Where Is Twilight Set? Real Town Setting Explained

The Twilight saga takes place all over the world, but what is the main setting of the series and is it a real place? Released in 2008, Twilight was a massively successful adaption of Stephenie Meyers’ paranormal romance saga of the same name. The tale of a small-town girl who falls for an immortal teen vampire, Twilight may have earned the scorn of many but the movie and its sequels were incredibly successful at the box office.

As the series progressed, the scope of each Twilight movie began to increase. The second movie, New Moon, jetted off to Italy for its climax, while the two-part finale Breaking Dawn featured vampires from the world over. However, the (relatively well-reviewed) original Twilight is set entirely in one small town, and this setting is central to the success of the series. Much of the Twilight saga’s most important action, such as Edward and Bella’s wedding, the birth of their child, and the climax, takes place in the same small town, despite occasional sojourns to sunnier climes.

The Twilight saga’s action is set in the very small but very real town of Forks, Washington state, a tiny community that is home to a real-life Quileute reservation. This setting is vital to the success of the series as Twilight’s vampires are visibly distinguishable from humans in direct sunlight, a fact that could have prompted author Stephenie Meyer to look up the towns in the continental US with the least sunshine. The town’s Quileute tribespeople was not overjoyed with their misrepresentation in the Twilight saga, but the town did experience a brief real-life tourism boon when fans of the novels began visiting to see the locations made famous by the action of the franchise.

However, fans willing to visit the setting may leave disappointed by its unfamiliarity, as the Twilight saga was shot in Oregon and Vancouver, rather than the real-life Washington state. The two settings are relatively similar, meaning Oregon has no trouble passing for Forks. However, the tiny size of the real-life town meant that the community may have had a harder time facilitating a large-scale Hollywood production like the Twilight saga, whereas Vancouver is home to one of the largest non-Hollywood sectors of the filmmaking industry. As a result, Forks never appears onscreen in the Twilight series, although the town is central to the story of the novels and faithfully recreated in the movie adaptations.

Since the Twilight zeitgeist died down, the town of Forks has not made many appearances in the news. However, last year did see the community mentioned in a ViceNews article detailing an incident involving paranoid locals worrying about a potential invasion of their hometown. This coverage of Forks failed to bring back the town’s Twilight era popularity, though, and the annual “Forever Twilight in Forks Festival” celebrated on September 13 remains the location’s main claim to fame and tourism.

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Cathal Gunning
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Cathal Gunning has been writing about movies and TV online since 2020. His obsessions include The Simpsons, Stephen King, the Scream series, and the horror genre in general. He has spent more time thinking about Stranger Things than the writers of Stranger Things, and he has never seen a Star War.

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