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SPOILER ALERT! Don’t read on if you don’t want to read about the ending of Wuthering Heights, which is currently in theaters.
If you walked out of Emerald Fennell’s lush, provocative take on the classic romance feeling like the story ended abruptly, you’re not imagining things. The filmmaker’s adaptation zeroes in on the feverish love between Catherine and Heathcliff, trimming away the generational aftermath that defines much of Emily Brontë’s novel.
The result is a film that plays less like a sweeping family saga and more like a tragic, self-contained romance — one that closes the door on the book’s second act entirely.
Clocking in at more than 400 pages, Brontë’s novel famously stretches across decades, following not only Catherine and Heathcliff’s destructive bond but also the younger characters who ultimately reckon with their inherited wounds. Fennell, however, ends her film at Catherine’s death, leaving the next generation — and the possibility of narrative closure — offscreen.
“It’s such a dense, complicated piece of work,” Fennell told USA Today. Adapting it was always “going to be really difficult. I had to kill a lot of my own darlings in order to make the story work in two hours.”
Does the Movie Differ from the Book?
It sure does. In Emily Brontë’s novel, Catherine dies shortly after giving birth to her daughter, Cathy — a child who becomes central to the story’s second half. Cathy grows up, marries Heathcliff’s fragile son Linton, and later forms a fraught but ultimately redemptive bond with her cousin Hareton. Their relationship offers the possibility of healing after years of cruelty, culminating in plans to marry as Heathcliff, haunted by Catherine, dies.
Fennell’s film removes that entire thread. Catherine, played by Margot Robbie, suffers from sepsis and appears to miscarry; the child is never born. Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi) arrives too late, cradling her body as memories of their relationship flicker onscreen — a finale that underscores doomed passion rather than generational reckoning.
Will There be a Sequel?
Not likely. Because the film eliminates Cathy altogether, continuing the story would mean inventing an entirely new narrative path — something Fennell doesn’t seem interested in pursuing.
“I think of this as a one-off, and I’m not alone in that when you look at other adaptations,” Fennell says, noting that the 1992 version starring Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche is one of the few to attempt the full sweep of the novel, while the 1939 classic with Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon also focused largely on the first half.
“There’s a world where this is a miniseries and you really get into deep, deep detail of every single thing that happens,” Fennell says. “But for me, the thing I connected to as a reader was always (Catherine and Heathcliff). I also don’t know if I’d be very good at sequels!”
