Last summer, AMC introduced viewers to a new comic book world withPreacherand the story of Jesse Custer (Dominic Cooper), the titular shepherd to a unique flock in West Texas with a unique gift of his own. It was bloody and sometimes creepy, supernatural and sometimes trippy, but always with a sense of fun from series creatorsSeth RogenandEvan Goldberg.
Season 2 will kick off at the end of the month with a road trip across the country in search of God — not a religious experience, but God himself. He’s missing, but we’ll get to that in a moment. If you want to dive right in without missing a beat or need a refresher, here’s a rundown of the events of Season 1 and what we know about the new episodes.
Jesse, haunted by visions of his father’s murder, returns to his hometown in Annville, Texas to head the family church as the new preacher. His three besties are Tulip O’Hare (Ruth Negga), an ex girlfriend from his bank-robbing outlaw days; Cassidy (Joseph Gilgun), an Irish bloodsucker with a penchant for hard drugs who reunites with Jesse after fleeing vampire hunters; and Emily (Lucy Griffiths), a friend who helps Jesse run the church, though she hopes to become much more. The preacher, stumbling through half-assed sermons, struggles to grow his flock until his life changes when he becomes a conduit for a mysterious entity.
The being is Genesis, a forbidden offspring between an angel and a demon that gives Jesse the power of persuasion. Whatever he commands while channeling the being, the listener is forced to obey. This causes problems in the town: one man kills himself when he’s told to open up his heart to his overbearing mother; Odin, a problematic businessman, is commanded to serve God, but little does Jesse know that Odin follows “the god of meat” instead of Christ; and a shunned kid named Eugene, who disfigured his own face and left a local girl comatose when he attempted suicide, was accidentally damned when Jesse told him to “go to Hell” in a moment of frustration.
While all of this is going on, two angels named Fiore and Deblanc are hunting Jesse down to return Genesis from whence it came, Tulip wants Jesse to take revenge on a man from their past named Carlos, Cassidy strikes up a brief fling with Tulip without realizing she and Jesse have history, Emily feeds the mayor of the town (who she was sleeping with) to the vampire when his injuries from sun exposure don’t heal properly, and Jesse fends off a siege from Odin as he tries to take his father’s land.
The story is intercut with scenes that appear to be from the past of a quiet cowboy who passed through Annville in need of medicine for his daughter. When he’s held up in town by a deplorable preacher, he’s unable to make it home in time and he finds both his daughter and wife dead and food for the crows. The cowboy, known later as The Saint of Killers, slaughters the bar patrons upon his return, but then Fiore and Deblanc pop up. This is not the past. It’s Hell. The angels traveled there to task the Saint with doing what they could not – hunting down Jesse and extracting Genesis.
What Happened in the Season Finale?
Donnie, an Annville local and righthand man of Odin, used to have beef with Jesse, who used Genesis to emasculate and nearly kill him. But he decided to follow the preacher’s example and forgive. Now, he’s letting Jesse hide out in his home. Police are on the hunt for him after he severely injured Odin’s men in their attack to take the church by force, and sheriff Hugo knows Jesse has something to do with his son Eugene’s disappearance.
Tulip initially storms into Donnie’s home with a pistol in her hand, but upon seeing Jesse calmly drying himself off from a shower, she takes him outside to her car where Carlos is tied up in her trunk. We learn the story of how Carlos betrayed them: he was supposed to be their getaway driver for a bank robbery, but he untied one of the policeman and ditched them. Tulip was pregnant at the time, and the experience caused her to miscarriage. When Jesse asks why he did it, Carlos responds, “You were happy.” Feeling Tulip’s pain over the memory of their child, Jesse goes to kill Carlos, but she convinces him not to as it won’t change things. Instead, they give Carlos a tire iron and gun to defend himself while they beat him until he’s left bloody and limping.
