For once, the homophobes were right.

If you strolled down a middle school hallway in November 2009, chances are some random guys would cackle at any mention of Jacob Black, Bella Swan, or Edward Cullen with utterances of “gayyyy.” This was an age of movies hinging entire gags on “do you know how I know you’re gay?” where the height of comedy for man-children and actual male children everywhere was to label something with these three little letters. No wonder, then, something aimed at women like the Twilight franchise constantly earned this designation.

Here’s the thing, though: They were unfortunately onto something — just not in the way they intended. Noxious YouTube trolls, teens hooked on Rucka Rucka Ali Pandora channels, and Smosh devotees circa. 2010 declared Twilight as gay because it wasn’t directly aimed at their sensibilities. But over time, countless aspects of this franchise have become embraced by the queer community as “gay” in a good way. Those shirtless werewolves. Michael Sheen putting his whole pussy into an evildoer performance. Instantly iconic campy lines like “you named her after the Loch Ness Monster?” Even Kristen Stewart herself recently declared that these movies were “so gay.”

I’m afraid your middle school bully was right about one thing: Twilight is gay. Very gay. But how?? What vein must you puncture in the Twilight Saga to release a cascading flood of queerness? Hang on tight spider-monkey…it’s time to look at how queerness manifests in these sparkly vampire movies.

Much of Twilight’s queer reputation as a film franchise comes down to that very first installment. Much like Cyndi Lauper’s She’s So Unusual album or the inaugural season of Heroes, 2008’s Twilight cast a long creative shadow over everything else that came after. This is the movie that bore so many of the most ubiquitous memes and reaction images. Plus, it’s the title that expanded the Twilight fan base beyond devotees of the books. Most importantly, Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke, whether intentionally or not, imbued the proceedings with a deeply queer sensibility.

Part of what makes Twilight queerer than its successors is that screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg is adapting a more intimate story. Later larger forms of conflict like the ticking clock of Edward and Bella having to get married or the machinations of evil Volturi coven aren’t around yet. Instead, the focus is on high school outsiders who, naturally, can allegorically register as queer. After all, Edward Cullen and his family want nothing more than their vampirism to remain secret from larger society lest they experience tremendous prejudice and even violence. They’re a bunch of closeted homos that happen to drink blood and run really fast. That’s the kind of allegorical reading that bubbles closer to the surface without the grander mythology propping up, say, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn.

Meanwhile, the more unabashedly ludicrous elements of Twilight just reek of queer camp. By the early-to-mid-2010s, movies everywhere from Jurassic World to Money Monster would be employing sickening light blue color grading for no good reason. Back in 2008, though, Twilight’s pervasively blue hues felt a little subversive of mainstream cinema visual norms. Queers and vampires alike are never fully “normal” as society narrowly defines that term. The inescapable blue in Hardwicke’s Twilight visually reflected this reality. Meanwhile, enjoyably preposterous sequences like vampires playing baseball are just the kind of nonsense that gays eat up.

Queerness also soaked deeper into Hardwicke’s Twilight thanks to the circumstances surrounding this feature’s origins. Hollywood was incredibly dubious of turning Twilight into a movie back in the mid-2000s. That’s why it existed as an independent feature financed and distributed through small label Summit Entertainment. After Twilight’s massive success, the sequels became pop culture events that executives and marketers obsessed over. Once New Moon had a Nordstrom fashion line and Eclipse had a Burger King tie-in, the saga had to adhere to slightly more heterosexual and mainstream expectations.

To be clear, 2008’s Twilight was no arthouse movie. It was decidedly mainstream with no explicit queer characters in sight and plenty of merchandise heralding its release. However, there’s a reason Breaking Dawn – Part One hasn’t spawned nearly as many memes or appreciative Tumblr posts about its queerness as the original film. This 2008 Hardwicke directorial effort exhibited confidence in embracing source material Hollywood shunned that alone attracted queer viewers. Here was a comparative pop culture “underdog” unabashedly embracing its weirder tendencies like an intimate scene hinging on Edward having to suck just the right amount of Bella’s blood. Gays inevitably gravitated towards the artistic conviction that also underscored past queer cinema staples like The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

It doesn’t hurt too that Hardwicke helmed Twilight. She’s a filmmaker whose works tend to intersect with interests, themes, and performers appealing to the queer community. For one thing, she directed Thirteen which features a moment of teen rebellion via a lesbian kiss. Her willingness to focus on messy women in general — Thirteen, yes, but also Plush! — has also garnered her enthusiasm from this demographic. Not to mention she’s made multiple films with queer favorite Toni Collette. Heck, Hardwicke was even once set to direct a lesbian Viking movie! Alas, Hardwicke was jettisoned from Twilight after just one movie. Like so many other big franchises with largely women fanbases (see also: Fifty Shades of Grey), a woman director did all the work to launch the franchise before getting pushed aside for male directors on the sequels. Hooray for Hollywood!

