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Why Amara From Supernatural Looks And Sounds So Familiar

Amara, otherwise known as The Darkness, is the primordial sister of God according to the Biblical lore featured in the classic TV show "Supernatural." Her storyline is a long and epic one, spanning five years of the show (2015-2020). In the end, she merges with her brother, God, and lives in harmony with him inside the body of a Nephilim named Jack who is the son of Lucifer and a mortal woman. When Jack absorbs both Amara and God, taking them into his own being, he becomes the new God and steward of Earth.

The actor who plays Amara is Emily Swallow. She's been in a ton of entertainment projects over the years, and "Supernatural" was far from her biggest role (although it is a prominent one). She started out with walk-on roles in some pretty noteworthy TV dramas like "Guiding Light," "Jericho," "The Good Wife," and "Girlfriend's Guide to Divorce." Her face may also look familiar from bit parts she played in TV crime dramas like "Medium," "NCIS," "Southland," "Rizzoli & Isles," "How to Get Away With Murder," and "Elementary." But below, we'll explore the roles you really know her from — both by her face, and her voice.

She played a recurring role toward the end of The Mentalist (2013-2014)

What happens when a former "psychic" who's good at reading people decides to use his abilities for good instead of grifting? You get the basic plot of "The Mentalist." It stars Simon Baker as Patrick Jane, the former psychic who solves easy crimes in his spare time while he hunts down the killer of his wife and daughter. And throughout Season 6, it also stars Swallow as FBI Special Agent Kim Fischer.

Near the beginning of Season 6, Jane is hiding out in an island paradise trying to avoid extradition back to the U.S. That's where he meets Kim, the only other English-speaking tourist at a local cantina which isn't usually patronized by foreign tourists. They go on a date, they bond, but both go their separate ways when Kim gets called back to work in the U.S. Jane reluctantly agrees to work for the FBI in exchange for his freedom, and discovers at the end of that particular meeting that Fischer is the FBI agent he's going to be closely working with in the near future.

You've heard her voice before on Castlevania (2017-2021)

"Castlevania" is the Netflix animated drama based on the video game series of the same name. And this isn't the only time on this list that Swallow will be associated with video games (but more on that later). There's a lot going on in the series, but it all starts when the love of Dracula's life, Lisa, is burned at the stake for practicing "witchcraft," a.k.a. science. This infuriates Dracula so much that he declares war against all of humanity and murders the entire town a year after her death.

Swallow voices Lisa in the show. But her presence doesn't end when her character goes up in flames. Her ghost essentially haunts the show, and she even gets brought back from the dead near the end of Season 4. Both she and Dracula are reunited in the end, burying their grudge with humanity once they have their second chance at love and a happy life together.

She played Natalie Pierce on Seal Team (2019-2021)

"SEAL Team" is a military drama on CBS which has recently moved to their streaming service, Paramount+. It stars David Boreanaz as Jason Hayes, the decorated and highly respected leader of Bravo Team. But it isn't all fun and war games for him. He has physical injuries and PTSD from his job, issues which go largely unaddressed until the show introduces a love interest to help him cope with these issues.

In Season 3 of "SEAL Team," the action is broken up a bit when Swallow joins the cast as Natalie Pierce. Pierce is a research physiologist (which, according to ZipRecruiter, is in fact a real job) who is tasked with the thankless job of keeping tabs on the SEAL team members' health and well-being. Early on, she becomes particularly concerned with the health and well-being of Hayes as they fall in lust (and eventually become more than just friends with benefits). For better or worse, their relationship ends after Natalie gets transferred to a better job in California. She asks Hayes to come with her, but that would mean settling for a desk job, which he declines. He's too married to the job to settle down.

You heard her voice again in The Last of Us 2 (2020)

"The Last of Us 2" is a rollercoaster of emotions from start to finish. The main character from the first game, Joel, is murdered in cold blood by newcomer Abby. But there's a reason for all the wanton violence: Abby is the daughter of the surgeon that Joel killed at the end of the first game. But Joel had a reason for doing what he did as well, since that surgeon was about to perform a fatal surgery on Ellie, the other main character from the first game and Joel's daughter figure. The surgery was meant to harvest biological material from her which, due to her natural immunity to the fungus zombies in the game, could cure mankind of the plague; but Joel would rather condemn humanity than live without her.

So where does Swallow appear in the game? She plays Emily, a high-ish ranking member of the Seraphites. The Seraphites are a religious cult who believe that technology is to blame for the plague. They are also at war with the Washington Liberation Front, which many of the main characters belong to. We see Emily for only a few minutes in the game when she, Abby, Yara, and Lev get into a fight. The fight ends with Abby wrapping her legs around Emily's neck and beginning to strangle her while Yara bashes her head in with a hammer.

She is a small but important part of the Star Wars franchise (2019-2022)

Swallow has made an appearance in not one, but two of the hottest and most-watched "Star Wars" shows to premiere in recent years: "The Mandalorian" and "The Book of Boba Fett." Both shows focus the spotlight on two fairly minor characters in the "Star Wars" universe who have become wildly popular with fans. And both characters — at one point or another — have important interactions with a masked Mandalorian known as the Armorer.

The role of Armorer is one that flew under the radar of most fans, even those who follow Swallow's career closely and are familiar with her voice. The Mandalorian mask she wears completely obscures her face, which is kind of the point. Her most recent appearance happened in Season 1, Episode 5 of "Boba Fett" where she explains the lore of the Darksaber to Mando and delivers a dark prophecy about what might happen to his people if he fails to prove he deserves to wield it. She also appeared in Episodes 1, 3, and 8 of "The Mandalorian."