her wish for revenge hangs over the next two films. The Twilight 2008 film page has the full details.

The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009), directed by Chris Weitz, opens on a birthday Bella Swan has been dreading: she turns eighteen, and Edward Cullen will stay seventeen forever. A paper cut at the Cullens' small party is enough to make Jasper lunge at her. Edward concludes that she is safer without him, tells her he does not love her, and the family leaves Forks.

What follows is the longest stretch of the timeline without Edward on screen. Bella goes numb for months, until she notices that reckless moments let her hear his voice. Her friendship with Jacob Black grows while they rebuild motorbikes, and then he withdraws. Bella learns that Jacob and others in his Quileute tribe are werewolves, and that vampires are their natural enemies. Victoria, still after revenge from the first film, begins to hunt Bella, and the wolf pack steps in to guard her.

The turning point is a cliff dive. Bella jumps for the thrill and nearly drowns, Jacob pulls her out, and Alice, who saw the jump in a vision, wrongly tells Edward that Bella has died. Edward goes to Italy to ask the Volturi to kill him, and Alice rushes Bella to Volterra to stop him. Aro rules that Bella knows too much and must be turned or killed. The Cullens bargain for time, on the condition that she will be changed soon. Back in Forks, Edward offers to change her only if she marries him, and Jacob is left hurt by her choice. For the film on its own, see Twilight New Moon.

In The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010), directed by David Slade, a string of killings in Seattle points to a growing group of newborn vampires, and Victoria is secretly building the army. Alice foresees it moving toward Forks, so the Cullens start watching the area closely. Bella is close to graduating from school and wants Edward to turn her.

Jacob admits his feelings, and Bella tells him she loves Edward, though he kisses her anyway. The Cullens and the werewolf pack set aside their old hostility and train side by side, with Jasper explaining how newborns fight by drawing on his own past. Edward proposes and Bella accepts. During a freezing night in a tent in the mountains, Bella kisses Jacob, which leaves her more certain that Edward is the one she loves.

Victoria and Riley find the hideout, and Edward kills them both. The Cullens and the wolves destroy the newborn army, though Jacob is badly hurt. The Volturi then arrive, find a surviving newborn named Bree Tanner who has given up, and Jane has her killed, a reminder that they are watching. Jacob accepts that Bella chose Edward, and the couple start planning their future. See Twilight Eclipse for more.

On the timeline, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 (2011), directed by Bill Condon, is the stretch where Bella and Edward finally build a life together, and it moves from a wedding to a delivery room in a matter of months. It begins with a forest ceremony where Bella's relatives and school friends sit alongside the Cullens and a few visiting vampires. Jacob Black takes a dance with the bride and then walks out, upset by what the wedding night means for a human Bella.

The honeymoon is spent on a private island off Brazil, and the trip changes the story almost at once, because Bella discovers she is pregnant and the baby develops far faster than any ordinary pregnancy. Edward is afraid of losing her and urges an end to it. Bella refuses. Once the couple are back in Forks, Rosalie becomes Bella's fierce guardian, while the Quileute wolves conclude the unborn child is a danger. Jacob parts ways with the pack's leader and takes Seth and Leah with him to stand beside Bella.

The turn comes when Edward starts to hear what the baby is thinking, and his fear gives way to love. The birth is brutal. Edward saves Bella by injecting venom straight into her heart, and Jacob, convinced the child is gone, ends up bonded to little Renesmee instead of attacking. Bella opens her eyes red. A scene after the credits shows the Volturi reading Carlisle's letter about the wedding and the change, and their leader remarks that the Cullens still hold something he wants. That sets up the next entry in the timeline. The Breaking Dawn Part 1 page covers the film itself.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 (2012), also directed by Bill Condon, is the last stretch of the timeline and follows Bella's first days as a vampire. She finds that she can keep her thirst under control, and Jacob forms a lifelong bond with Renesmee, which Bella accepts after a first burst of anger. Renesmee grows at an astonishing speed, and Charlie starts to notice that something is strange about the family.

Irina sees the child from a distance, misreads her as an immortal child, a forbidden kind of vampire that cannot be controlled, and tells the Volturi. Alice leaves after a vision of the Volturi coming, and the Cullens gather vampire friends from around the world to stand as witnesses. Bella learns that her mental shield can be stretched to protect others from vampire powers, and she trains to use it.

The Volturi arrive in the snowy fields near Forks with a large army led by Aro. A battle begins, Carlisle, Jasper and several others fall, and then it turns out to be a vision Alice shows Aro, one in which the Volturi lose heavily. Alice's last witness, a half human, half vampire man, proves Renesmee is no danger, and the Volturi back down. Alice glimpses Renesmee and Jacob together in the future, and Bella lets Edward see her memories. Read more on the Breaking Dawn Part 2 page.

In my opinion, the Twilight timeline is one of the easiest in any franchise, because the five films run in a single line from Bella's arrival in Forks to the standoff with the Volturi, and none of them jumps back in time. That being said, a few threads reward a closer look, and I will take them in turn.

The first is Victoria, who runs through the first three films. She is left hunting in Twilight (2008), she is the reason the wolf pack guards Bella in New Moon, and she is dead by the end of Eclipse, so those three films work as one long chase. The second is the Volturi, who first appear in Italy in New Moon, return for Bree Tanner in Eclipse, and learn about Renesmee at the end of Breaking Dawn Part 1. Read together, they set up the final confrontation well before it arrives.

The third is the split of the last book into two films. Bill Condon directed both Breaking Dawn parts, with the wedding and birth in one film and the aftermath and standoff in the other, so it could be argued that the pair are really one story told in two sittings. The screen version departs from Stephenie Meyer's novels in places, and the Twilight books vs movies comparison sets out those differences, while the Twilight characters hub shows who matters at each stage.

If you are new to this, my practical advice is to watch in release order, using the Twilight movies hub for the full list, and to treat the Midnight Sun series as a separate project, since it is television and not part of the film timeline.