Film

Wuthering Heights Officially Rewrites The Book’s Biggest Twist

17 February 2026

Warning: This article contains SPOILERS for Wuthering Heights (2026).

Although director Emerald Fennell’s version of Wuthering Heights changes a lot of details from the original Emily Brontë novel, the movie’s biggest twist derails the story completely. Written in 1847, Wuthering Heights is a classic work of Gothic Romanticism by English author Emily Brontë.

The book focuses on the volatile love shared by Cathy Earnshaw and an orphan foundling, Heathcliff. As children, Cathy and Heathcliff are inseparable, but then pressure on Cathy to marry and on Heathcliff to make his way in the world drives them apart. Crucially, this is only part of the novel’s narrative.

Something that many screen adaptations of Wuthering Heights gloss over is the fact that the real main characters of the book are the next generation of the dysfunctional Linton/Earnshaw family. The book initially begins by introducing an older Heathcliff and his unstable family, before a lengthy portion of the novel is narrated by his servant, Nelly.

Wuthering Heights Changes Cathy’s Death Completely

Margot Robbie's Cathy is crying in Wuthering Heights — Margot Robbie’s Cathy is crying in Wuthering Heights

This is pretty pivotal, since the biggest twist in Wuthering Heights is Cathy’s early exit. In the book, Cathy dies shortly after giving birth to her daughter, while she is still extremely young. The second half of the book’s story concerns the aftermath of her death, as Heathcliff is driven to the brink of insanity by guilt that shatters the family’s next generation.

Although 2026’s Wuthering Heights courted controversy by casting Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff, the movie’s release proved that this was the least of its divergences from the source material. Cathy’s pivotal death occurs around the midpoint of the novel, and the second half follows the next generation of the family as they fail to cope.

In Fennel’s version of the story, Cathy’s death comes at the end of the movie, and there is no framing device to contextualise the story’s narration. Throughout the novel, it is clear that Nelly’s version of events could be a self-serving retelling; in the movie, no such subjectivity is highlighted.

Wuthering Heights Cuts Half Of the Original Novel With This Twist

Jacob Elordi in tears after learning about Cathy in Wuthering Heights

A little over half of the original novel’s story is technically cut out by Fennell’s movie, which jettisons the entire setup that introduces the narrator, the second half after Cathy’s death, and the framing device. This has a huge impact on the story for a variety of reasons.

For one thing, Hong Chau’s Nelly and Shazad Latif’s Edgar are both portrayed as more unambiguously villainous characters in the movie. It is their consistent intervention that keeps Heathcliff and Cathy apart, whereas, in the original novel, it is the circumstances of the duo that ensure they can’t be together in adulthood.

Turning Nelly and Linton into antagonists has the potential to be an interesting subversion of the original plot of Wuthering Heights, but dropping the second half of the story makes this change less compelling and more confusing. The movie becomes the story of two lovers driven apart by other people, whereas the novel is something far more thorny, more complex, and more tragic.

Nelly’s narration often portrays Heathcliff as someone who is unstable, dangerous, and violent, but the reader is forced to question whether Nelly’s own knowledge of how the tragic story plays out is influencing her retelling. It makes sense for Nelly to remember the worst aspects of Heathcliff, since she’s aware of how cold and uncaring he becomes in later life.

By cutting Nelly’s role as an older narrator, 2026’s Wuthering Heights flattens this distinction and ensures that everything onscreen can be taken at face value. Ironically, considering how much ink has been spilled over the movie’s potentially problematic romance, Heathcliff is much less villainous in the movie than in the original novel.

The Biggest Twist In Wuthering Heights Makes Its Other Changes Worse

Margot Robbie in a wedding dress in Wuthering Heights 2026

Elordi’s version of the character does not, for example, kill his new bride’s pet dog, as his novel counterpart does. His seemingly abusive relationship with Isabella Linton is, viewers are reassured, consensual, and his potential for domestic violence is downplayed to the point of near non-existence.

Since this version of Wuthering Heights is no longer a story within a story that is narrated by a character within the story, the movie’s changes are less defensible than they might otherwise have been. Keeping this detail and maintaining Nelly’s role as the narrator could have easily justified all the other major divisive changes, as viewers could argue that Nelly’s perspective colors the retelling.

Instead, Fennell’s take on Wuthering Heights is a confused and confusing love story that strips the story of its most resonant elements, namely its social context. Cathy and Heathcliff are torn apart by the class division between them, and losing Cathy drives Heathcliff to become the cold, violent monster he is later in the book.

Heathcliff and Catherine walking in a hall in Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights Review: Emerald Fennell Prioritizes Vibes in Toothless, Whitewashed Adaptation

Fennell is flippant with the source material’s most readily available themes in favor of a plasticized, garish romance.

Much like Fennell’s earlier Saltburn took the plot of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley and made its villain less complex and symapthetic by cutting out his economically deprived background, the director’s take on Wuthering Heights exists in a world where petty personal differences are all that keep Cathy and Heathcliff apart. Thus, Wuthering Heights’ changes render its story toothless.