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When we last left our intrepid ‘heroes’ on the Season 3 finale of Preacher, we weren’t even sure there would be a Season 4. But here we are with one final season to wrap up the story of Jesse Custer, his on-again-off-again girlfriend Tulip, and their vampire friend/lover/pain in the ass Cassidy who, at the end of the finale, was a prisoner at The Grail’s headquarters, the ancient fortress Masada. And it seems he has an angel for a cellmate strung up high above the actual cell.
The new season opened with a whole lot of information, jumping from location to location and across various time periods, ending in Australia with Jesse falling from a plane, smashing into the ground below. Could this be Jesse’s ultimate fate? We also got a glimpse of Tulip with a newly blond Cassidy, obviously more than just friends now. Another potential future? Or will all of these events be changed by the time we get around to the series finale in a few weeks? When the episode finally got back around to the present, Jesse and Tulip are together, seemingly happy (appearances can be deceiving though) and somewhere in the Middle East — in a car with Illinois license plates — ready to launch their plan to rescue Cassidy from The Grail. And with Jesse now in possession of Genesis once again, this is one rescue that should go off without a hitch.
And it started out fine. Jesse got a whole group of Grail employees — tossing back a few at the Holy Bar & Grail — to see Tulip as their new leader. All they had to do was act as if they captured her and get her to the front door at the fortress. There, she is to keep the door open while Jesse extracts Cassidy. He has no idea that poor Cas has been a guinea pig for an Advance Torture class. What better test dummy to shoot at than a vampire who can regenerate any injury? As Cassidy told the instructor, Frankie Toscani, there isn’t much he could do that hadn’t already been done. Well, there was one thing, something that Cassidy found even more painful than a few bullets — circumcision. Again and again and again and again … well, you get the picture. (And apparently Herr Starr has the foreskins prepared for him as a meal. Bleurk.)
Most of the first hour of the two-hour premiere was centered on Cassidy’s rescue, or attempt at a rescue. Nothing ever goes quite as planned and the agent who was the lead for Tulip got a little too zealous in her mission which alerted those who were not under the control of Genesis and the whole thing went south quickly. The doors closed and the poor woman was crushed between them while she attempted to keep them open … with her body. But she lived long enough to tell Tulip there was a switch to re-open the door — all the way at the top of the mountain in which the fortress has been carved. Easy peasy … except Tulip’s nemesis Agent Featherstone is at the top awaiting her. Drawing their guns, the two fired but neither was hit as the bullets smashed into each other in midair, so it was on to the hand-to-hand combat. Tulip was tossed over the side but managed to hang on and get back up, getting the upper hand on Featherstone whom she gladly pushed over the edge. Who knew that the Grail uniform was also capable of transforming into a BASE jumping suit that allowed Featherstone to glide away?
Inside, Jesse thwarts Herr Starr, who was even prepared for Jesse with noise-cancelling headphones but was not prepared for the Genesis-controlled agents, and takes down Toscani and his students but Cassidy is less than thrilled to see him, really fed up with Jesse’s constant attempts to play the hero (and more than a little miffed that Jesse didn’t think to bring a torture victim some Percosets). The argument escalated all the way to the door, which was still closed, but it all came to head when Cas brought up Tulip. Jesse warned him that Cas was not to say another word about her and ever the rebel, Cas just had to say ‘Tulip’ one last time. But before things got worse, the doors opened and … Cassidy refused to leave on Jesse’s terms. If he was leaving he was doing it on his terms. Returning to the Holy Bar & Grail without Cassidy, Tulip asks if he knew she was there. That seemed to trigger Jesse and he asked her point blank if she had slept with Cassidy. Tulip lied and denied that she had and Jesse seemed satisfied with her answer. But they were going back to Masada the next day and drag Cassidy out whether he wanted to or not.
