Note: There are book spoilers for The Vampire Chronicles, so read at your own risk if you don’t want to be spoiled for possible plot points.

A lot happened tonight in tonight’s episode of The Vampire Lestat, but there was one name brought up multiple times which show-only viewers likely won’t recognize… and book fans will recognize as a huge piece of canon lore.

So let’s talk about it. More specifically, let’s talk about Amel.

At the very start of the episode, we hear one of Lestat’s future recordings for “The Failures,” where he casually refers to himself at one point as, “But I, Amel, digress.”

Then later, when Akasha is awoken at the turn of the century by Lestat (Akasha just wanted to join in the celebration too, okay?), she rambles to herself for some time, including asking herself: “And who arranged it? Did Amel?” Later, she also says, “It is Amel. It is always Amel.” And then, most cryptically: “And what should Amel do with it if not to answer?”

If you’ve never read the books, those lines probably sounded like cryptic nonsense. But they’re actually introducing a very important entity in Anne Rice’s mythology.

Who is Amel?

Amel isn’t a vampire. He isn’t a god, and he isn’t exactly a demon, either. Amel is a spirit.

In Queen of the Damned, Anne Rice reveals that before Akasha and Enkil ever became vampires, the twin red-headed witches Mekare and Maharet could commune with spirits. Of all the spirits they encountered, none was more powerful than Amel.

He was hungry, and he was drawn to blood. He called himself “Amel, the Powerful,” “Amel, the Terrible,” and “Amel, the Evil One Who Pierces.”

Subtle branding, he was not.

Amel could barely interact with the physical world, managing only to leave tiny bite-like wounds on skin and draw small droplets of blood.

More than anything, though, he wanted a body of his own.

How Amel became the first vampire

In ancient Kemet (roughly modern-day Egypt), Queen Akasha and King Enkil ruled. After the twin witches were dragged before them, punished, and driven out in disgrace, Amel became furious over what had been done to them and began tormenting the royal court.

While Amel was haunting the palace, an old family with a grudge against Akasha broke into the palace one evening and drove daggers into her breast, leavin her dying on the floor.

That was the opportunity Amel had been waiting for.

Anne Rice describes it beautifully as, “…a great reddish cloud enveloped her; it was like a whirlpool surrounding her, or rather a wind sweeping up countless tiny drops of blood.”

That reddish cloud was Amel. And then, as Rice writes, “as if drawn into her wounds, disappeared.”

In that instant, Amel finally got what he’d wanted all along: a body.

Amel entered Akasha’s dying body, binding his spirit to her flesh. Moments later, Akasha rose again. Her wounds had healed. She no longer needed food or water. She no longer aged.

But she hungered, for blood.

Akasha and Amel were no longer separate beings. Spirit and flesh had fused together, creating the very first vampire.

Akasha then turned Enkil, and from her, every vampire in Anne Rice’s universe ultimately descends.

Why every vampire depends on Akasha

As Marius explained tonight, if Akasha and Enkil burn, then all vampires will burn. The reason for that, assuming they’re going with the book lore and they appear to be, is that Amel is inside of every single vampire.

When Akasha turned Enkil, a fragment of Amel passed into him. When Enkil turned others, pieces of Amel were passed into them as well. Every vampire who has ever been made carries a piece of Amel within them.

As Mekare explains in the book, “There is but one Amel. Its core resides in the Queen, but it is in you also.”

The books refer to this as the “Sacred Core”, and every vampire carries a piece of Amel inside them.

If you destroy that Sacred Core, which currently resides inside of Akasha, then you also destroy every vampire as well.

Does Lestat become Amel?

Which brings us to the very interesting line uttered in the intro tonight, when on Lestat’s future recordings for “The Failures”, he refers to himself as, “But I, Amel, digress.”

That’s… a very strange thing for Lestat to say, even if all vampires do have a piece of him within themselves.

So does Lestat now have the Sacred Core within himself, in the future?

In Queen of the Damned, Akasha is ultimately killed, and the Sacred Core is transferred into Mekare, one of the twin witches (who has also been a vampire for centuries).

Much later in the series (as part of The Prince Lestat trilogy), though, Amel is actually transferred into Lestat himself, making him the new vessel.

I don’t necessarily think the series is going to follow that exact path. It feels like the writers are combining mythology from multiple books, including The Prince Lestat trilogy.

Given these recordings appear to come from some point in the future, where I think it’s probably safe to assume Akasha is no longer alive, it feels possible the show may simply skip over Mekare as Amel’s temporary vessel and jump straight to Lestat. Or, the show keeps beating us over the head with the fact that Lestat “has the blood of Akasha in him” — maybe he already has a sizeable piece of Amel inside of him.

How we get there fully, though, is anyone’s guess.

Once Amel fully regains his consciousness in the books, he and his host become something of uneasy roommates, sharing the same body but not always the same mind. Amel can even occasionally overtake Lestat’s body, acting through him without Lestat’s consent.

I also wouldn’t be surprised if all of this eventually feeds into The Tale of the Body Thief (which is where I think a potential season five is heading). If Amel winds up in Lestat, perhaps that is a reason Lestat needs a new body, or a reason why someone would want to steal his specifically.

Does this have anything to do with The Great Conversion?

There’s another interesting wrinkle here, too. When Amel first fused with Akasha, he essentially lost himself within her, his own consciousness dissolving into hers. But over the next six thousand years and his future hosts, he slowly reassembled, first as fragments, then whispers, then eventually a distinct Voice.

From the way Akasha was speaking, it sounded like Amel could already be conscious and communicating through her.

It’s also worth noting that Amel is far from benign. Being fragmented across every vampire on Earth is agonizing for him, and once he regains enough consciousness to communicate, he begins whispering to older vampires, urging them to burn younger ones and reduce the vampire population. Which lines up interestingly with Akasha’s own ideology in Queen of the Damned — where she wakes up wanting to slaughter roughly 99% of the world’s men, keeping only a small population as breeding stock.

Both of them, in different ways, are very into nearly-extinction-level events. Two beings with very violent ideas about population control! This totally ends well.

Given everything we’ve already heard this season about the Great Conversion, Armand’s fears that vampires are multiplying too quickly, and the repeated mantra to “make more” coming from those who are pro-Great Conversion like Gabriella, it feels like the series is definitely laying the groundwork for a collision between all of these competing ideologies.

Are these vampires’ petty little fights or ideas about vampirism really going to matter when Akasha and potentially Amel fully wake up? I sure don’t think so.

Much to think about.