Preacher 1.03 “The Possibilities”

This week kicked off with a soft intro of another iconic Preacher villain, but for right now he’s just a shadowy figure who wanted those Grail blueprints Tulip (Ruth Negga) killed a couple of guys to obtain. It’s another mysterious side-plot that gets introduced and then left for another day. As someone who lived with these comics as they were being produced, each one of these mysterious asides is exciting and helps keep me engaged and anxious to see what’s next.

I don’t know if it’s going to have that effect on people who don’t know what’s coming.

It may just seem scattered and unfocused.

At least this week, Fiore (Tom Brooke) and DeBlanc (Anatol Yusef), who returned from the dead at the close of last week’s episode, provide us with a bit of explanation for their part of the story. Not before Cassidy (Joseph Gilgun) kills them one more time for good measure, but it provides one of the more interesting developments in both Cassidy’s personality and the overall plot of the series. They reveal to him that they are on a mission from Heaven to retrieve the power that now resides inside Jesse (Dominic Cooper), and Cass prevails on them to allow him to be the middleman. Let him talk to Jesse and try to come to some sort of arrangement.

I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t trust Cassidy in this role.

Especially given how excited he is to discover Jesse’s power in the first place. In another very entertaining scene that really relies on the chemistry between Cooper and Gilgun, Jesse demonstrates his power by making Cassidy hop on one foot, sing some Johnny Cash (sort of), reveal that he likes Justin Bieber, shadow box, and then try to fly. Rather than be put off by this, Cass LOVES it.

He’s not going to be helping the Heavenly Host steal Jesse’s power. Not before he has a chance to profit from it himself.

In the meantime, Tulip almost gets Jesse on board with her plans, once she finally reveals the purpose of her visit: she’s tracked down Carlos, the guy who betrayed them on their last job together; the job that split them up. With his new-found power, he is tempted by the urge for revenge/justice, but a run-in with sad-sack Donnie (Derek Wilson) convinces him that he has to use his power for good, not personal satisfaction.

So we see, by the end of the episode, that everybody in this series is dealing with a wide range of “possibilities” – both good and bad. However, it’s not just the characters, but the creators of the series who are finding themselves tangled up in a knot of possibilities. And with just ten episodes of Preacher on the schedule, some decisions are going to have to be made quickly. We need to get the story moving, despite the fact that every performance is spot-on, every scene is well-written and acted, every mystery is engaging.

But we can only keep expanding the world of Preacher for so long before we have to get in there and start exploring it.