Hugo has since realized Cassidy is a vampire and tortures him in a jail cell for information on Eugene. He eventually lets him go because he knows when and where he can find Jesse: the preacher made a bet with Odin that he could call down God to the church the following Sunday.
Donnie and his wife smuggle Jesse and Tulip to the church, and when Sunday comes, the whole town has gathered to witness this miracle. Using a communication device he snatched from Fiore and Deblanc, Jesse sends a message up to Heaven. The sun snuffs out and plunges the town in darkness as light bursts forth from the device and shows an image of a man with a white beard, dressed in white robes and claiming to be “the Alpha and Omega.”
This being maintains the ruse for only so long before Jesse, picking up on some inconsistencies, uses Genesis to force the truth out of him. God is missing. He’s not in Heaven and the panicked angels have no idea where he is. The revelation throws the town into chaos. Emily tells her kids that nothing has changed, but two men dressed as local mascots (who’ve been warring with each other) hang themselves from a tree, a group of children stab the pedophile bus driver to death, and the comatose girl is smothered to death by her mother as her brother takes a selfie. This Hell on Earth becomes more real as a methane reactor leaks gas all around town and causes an explosion that destroys everything in the vicinity.
Jesse, Cassidy, and Tulip remain at a diner unscathed, and that’s where we last see the trio. The preacher sees Eugene’s face one more time before they pile in a car and set off in search of God. Road trip! Meanwhile, Fiore returns to earth off the Hell bus where he’s left alone; the Saint of Killers shot and apparently killed Deblanc. Speaking of the cowboy, the last remaining survivor of the explosion is a lone seraphim. The angel — who attacked Jesse, Fiore, and Deblanc earlier in the season — is walking through the town’s remains as a bullet tears a hole through her chest. She falls, revealing the bounty hunter holding his gun behind her.
What Do We Know About Season 2?
Team Preacher will travel cross-country in search of God while dodging the Saint, but there’s another big bad they have to watch out for.Pip Torrenswill playHerr Starr, a notable character from the comics. As the leader of a secret organization called The Grail, he’s described as “a gifted mastermind” and has plans for Jesse when he learns of his mysterious power. He appeared briefly in the third episode of Season 1 when a woman named Dany gave him a map she received from Tulip in exchange for information on Carlos.
Julie Ann Emeryplays Herr Starr’s righthand woman,Lara Featherstone, one of the best operatives The Grail has to offer.Noah Tayloralso popped up in one of the trailers sporting a mustache, but it’s unclear who he’s playing.Malcolm Barrett(NBC’sTimeless),Ronald Guttman(Showtime’sHomeland), andJustin Prentice(13 Reasons Why) will also appear in recurring roles.
Fans also spotted a title card for New Orleans and a sign for Papa Bebe’s House of Voodoo in the trailers, which means we could be meeting Xavier, a local voodoo priest and an old friend of Cassidy’s who helps Jesse with a spiritual quest inside his own mind. Other characters from the comics associated with this city include Dee, an eye-patch wearing bartender from Cassidy’s past, and Eccarius, a fellow vampire who’s goth style is at odds with Cassidy’s drug-fueled outlook.
We do know Jesse and the gang will encounter a man named Frank Patel (Vik Sahay),describedas being “furious with life and everything else.” Frank gives one of the angels an odd job and helps Jesse, Tulip, and Cassidy “find one of the things they’re looking for.” Executive producerSam Catlinalso toldDeadline“we’ll know more about who those two men were” who killed Jesse’s father, John Custer. While Jesse replays the moment in his mind, viewers are still not privy to the assailants’ identities. Other faces Catlin promised will be the serial killer Reaver Cleaver, Jesse’s nasty redneck Cajun grandmother, Marie L’Angelleand, and her bodyguard Jody.
Season 1 consisted of 10 episodes, but AMC bumped the order to 13 for Season 2. Rogen and Goldberg returned to direct the pilot episode, which premieres Sunday, June 25 at 10 p.m. EST on AMC.