Subsequent Twilight entries weren’t devoid of queer material. Just look at the wave of buff shirtless dudes hanging around with Jacob Black in later entries. However, eventual directors like Chris Weitz and David Slade dialed back some of the campier elements of the original Twilight for their outings. They were now interested in recapturing the lightning of the bottle of the first movie, not tantalizing queer views. Plus, somebody like Weitz was most experienced with co-directing and helming movies like American Pie, The Golden Compass, and AfrAId. These aren’t exactly queer classics. Nor are they features rife with bold swings for the gays.

Brief flashes of queer madness would creep into these movies, but typically, the Twilight saga was content in the post-2008 era to replay the hits and not push boundaries. Worst of all, 2011’s The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part One featured lots of creepy quasi-anti-choice dialogue related to Bella’s fetus. Spouting nonsense about clumps of cells being “humans,” not to mention reducing Bella Swan to just being a spectator largely lying on a couch, reaffirmed reductive societal and cinematic norms about women. Between its gender politics and stale bright lighting (which could’ve existed in any movie), Breaking Dawn – Part One was regurgitating cishet cinema standards, not cheekily challenging them.

Ironically, the nadir of Twilight cinema was immediately followed by one of its greatest installments. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part Two ended the series on a high note infused with some honest to goodness queer energy. With Bella Swan now a vampire thirsting after blood, this character gets to hunger after a mountain climber and angrily throws Jacob Black across long distances like a used tissue. Queer cinema is full of women subverting gender norms by being messy, violent, and unhinged. We love a Jennifer from Jennifer’s Body or the titular lead of Frankenhooker. Swan in Breaking Dawn – Part Two captures that phenomenon by becoming a gnarly undead figure.

The feature’s finale, meanwhile, ratchets up the madness for what’s eventually revealed to be a dream sequence of how a showdown between our heroes and the Volturi coven COULD go down. Initially, though, Breaking Dawn – Part Two plays out this potential outcome as its actual climax. This makes the sight of longstanding characters getting their heads sliced up or people tumbling into gigantic lava-filled chasms incredibly shocking. This saga has gone from Dawson’s Creek to Lord of the Rings on bath salts in the blink of an eye!

Director Bill Condon (the only openly queer director to work within the Twilight saga) executes this maximalist fake-out ending with nary a wink to the audience. That confident execution of outlandish material is what defines camp classics. After all, camp is, to quote John Waters on The Simpsons, “the tragically ludicrous, the ludicrously tragic!” Oh, also, it’s also the installment that gives Michael Sheen an extravagant amount of screentime to play Aro. Sheen, decked out in pale makeup and with a wild smile constantly plastered on his face, absolutely chews up the screen in a hammy performance that would make Tim Curry proud. He became a fixture of lustful Tumblr posts and queer fan-fiction, and his campy presence further solidified Breaking Dawn – Part Two‘s queer bonafidas.

Nearly two decades after the Twilight film series began, it’s now clear this franchise’s queerest impulses were found in its beginning and its ending. In between, there’s a lot of padding (especially in Breaking Dawn – Part One) and unfortunate adherence to heteronormativity. Stripping away Hardwicke from this saga and replacing her with go-to male genre movie directors undoubtedly impacted the presence of queerness in this saga. Not even lines like Bella Swan’s declaration in Eclipse that “from now on I’m Switzerland, OK?” could keep heteronormativity at bay.

Just because Twilight wasn’t wall-to-wall queerness, though, doesn’t mean its enduring popularity with the gays is inexplicable. After all, this is a saga with a close proximity to the goth scene that emphasized women’s perspectives and romance, starred a super gay lead actress, and was often ridiculed by cishet folks. No wonder so many LGBTQIA+ folks have a soft spot for these titles, especially those who grew up with Twilight and look back on it with nostalgia. While these five movies may fluctuate in queerness the ultra-queer high points make it clear why everyone from your high school bullies to Kristen Stewart couldn’t stop calling Twilight “super gay.”

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