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As Guillermo del Toro's Netflix adaptation comes to life, should we say 'Frankenstein' or 'Frankenstein's monster?' Jacob Elordi says "it's irrelevant"

Elordi, who plays Victor Frankenstein's creation in del Toro's adaptation of Mary Shelley's godfather of all horror, implies there's far more to his character than what we call him

News by Grant DeArmitt, Staff Writer

Published on Tue Nov 04 2025

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It's a debate that rages across all corners of the horror internet: what do you call the creature at the heart of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein? A particular type of nerd takes no small amount of glee from correcting the casual horror fan when they call the creature himself Frankenstein, but other scholars of the literary masterpiece find it more than acceptable that the monster should take his creator's name. With Guillermo del Toro's take on the 1818 classic lumbering its way toward streaming, that debate is sure to reach a new level of heat very soon.

Which is why we were so grateful that del Toro's creature himself, Jacob Elordi, weighed in on the question.

Elordi, who dons an extensive layout of monster prosthetics to play the creature in del Toro's 2025 Frankenstein adaptation, recently took part in an interview with The Independent alongside the film's director and Victor Frankenstein, Oscar Isaac. Naturally, the subject of the creature's real name came up in conversation.

"It’s irrelevant, right?" Elordi said, no doubt sending psychic shockwaves across Tumblr, "That’s the language we’ve created to have a discourse about Frankenstein – do we call him this or the monster? – which is very representative of the world."

More important to Elordi's time in the stitches and corpse makeup is what naming means to the creature himself. And without getting into any spoilers, the Priscilla star clarifies that that meaning is "'love' at the beginning and then, once he finds consciousness, it becomes ‘why?’ And that simplicity is so abundantly profound."

Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein is in select theaters now, and will stream on Netflix November 7.

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Grant DeArmitt: Grant DeArmitt (he/him) likes horror, comics, and the unholy union of the two. In the past, and despite their better judgment, he has written for Nightmare on Film Street and Newsarama. He lives in Brooklyn with his partner, Kingsley, and corgi, Legs.