Voodoo. A Night of the Living Dead. God is still missing. Witches. Escaping Hell. Possessing a supernatural organism. Adolf Hitler. Being haunted by the ghosts of your dysfunctional family’s past. Oh, and an Irish vampire who really likes to party. These are just a few of the topics presented in Season 3 of Preacher.
Returning from the cliffhanger of last season, I really thought Showrunner Sam Catlin had made a deadly mistake. Tulip was dead. And I was very upset. Ruth Negga’s character was complex, but necessary for the show to go on. The central focus of the first episode of the year surrounds Tulip, naturally. But how will she (along with all the other characters) react to coming back to life… and living on the bayou?
The season premiere, “Angelville,” exists mostly as an origin story for both Jesse and Tulip, while introducing a new antagonist for Jesse to outwit: an elderly French Creole who’s also his grandmother, Madam L’Angelle. After only one episode, the road trip of Season 2 seems very, very far away. Cassidy causes trouble as he mourns in his own way, but doesn’t have a whole lot to do, other than purchase some of Tulip’s favorite things in hopes that she returns to the land of the living. Jesse must make a deal with the devil in order to bring Tulip back to life, and from the looks of things, he’s really going to need the help of Genesis to get through it all.
Hitler, Arseface, Herr Starr, The Saint of Killers and Genesis don’t make appearances in this first episode. Hopefully they’ll all return in next week’s episode.
While Season 3 is only 10 episodes long, looking at the ratings from last year (which hovered around 2 million U.S. viewers per episode), this could easily be the final season of the show. Hopefully, viewers and fans will prevent that from happening. But without the added publicity of Talking Preacher to further promote the season premiere, much like in seasons past, the future doesn’t look very bright for the series. That is an incredible shame, because Dominic Cooper is the perfect actor to portray Jesse Custer. And the characters are so oddly unique, attempting to describe them in only a few words cannot do them justice.
Based on the Vertigo (an imprint of DC Comics) comic book series of the same name, the characters of Writer Garth Ennis and Artist Steve Dillon are quirky, odd, outrageous, irreverent, somewhat blasphemous and above anything else, far from boring. They’re also unlike anything else that’s ever appeared on television before and they’re incredibly entertaining. These are only a few reasons why I truly enjoy this series and I hope that it will get enough time to fully develop its storylines before it eventually ends. Hopefully that won’t be anytime soon.
Season 3 of Preacher holds a lot of potential, storywise. Set your DVR to record new episodes, airing on Sunday nights.