Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
Disclaimer: This post contains major spoilers about Frankenstein (the 2025 movie)
“Let us be monsters together”
A tweet popped up on my feed with the above quote, which was attached along with the poster for Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, the one featuring Jacob Elordi as the creature, carrying Mia Goth’s character Elizabeth, in her bridal dress. It seems, several people are ‘shipping’ the two.
Funnily, I had seen the film for the second time just a few hours before spotting the tweet, and that too with my father. Neither of us are the types to talk during a film, so there was dead silence in the room for most of the runtime. That is until the climactic scene of a fatally wounded Elizabeth being carried by Frankenstein’s creature came along and she talked about the fleeting nature of ‘love’ to him.
“I sought and longed for something I could not quite name. But in you I found it. To be lost and to be found, that is the lifespan of love. And in its brevity, its tragedy… this has been made eternal. Better this way… to fade… with your eyes gazing upon me”
As Elizabeth uttered her last dying words to the Frankenstein’s creature, my father uttered his first comment in Hindi: ‘yeh thik nahi dikhaya’ (this wasn’t the right way to go about it). He clearly interpreted her words to be a romantic declaration of love, which he thought was absurd and unconvincing.
To which I responded saying ‘my immediate reaction was the same, but then I remembered her conversation with Victor Frankenstein before the creature’s birth, where she mentions how she was always looking for something pure. For her the creature is a miracle, a pure creature, it’s not romantic love, but something mixed with religious fervor and search for life. For her, she has witnessed a miracle and she can die in peace with that knowledge’
(Okay, well, I said something along those lines in Hindi, but that’s the gist of it).
See, that’s the beauty of stories: the reader/viewer/listener can draw their own conclusions over what really is happening. Of course, the simplest conclusion is to think Elizabeth is in love with the creature, but I choose to conclude otherwise and don’t think her feelings for the being is romantic.
She is introduced as a young devout woman who grew up in a convent. When she meets Victor, she tells him how she has “always searched for something more pure, marvelous.”
When Elizabeth sees the creature for the first time, she is moved by his wounded state and doesn’t recoil in fear or disgust. When she learns of his origin, she grows curious and visits him again. The creature, who at that point is like a newborn child, offers her a leaf in innocence, and Elizabeth is overjoyed by the simple, thoughtful gesture. For Elizabeth, perhaps it is the rare moment when a grown man does not look at her with a lustful or ‘impure’ gaze… you know, the dreaded male gaze everyone write about. She even marvels to Victor about the creature’s ‘pure’ soul, though Victor Frankenstein himself cannot find anything pure or fascinating about what he has created.
I’d say Elizabeth loves the creature the way one loves a child or a pet, developing a desire to protect and care for him. Even though he is Frankenstein’s creation, to Elizabeth he is a marvelous miracle, something she had been searching for all along. Also what could be more profound for a religious young woman than witnessing something miraculous and dying with that knowledge?
The creature certainly bears no romantic feelings for her; minutes before seeing Elizabeth again, he begs Victor to build him a companion, already accepting that no human woman would ever want him as a partner. Yet when Elizabeth once again shows him kindness, and dies willingly before him, he is deeply moved, wishing only for death and peace for himself too.
Of-course, if you’d rather prefer there was the ‘beauty and the beast’ kind of love between Elizabeth and the Creature, that’s up to you. But this is how I choose to interpret their bond in the film, something that is platonic and in Elizabeth’s words: pure.
‘Frankenstein’ is available on Netflix.
Read Next: Mary Shelley Vs del Toro’s Frankenstein – 12 Differences (Audio Version Below)
Hello Sneha, Del Toro himself confirmed the love was romantic.
And still, the viewer can make their own interpretations.
I think it was a one sided romantic relationship from Elizabeth towards the creature that was forced by Del Toro. It was pretty clear the initial relationship was platonic and innocent like an owner and its puppy. However, Elizabeth was already kind of quirky(weird), so it’s not surprising that she somehow developed romantic feelings for something she’s always searched for -a pure, gentle thing (human?). Her dying words defined what she thought was love and it was clearly directed at the creature.
The creature’s love towards Elizabeth was similar to what he had for the old man. They were both his friends.