The supernatural franchise Twilight has its own version of werewolves — but why are Jacob and other Quileute werewolves while Billy Black, Jacob's father, isn’t? Back in 2005, Stephenie Meyer shared her own vision of vampires and werewolves in the novel Twilight, the first in what would become a series of four books and a massively successful movie franchise. The core of the series was the romance between vampire Edward Cullen and mortal Bella Swan, with werewolf Jacob Black in between, forming an awkward and at times problematic vampire-werewolf-human-love triangle.
Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner) became a very important part of Bella’s (Kristen Stewart) life once she arrived at Forks to live with her father, Charlie Swan (Billy Burke), and as he was the only person she already knew, they became very close. Bella, along with readers and viewers, learned that Edward (Robert Pattinson) and his siblings are vampires in Twilight. However, New Moon had its own big revelation, as it was in this story where Jacob began his transformation into a werewolf, something that was (understandably) a big shock for Bella. This only increased the rivalry between Edward and Jacob, as their clans had been enemies for centuries, but one big question arose: why is Jacob a werewolf but his father, Billy, isn’t?
In the Twilight universe, the Quileute tribe resides in and around Forks, and many of them are werewolves, like Jacob Black. The tribe has its own legends and mythology, with some of the youngest members believing the whole “werewolf” part to be nothing more than a legend, as they hadn’t gone through the transformation nor did their parents, which was Jacob and Billy’s case. Like Twilight's only female shapeshifter Leah Clearwater, Jacob's father lived in La Push his whole life. One of his earliest memories was watching his grandfather transform into a giant, russet-colored werewolf along with his two best friends. As a result, Billy grew up hoping a vampire would cross Quileute land so he would phase and become a werewolf like his grandfather, but that wasn’t the case.
Billy and Jacob’s ancestors would transform into werewolves when they reached manhood, but as years passed, this changed completely. The newest generations would only transform if a cold one, a.k.a. a vampire, was near. When Jacob's father was a teenager, however, there were no vampires in the area, so the gene was dormant. Thankfully, the tribe experienced no vampire-related deaths in the Twilight universe, and around the time Billy Black turned twenty, he realized that he wouldn’t have the chance to be a hero. While it was initially hard to accept, he eventually learned to enjoy the peace of not having vampires around and thus not transforming into a werewolf. When Jacob was born, Billy hoped he would have the same calm life and wouldn’t have to transform, but then the Cullens arrived – and with Twilight's vampires around once again, a new generation of werewolves surfaced.
From the beginning of the Twilight series, it's established that Billy Black's character is in a wheelchair. The reason why Jacob's father uses a wheelchair in Twilight is much more human than most of the franchise's supernatural content: Billy uses a wheelchair in the Twilight series because he has nerve damage due to complications from diabetes.
In Breaking Dawn, the arrival of the Denali, the Volturi, and others caused more werewolves to unintentionally emerge, increasing the packs’ numbers and becoming the biggest in Quileute history. While Jacob's father Billy Black isn't a werewolf, he still helped with the fight in his own way. Stephenie Meyer made big changes to both fantasy creatures and real-life cultures in all of her subsequent Twilight sequels, to fit with her vision of the Twilight universe, but that left various questions unanswered.
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