The Twilight Saga: New Moon sees Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) trying to end his life in a very strange way that, ultimately, doesn’t make sense. Stephenie Meyers introduced readers to her unique world of humans, vampires, and werewolves in her debut novel Twilight, back in 2005. The success of Twilight led it to become a worldwide phenomenon, and in 2008, it was adapted to the big screen. The success of the movie adaptation of Twilight led to the rest of the novels also getting film adaptations, and in 2009 it was New Moon’s turn.

New Moon reunites viewers with Edward and Bella (Kristen Stewart), now officially a couple, as they prepare to celebrate Bella’s birthday. However, an incident at the party with a paper cut and a hungry Jasper (Jackson Rathbone) leads Edward to break up with Bella for her safety and he and the Cullens leave Forks. Some time later, after believing Bella has died, Edward also prepares to die, though in a very theatrical way. However, looking back, Edward’s plan doesn’t make a lot of sense, even when taking into account why he was going to do it the way he planned.

Why Edward Planned To Step Into The Sun In Volterra In Twilight: New Moon

Edward Cullen Tried & Failed To Get What He Wanted From The Volturi

In the movie adaptation of New Moon, Bella discovers that she can hear (and even see) Edward whenever she’s in danger, so she puts herself in dangerous situations. In one of those, she almost drowns, and this appears in one of Alice’s visions. This is how Edward learns of Bella’s “death”, and finding himself unable to carry on without Bella, he asks the Volturi to kill him – however, they refuse to do it. Without the support of the Volturi, Edward decides to provoke them into killing him.

As one of the main tasks of the Volturi is to ensure that the existence of vampires remains a secret and humans never find out, the best way to get them to kill Edward is if he exposes himself as a vampire to humans at a very important festival. This would finally make the Volturi get rid of him, but viewers have pointed out how this wouldn’t have worked due to how the vampires’ sparkly skin was portrayed in the Twilight movies.

If anything, humans would have been curious about how Edward’s skin was so sparkly and could have even been mistaken as part of the festival. Humans in the world of Twilight have no idea that the skin of vampires, instead of burning and turning into dust, sparkles under the sun, so they wouldn’t have even known that what they were looking at was a vampire. In the books, however, the skin of vampires under the sun is described as a more shocking scene, in some cases even looking as if they were on fire, and that would have definitely attracted unwanted human attention.

Edward’s Plan In Twilight: New Moon Was Never Going To Work

Edward Forgot A Key Detail In His Death Plan

At least in the movie, Edward’s Volterra plan was never going to work due to the above-mentioned details about his sparkly skin, but there’s another big reason. Edward’s decision was inevitably going to appear in Alice’s visions, giving her enough time to fly back to Forks, alert Bella, and travel to Volterra together to stop him. Had Edward truly wanted to end his life, he could have found another way to provoke the Volturi that wouldn’t have so conveniently given Alice and Bella time to stop him.

On top of that, Bella and the Cullens were being chased by Victoria, who would have surely agreed to kill him. Edward’s death plan in New Moon was more for dramatic purposes than anything else, and this allowed Meyers to introduce the Volturi and give Edward and Bella an even bigger obstacle, as they obviously opposed their relationship.