Twilight Theory Destroys Bella’s Biggest Secret in Breaking Dawn: Charlie Knew Everything

Summary:

• Most fans don’t suppose Charlie Swan knew what was going on with his daughter.
• In Breaking Dawn, Charlie realizes Bella has changed, and he knows about Renesmee, too.
• Charlie Swan only chooses to keep quiet about his knowledge to keep his daughter close.

Twilight protagonists and fans alike treated Charlie Swan patronizingly, like Bella’s good-natured but slow old man. While Charlie was indeed a kind and caring father, he was by no means slow or dumb, and throughout the franchise, he knew way more than he let on. This became especially apparent in the last movies, Breaking Dawn.

We’re convinced that long before the finale, Charlie Swan had already caught up to both Bella being a vampire and Renesmee being her and Edward’s biological daughter. Why are we so sure, you ask? Well, allow us to explain.

How Did Charlie Realize Bella Had Changed?

Let’s keep our heads in Breaking Dawn but quickly backtrack to Twilight for a second, shall we? That would make things way easier to understand.

In Twilight, when Bella first touched Edward’s hand, she immediately flinched because his skin was stone-cold. This was not even a metaphor since in this franchise, vampires work differently, and their skin is, indeed, crystallized. Edward’s skin was ice-cold and hard to the touch; so was Bella’s after she was turned.

In Breaking Dawn, Charlie hugs his daughter after she and Edward return, and he surely feels just the same as Bella did when she touched her future husband for the first time: skin that’s hard as stone and ice-cold. In the movie, his face says it all as he immediately understands his daughter changed, though he might not know how.

Thanks to Jacob revealing his werewolf nature to Charlie, Bella’s father could be sure of one thing: the supernatural was real. After hugging his daughter and sensing the changes in her, many oddities that had been happening in the past years started clicking in Charlie’s head, and the entire puzzle finally made sense to him.

He might not have thought of vampires right off the bat, mind you, considering that vampires in Twilight’s “real world” worked differently from those in its media. Still, Charlie was absolutely aware that his daughter was not the same anymore and she’d become something supernatural. Specifics did not matter as much to him.

How Did Charlie Realize Renesmee Was Bella’s Child?

This one’s even easier to explain, and it also supports our previous point. Bella and Edward’s explanation that Renesmee was “special” really didn’t cut it in terms of explaining how a child could grow up to four years old in under three months, and adoption made even less sense to Charlie: he saw that Renesmee looked like Bella.

Having already realized that Bella was changed and supernatural in some way, Charlie accepted the fact that he had somehow become a grandfather in record time and just rolled with having a little fast-growing granddaughter. At that point, Charlie Swan was barely questioning anything but he was certain that Renesmee was Bella’s.

Why Didn’t Charlie Do or Say Anything to Bella?

Despite being genuinely concerned for his only daughter and knowing that something supernatural had happened to her, Charlie never confronted Bella about it. This might seem counterintuitive to many; if he didn’t speak up, it would mean that he either knew nothing or wasn’t worried about Bella’s well-being. That’s not true.

It was quite the other way around.

Bella had made it clear that if her father learned too much about what was going on, she’d have to disappear to protect him, and Charlie didn’t want to lose his daughter. While he was quite uneasy about the situation, he decided to completely trust Bella and accept that he would never learn some information if by remaining somewhat in the dark he would ensure Bella wouldn’t leave him. That was his choice.

But by no means was Charlie a slow fellow who didn’t understand what was going on around him. He knew about Bella’s changes; he realized Renesmee was her and Edward’s biological child; and later, we’re sure, he also came to the conclusion that his daughter had become a vampire. Charlie merely stayed quiet to stay close.