By: Kelly Kearney

With Eugene (Ian Colletti) still missing thanks to Jesse (Dominic Cooper) condemning him to hell, Sheriff Root (W. Earl Brown) has had enough of the preacher’s run around and finally takes him into custody. With Jesse handcuffed in the back of the cruiser, the sheriff is hell bent on finding out what happened to his son. I’m not sure why all of Root’s stories wind up being gory and traumatic except to say he uses them as some sort of underlining threat. When he tells Jesse about what happens to child killers in prison it’s pretty obvious he thinks Custer killed his son. Jesse winds up escaping from the sheriff’s car, but not before he ominously promises to see Sheriff Root in church on Sunday. Jesse has planned a holy reckoning for Sunday. If the people of Annville won’t turn to God, he’s going to unleash God on Annville. Talk about a holy threat!

Two Tickets to Hell Please

Last week DeBlanc (Anatol Yusef) and Fiore (Tom Brooke) promised Jesse that they’d help get Eugene out of Hell if Jesse let them remove Genesis. The spirit removal didn’t go as planned, but Jesse isn’t going to let the angels renege on their deal. They promised to help bring Eugene back so that’s why they’re talking to Lucinda, the other worldly travel agent. Yup, that’s right. if you need to take a trip to heaven or hell, you need to set it up with Distant Vistas travel agency. The two angels book their trip to Hell, but not before DeBlanc threatens to report Lucinda for hitting on Fiore. Afterlife or not, no one is coming in between this heavenly bromance…that is until Lucinda (Tara Karsian) replies with her own threats of turning the two unregistered travelers in. First of all, who would she turn them in to? Does heaven and hell have some kind of homeland security or TSA agency? Apparently so because DeBlanc keeps quiet about the flirting and the two are set for a platonic getaway to the fiery pits of hell…That is until they remember the heaven phone. DeBlanc knows the ins and out of hell and wants no part of it. Both he and Fiore are worried that if they get heaven involved in this save Eugene plan, they’ll be separated and not be allowed to work together. They still haven’t completed their “Genesis in a coffee can,” job and because of that they’ve been avoiding calling “home.” They decide hell is the last resort and they’ll use the heaven handset to call in some divine help – only to find the phone is gone! Now they have no other option, but to go to hell. On a side note, DeBlanc and Fiore wouldn’t have this problem if heaven would’ve upgraded to smartphones. You have Steve Jobs up there and your guy’s can’t come up with a calling app? You can’t steal that! So with no phone and no other way to get Eugene, the two angels have no other choice, they’re on a highway to hell. Eugene had better be worth it.

It’s the Quiet Ones You Have to Watch

The last time we saw or should I say heard Cassidy (Joseph Gilgun) he was at Tulip’s (Ruth Negga) house eating his way through Annville’s shelter dogs. The immortal Irishman is looking rough thanks to Jesse letting his BFF almost burn to a crisp when Cassidy dramatically revealed his vampirism in the hot noon sun. Obviously, Cassidy is alive but he’s not healing as well as he should be no matter how many mutts he sucks the life out of. Tulip is worried, but she’s also desperate to get to Albuquerque and kill the infamous Carlos. She doesn’t want to leave Cassidy in this decrepit and sad state so she calls her new friend Emily (Lucy Griffiths) to stay with the him while she heads out to enact her revenge. Emily, who never knew about Cassidy’s bloody secret, is shocked but agrees to stay with the vampire and feed him today’s lunch which consists of two guinea pigs. Knowing that Cassidy is going to devour those innocent pets is too much for the kind hearted Emily so she releases them and calls her annoying suitor, the mayor, over to help. When the Mayor (who also happens to be Odin Quincannon’s top lap dog) shows up to help sweet Emily out, she quickly shoves him into the room with Cassidy subsequently killing two birds with one stone. Cassidy gets a Mayoral healing meal and Emily gets rid of her problematic relationship as well as the man that’s been helping Odin (Jackie Earle Haley) take All Saints from Jesse. That’s what you call a win/win and who knew Emily had it in her to be so pragmatic and cold? It looks like Tulip and Emily have more in common than they thought.

Did You Die?

The last time Jesse saw Tulip, he was insulting and mocking her to the point she washed her hands of the preacher and left. Jesse heads to her house to presumably apologize, but finds Cassidy and Emily there with the mayor’s dead body. The two best friends make amends and we find out that Jesse did use the fire extinguisher to put Cassidy’s flames out…eventually. He wasn’t going to let him die…probably. Still, Cassidy is on the mend and now thanks to waitress Emily, they need to dispose of Cassidy’s last meal. Jesse helps Emily and Cassidy get rid of the drained corpse because that’s what friends do, right? Apparently so because later Cassidy helps Jesse dig up and cut off an angel’s hand so that the preacher can call heaven on the holy hand set. It seems that phone only works if its dialed with angel hands and Cassidy knows just where to dig one up. While Jesse, Emily and Cassidy have been dealing with post meal cleanup, it looks like Tulip got her man. Carlos (Desmin Borges) is bloodied and bound when she gets a call from Jesse who’s being surprisingly sweet to her. After the last time they spoke, it’s strange that Jesse would be so endearing towards his ex, but their lives have been interwoven for decades and a few insults can’t change that.

Hell Is Something Your Destined to Repeat

Throughout the season we’ve seen flashbacks of a cowboy (Graham McTavish) who crossed the land in search of life saving medication for a little girl. The man killed anyone who got in his way, only to fail and the young girl died anyway. We finally get insight into who this cowboy is and to say the warning for graphic violence piqued my interest is an understatement, but boy did Preacher deliver! The mystery cowboy served up a bar room slaughter, killing dozens of men and one holier than thou Preacher in an act of revenge for the dead girl. We soon realize hell is some kind of messed up version of the film Groundhog’s Day as this man is doomed to repeat his mission to save the young girls life and ultimately fail, for apparently an eternity. The cowboy, who’s based of “The Saint of Killers” from the Preacher comic, really enjoys killing, especially holy men and DeBlanc and Fiore use this to their advantage. They never planned on coming to hell to rescue Eugene so it seems they actually went there to hire this killer cowboy to end their Jesse problem, therefore removing Genesis from his body once and for all. I guess being an angel doesn’t stop you from being a shady, backstabbing cheat and that’s just what these two are. This cowboy is death personified and with his taste for slaughtering preachers, DeBlanc and Fiore have found the man to finish the job that they couldn’t do.

Will Odin succeed in taking over the Custer land and All Saints? Will Eugene ever get out of hell? Will Jesse bring God to Annville or will he preach his last sermon thanks to the hell bound cowboy? All these questions and more will be answered in the season finale of “Preacher.”