Viewers have been thrilling to Starz' adaptation of Neil Gaiman's novel American Gods (on Amazon Prime in the UK), not least for its unusually frank depiction of supernatural rumpy-pumpy.

But while the story of Shadow Moon (Ricky Whittle), his undead wife Laura (Emily Browning) and enigmatic boss Mr Wednesday (Ian McShane) is intriguing and stylish, the show hasn't always explained who all the strange people – divine and otherwise – they encounter are. Mad Sweeney is explicitly a leprechaun. We get that. But what about Mr Ibis? Or Nancy the spider?

Allow us to fill in the theographical detail (if you will)…

The Ancient Gods

1. Who is Mr Wednesday? (Ian McShane)

Starz

Who is he in the show?

A charming old conman with one eye who is trying to enlist gods currently living incognito in America in a coming war against the up-and-coming "new gods" of globalisation, technology and media. A pair of ravens always seem to be somewhere near him.

Who is he in mythology?

Odin (or Wotan), the head of the Norse pantheon. Also known as the Allfather, Odin is the god of the gallows, battle, healing, knowledge, poetry and writing. He is accompanied by the ravens Huginn (Thought) and Muninn (Memory), and once hanged himself from Yggdrasil, the World Tree, for nine days and nights as a sacrifice to himself.

2. Who is Mr Nancy? (Orlando Jones)

Starz

Who is he in the show?

A colourful spider, and also a flamboyant human storyteller who appears (in modern dress) in 1697 to a group of African slaves on board a Dutch transport ship. He tells them the future of the black man in America and incites them to burn the ship to the waterline, killing themselves and their captors, rather than live another day in shackles.

Who is he in mythology?

Anansi the spider is a recurrent figure in the folk tales of Ghana (and subsequently the West Indies, Suriname, Sierra Leone and the Dutch Antilles). He's usually depicted as an anthropomorphic spider. He is the god of stories.

Typically Anansi, despite being small and weak, uses his wits and cunning to outsmart or defeat larger and more powerful enemies. He's got a silver tongue and a wicked sense of humour, and is popularly considered a symbol of slave resistance.

3. Who is Bilquis? (Yetide Badaki)

Starz

Who is she in the show?

A sensuous woman who takes many lovers, male and female, and devours them through her vagina while demanding their adoration and worship.

Who is she in mythology?

The Queen of Sheba. She appears in Christian, Jewish and Islamic myth, but the Ethiopian tradition contains more detail than any other. In it, the famously appealing Bilquis, a queen of the south, visits the Hebrew King Solomon to see if he is as great as she has been told.

She spends the night with him and becomes pregnant after deliberately breaking their agreement that he would not touch her if she in turn took nothing of his. (She took a drink of water, the minx.) Their son later visited Solomon and stole the Ark of the Covenant.

4. Who is Mr Ibis? (Demore Barnes)

Starz

Who is he in the show?

A quiet, dignified undertaker who keeps a gigantic, ancient-looking ledger in which he writes the stories of the arrival of each of the gods in America. (In very nice calligraphy, btw.)

Who is he in mythology?

The Ancient Egyptian god Thoth (or Djehuti), who was usually depicted as a man with the head of an Ibis. He was the god of writing and science, and he oversaw the settlement of disputes. He was also one of the gods who judged the dead before they reached the afterlife.

5. Who is Mr Jacquel? (Chris Obi)

Starz

Who is he in the show?

An eerily calm, deep-voiced undertaker (in business with Mr Ibis) who also shepherds the dead to their afterlife. You may also have noticed he often has a cat nearby.

Who is he in mythology?

The jackal-headed Egyptian god Anubis. He was the god of the afterlife who – as in the show – weighed the hearts of the dead against a feather on his scales. The cat is Bastet, the warrior goddess who was married to Anubis.

6. Who is Czernobog? (Peter Stormare)

Starz

Who is he in the show?

A creepy old Eastern European dude who plays draughts and is obsessed with hitting people with his giant hammer.

Who is he in mythology?

The enigmatic "black god" of the Slavs, and counterpart of Bielobog, the "white god". Sometimes associated by Christians with Satan (and possibly invented by them too), he's the god of evil and bad luck. Believers would spit curses into a bowl at feasts to keep him at bay.

7. Who are the Zorya? (Erika Kaar, Martha Kelly and Cloris Leachman)

Starz

Who are they in the show?

Three sisters who live with Czernobog in a grotty tenement apartment. Zorya Vechernyaya (Leachman) is elderly, Zorya Utrennyaya is middle aged and Zorya Polunochnaya is young.

Who are they in mythology?

Zorya Utrennyaya is the Slavic incarnation of the morning star, who opens the gates of her father's palace each day to allow the sun to begin its travels. Zorya Vechernyaya is the evening star who closes the gates after it. Zorya Polunochnaya is the night.

8. Who is Vulcan? (Corbin Bernson)

Starz

Who is he in the show?

The extremely prosperous owner of an American ammunition factory, who tells Wednesday and Shadow that since he did a deal with the new gods and accepted guns as part of his remit, he has become more powerful than ever, with each gunshot acting as a prayer to him.

Who is he in mythology?

The Roman god of fire, the forge and – as his name suggests – volcanoes. At his festival in August, live animals were thrown into bonfires as a sacrifice. He was the not-particularly-favoured son of Jupiter and Juno, and was born red and ugly. Juno threw him off Mount Olympus and he broke his leg on landing in the sea. He grew up underwater and became a talented craftsman, later trapping Juno in a trick chair. He only released her when Venus agreed to marry him.

The eruption of Mt Etna was supposed to be caused by his anger at Venus' infidelities.

9. Who is the Djinn? (Mousa Kraish)

Amazon Prime Starz

Who is he in the show?

A New York taxi driver with eyes of fire who seduces unhappy Omani salesman Salim and takes his identity in return for a night of love.

Who is he in mythology?

A djinn, or genie. In Arabic mythology they were physical entities made of a scorching, smokeless fire, and constitute the third class of beings after angels and humans. They had free will and could therefore be good or bad, and often engaged in sexual relationships with humans.

The Modern Gods

1. Who is Technical Boy? (Bruce Langley)

Starz

Who is he on the show?

An arrogant, socially-inept brat who rides around in a limo and commands an army of nano-bot-like faceless thugs. He also vapes synthetic toadskin.

Who is he in mythology?

Technology. Mobile phones. The Internet. Everything you rely on to do stuff without understanding how it works.

2. Who is Media? (Gillian Anderson)

Starz

Who is she in the show?

Sometimes she's Lucille Ball, sometimes David Bowie, sometimes Marilyn Monroe. She can appear in the flesh or on screens at will.

Who is she in mythology?

The media, of course. We're everywhere. You're reading us now. MWAHAHAHAAAA!

3. Who is Mr World? (Crispin Glover)

Starz

Who is he in the show?

The one who Media and Technical Boy answer to, a mysterious boss figure to the modern gods who wants Wednesday and the others to accept his dominion.

Who is he in mythology?

The forces of globalisation, corporate power and international finance. He's The Man.

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