But that night Jesse had a dream, one that seemed to point him to a rock that looked like a giant penis (of course it did), followed by a nuclear explosion. Another portent of the future to come? Jesse also received a call from his father who told him it was time to find God, and then he was choking Herr Starr, who then turned into Tulip who said, in someone else’s voice, that there was no more time for dreaming and this was his wake up call. Jesse seemed to regard this as a sign of what he had to do — find that rock — and left a note for Tulip as he slipped away.
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The second episode, ‘The Last Supper’, found Jesse hitching a ride with a chicken farmer / former porn star, having his money and boots stolen by a kid, and hitching another ride with a guy on a camel. As they encountered another man on a camel, the two men got into an argument that Jesse tried to stop with Genesis. But the two men and the two camels ended up dead because the other guy didn’t speak English. Jesse finally makes it to the airport, meets a pilot who tells him the rock formation he’s looking for is in Australia and … Jesse remembers he left his lighter in the pickup with the chicken lady, so he Genesizes the pilot to drive him to De Sade’s House of Entertainment (the name on the side of the truck) to get his lighter. But he may be in for a little more than he bargained for, unaware that Herr Starr is watching the entrance from a security camera while the pilot is lured in to rescue a child he saw in the window (apparently the same child that robbed Jesse earlier).
Tulip, meanwhile, is alerted by the hotel owner where she’s staying that The Grail is in hot pursuit of her. She’s fine with that, as Tulip usually is. As they converge on the hotel, Tulip’s car blasts through the garage wall and tears off with Featherstone and The Grain behind her. With some fancy maneuvers, she out-drives everyone, leaving a collection of wounded and dead Grail agents in her wake. Featherstone survived unscathed. But … one of the injured looks familiar — it’s Tulip in her Grail disguise. The driver of the car was the guy from the hotel. It had been a ploy all along. But Cas was working on his own way out, at one point chewing off his own foot to get out of the shackles, stealing a Grail doctor’s uniform and making his way to the door without issue. But as the door opened to the blazing sun above the fortress, Cas knew he’d be unable to exit so he pretended he forgot his stethoscope. He also found a stockpile of what appeared to be cocaine, snorted and stole a lot of it, encountered Toscani and some agents in an elevator but still managed to make his way back to the door … before collapsing in front of the front desk.
The premiere came to an end with what was probably another flash forward as Jesse was seen sitting on a plane headed to Australia, the same pilot gleefully announcing that he’s turned off the No Smoking signs. There’s no one else on the plane so why not? But there is someone else there — Cassidy. But he was just a figment of Jesse’s imagination, perhaps a manifestation of the guilt of leaving Tulip behind. But there was a final scene that was the most interesting.
Earlier we were shown that Herr Starr is not working alone. In fact, he’s working with God (who proclaims Diet Dr. Pepper as his finest achievement). God is not happy that Starr let Jesse get away … again … but he says if Starr wants Jesse to suffer, ‘Let’s make him suffer.’ In the end, we see a toy plane like the one Jesse seems to be on. But there are also other items from Jesse’s past all the way back to the church from Season 1. And God is moving things around, perhaps showing us that nothing that’s happened to Jesse thus far has simply been fate.
It was an action-packed season premiere with quite a lot going on. In addition to everything else that’s been mentioned there was a hilarious scene with God admiring some of his handiwork, namely a really cheesy stop motion animated dinosaur. Unfortunately, the dino took a dump .. then ate it even as God yelled at him not too so God just destroyed the dinosaurs. Now we know how it happened. There was also one quick scene with the Saint of Killers and Eugene making their way to the burned out remains of Angelville, always one step behind Jesse and company. Also, Herr Starr was confronted at a Grail board meeting when he would reveal the Messiah, but with so many clones on the loose, he could only tell them the Messiah was safe and would be revealed in due time. Unfortunately, one of the members was placed in a box with a grenade and blown up for pressing Starr on the issue. There were no further questions from anyone else in the room. Preacher is not afraid to push the boundaries of the absurd.
What did you think of the season premiere? Start a conversation in the comments section below!
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Purely entertainment. I love this show.