Jesse (Dominic Cooper) begins to understand on this week’s Preacher. All Images: AMC

After two pretty off-the-wall episodes, Preacher slowed down with its third episode, spending time explaining things both to the audience and the characters. It all adds up to an important episode, just not a particularly exciting one—but at least we now know a bit more about all the craziness we’ve seen over the past few weeks.

The biggest revelation came at the beginning as Tulip meets some mysterious people in Houston, exchanging the information she had received after a fair bit of nastiness for an address—specifically the address of a man named Carlos, who apparently betrayed Jesse and Tulip at some point in their past. We saw two brief glimpses of that event, but there weren’t any real specifics other than Carlos did Jesse and Tulip very wrong. So wrong, in fact, that Jessie briefly goes against his positive mantra and agrees to help Tulip kill him. He eventually changes his mind, but the fact he agreed to commit murder at all tells us not just a lot about Carlos, but that the evil streak still inside Jesse.


Cassidy (Joe Gilgun) is shocked to learn of Jesse’s power.

Before that, though, Jesse finally tells someone about his powers. That someone is Cassidy and really, is there anyone better? In the episode’s best scene, Jesse throws Cassidy around like a puppet with his gift, even forcing him to admit he likes Justin Bieber. Cassidy loves it and suggests Jesse is either Jason Bourne or a Jedi. Either way, they try to put the magnitude of the power into perspective. This is big. When asked to describe it, Jesse can only say it feels like a blender inside him, full of all of God’s creations.


The revelation of Jesse’s power to Cassidy sets up yet another telling moment in the episode, when the two guys Cassidy killed last week come back. After freaking out that they’re still alive and then running over Cassidy with their car, these resurrected men guys tell the vampire they’re not there for him but for Jesse and his power... and one also adds they’re from Heaven. While this seems plausible in the world of Preacher, I don’t Cassidy believes this, but he does hilariously agree to be the middle man between them and Jesse—which, knowing Cassidy, will almost certainly not go well.

Jesse receives a bit of explanation himself—or at least a realization about the purpose of the power he’s received. After an encounter with Donnie who’s still trying to reclaim his manhood, after being emasculated not only by his boss and son, but a bus of kids earlier in the episode), Jesse begins to use the power against the town jerk. Then, in that moment, Jesse says, “I get it.” What exactly he gets, we don’t know. It’s presumably another explanation for another episode.


Tulip and the mysterious Danny.

Random notes and questions:

  • Who are these people in Houston? Not just the woman, Danny, but the man in the white suit watching what sounded like torture movies?
  • Jesse’s power can be used for good. The girl from the end of the last episode’s eyes did open, and it restored her mother’s faith.
  • Jackie Earle Haley’s character, Odin Quincannon, is a fucking creep. He was in his office LISTENING TO ANIMALS BEING SLAUGHTERED LIVE?!?! That should turn out well.
  • The final moment of the episode showed a simple steam pipe (or something) opening on the ground. However, if you think about the show’s religious symbolism a bit, it seems likely this signifies the release of something from below, almost certainly hell. I mean, we’ve already got characters on the show from Heaven...


All in all, it’s an interesting episode of Preacher, just not the action-packed hour of craziness the show’s first two outings contained. I’m still loving this world, though, and even though this episode provided a few answers, I want more—and I’ll happily keep watching until I get them.