Inside Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi’s ‘Wuthering Heights’ Controversial Ending

The 2026 “Wuthering Heights” film starring “Barbie” actress Margot Robbie and “Frankenstein” star Jacob Elordi takes a big departure from the 1847 novel by Emily Brontë. There have been numerous diversifications through the years, however this model, written and directed by Emerald Fennell, of “Saltburn” fame, ends in a different way from the ebook on which it’s primarily based.

“Wuthering Heights” is a posh Gothic story that focuses on themes of obsessive love and revenge. The story focuses on the obsessive love affair between Catherine “Cathy” Earnshaw (Margot Robbie) and Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi). They’re kids when Cathy’s father takes in Heathcliff as a mysterious orphan. The 2 develop up collectively and develop deep emotions for each other.

Nevertheless, Cathy decides to marry her rich neighbor, Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif), which prompts Heathcliff to depart. He later returns a rich man and marries Edgar’s sister, Isabella Linton. That stated, though they’re each married, their romantic emotions for one another don’t diminish.

Many followers know that Cathy really dies about midway by the ebook, and Heathcliff finally drives himself mad. Within the ebook, Heathcliff visits a pregnant Catherine in secret, and he or she dies shortly after giving delivery to a daughter, Cathy.

Within the film, Cathy’s housekeeper, Nelly, performs a extra villainous position. Cathy tells Nelly that she has had a miscarriage, however Nelly thinks she is mendacity for consideration. Nelly has additionally been burning Heathcliff’s letters to Cathy to maintain them aside. Nevertheless, as soon as Nelly realizes Cathy is dying, she tells Heathcliff. Sadly, it’s too late, and Cathy dies from sepsis from the miscarriage earlier than he arrives.

Within the ebook, Cathy has a daughter, however within the film, she suffers a miscarriage. That is just one change from the supply materials. The opposite change is that Heathcliff visits Cathy earlier than she dies; nevertheless, within the film, that doesn’t occur. She speaks to him in a dream-state, however they don’t really meet in particular person earlier than she dies. Fennell defined that the choice to maintain Heathcliff and Cathy aside on the finish is “partly structural.”

“There are about three completely different conferences and three completely different speeches, and so a part of it was consolidating that,” she stated whereas chatting with Entertainment Weekly. “But in addition, we speak loads about ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and, clearly, after we meet Isabella, she’s speaking about that sort of story and about that missed factor, and I really feel a lot that Cathy and Heathcliff’s [romance] was about lacking one another.”

She went on to say, “And so what I did was I introduced quite a lot of the love ahead, and quite a lot of these actually necessary conversations ahead, to present them a while in order that it did not simply occur on the finish.”

As an alternative of following the story of their kids, the film ends fairly rapidly after Cathy passes away. Her return as a ghost, featured in a number of different diversifications, doesn’t happen right here.

“It begins the place it ends and ends the place it begins,” Fennell stated of her chosen ending. “And that is the factor about love, and it is the factor concerning the ebook, proper? It is that it is perpetually and it is cyclical, and so there is not any cease — even when there is a horrible, unhappy, tragic cease, it is probably not a cease — as a result of that is what the ebook feels a lot about.”

She provides, “It is concerning the depths of human feeling and the way it exists in a profound method, not only a bodily one. And in order that, I do not know, that felt like the correct technique to finish it for me.”