The Twilight books and movies are full of memorable quotes, but the most famous one is, arguably, the “lion and lamb” one – but what does it really mean? In 2005, Stephenie Meyer shared her unique vision of what vampires and werewolves would be like and how they would coexist with humans in her debut novel Twilight. The book was the first entry in a series of four novels telling the story of the problematic romance between mortal Bella Swan and vampire Edward Cullen, who came across various obstacles, such as another vampire coven known as the Volturi and a pack of werewolves.
The Twilight book series became a big phenomenon, building a solid and loyal fanbase all over the world but also drawing a lot of criticism. Still, that wasn’t an obstacle for the books to make the jump to the big screen, and so The Twilight Saga was released between 2008 and 2012, with the final novel, Breaking Dawn, split into two movies. The Twilight Saga expanded the books’ fanbase and was quite successful at the box office, though not so much with critics. A lot can be said about the quality of the Twilight movies, but from the point of view of the fans of the books, the saga reached its goal of appealing to its target audience, and the movies were very loyal to the source material, with some of the most famous (or infamous) quotes from the books making it to the movies.
The crew behind Twilight aimed to make a movie as faithful to the novel as possible, so in order to achieve that, Meyer was brought in to take part in the production process. Meyer visited the set and was asked to give notes on the script and a rough cut of the movie. Meyer has said that the production crew let her have an input on the movie and probably “took 90 percent of what she said” and made it part of the script. She has also shared that there were some very specific details she wanted to be kept for the movie, particularly the unforgettable line “and so the lion fell in love with the lamb”, which Edward tells Bella after he reveals her true nature to her.
The line is pretty self-explanatory in the context of Twilight, as Edward constantly expressed how he was “an animal” (and Meyer explore this more in-depth in Midnight Sun), and he saw Bella as fragile as she could be a prey, so he, the lion, fell in love with her, the lamb. However, fans have given it other, more emotional and sentimental interpretations. Some fans see the lion as a strong and confident figure while the lamb is just part of the crowd, so by falling in love with the lamb, the lion is showing that it can find beauty, both superficial and inner. Others see it as having a connection to a Bible passage that reads “the wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat [...]”, referring to natural enemies coming together in peace and harmony, though that would be more fitting with the tense relationship between vampires and werewolves – it can be argued, however, that this line did come true as Bella helped bring these enemies together by the end of Breaking Dawn.
As to why Meyer fought for the “lion and lamb” line to be kept in the movie, she explained it was because it’s the line that people know Twilight for, and even though she admitted that the way screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg wrote it sounded better for the movie, she insisted on keeping it word by word in order to avoid backlash. Whether changing or omitting the “lion and lamb” line in Twilight would have drawn backlash or not is up to fans’ imagination, though many wouldn’t have minded not hearing it in the movie.