While last week I found myself wondering if Preacher was on its last legs, this week breathed some life back into the show. Mostly because it was a Tulip-heavy episode, and Ruth Negga’s Tulip is an absolute delight.
Tulip is trying to track down the Grail (who have already gotten out of New Orleans, obviously) when she runs into God again. It’s our first real glimpse of God sans the dog suit, and he looks like “fake God,” as Tulip points out. He also comes across both mean and secretive, telling Tulip that her screwing everything up was exactly what he wanted and he counted on the “curse of the O’Hares”. He also doesn’t give her a straight answer about his motives on earth, saying he’s creating a pass/fail test for humanity, which Tulip doesn’t buy. God grows impossibly tall and angry as he tells Tulip to mind her own business, before knocking her over and speeding off. God’s a dick, and Tulip is going to “kick his dick-ass”.
Tulip is definitely back in fighting form. She not only threatens God (and imagines actually kicking his ass) but decides to take on Gran’ma too. Despite Jesse’s warnings, Tulip does some snooping and finds a body, a phone that mysteriously connects, a candy, which she inexplicably eats, and a trunk full of blood-stained kerchiefs. She presses T.C. for info – okay, she agrees to look at T.C.’s “dingle” in exchange for the info – and he tells her that Gran’ma’s kerchiefs represent the blood pact, but cannot be destroyed.
In an inventive, black and white old school horror sequence, T.C. recalls a man who tried to steal back his wife’s kerchief and rip it in half, only to have his wife rip at the torso as well. This sequence is fun and playful, and Preacher really seems to be leaning into the creativity this season (like Tulip in purgatory).
Another fun scene comes later when Tulip tries to hire a rival witch to help break Jesse’s pact with Gran’ma. Madame Boyd had set a trap for Tulip, for an unknown reason, who tries to fight her way out and leap out a window, only to be thrown back in by a pair of henchmen.
Cassidy’s still healing from his gunshot wounds, and Jodie and T.C. have noticed he heals quickly… too quickly. Jesse tries to urge Cassidy to leave, but he won’t go without Tulip. Cassidy gets a love potion from Gran’ma so he could theoretically sway Tulip into leaving with him, but we don’t see him use it. Will he use it? Would he use it?
We don’t know, and we don’t get to find out. T.C. catches Cassidy drinking blood and the jig is up. He and Jodie tie Cassidy to a tree so the sunlight would kill him, but Jesse convinces them to try something else: The Tombs. In the Tombs below Angelville, men in chains fight to the death with Jesse as ringmaster.
Jesse and Cassidy still aren’t on great terms, but this week Jesse started to make actual strides. He apologised to Cassidy, called him his best friend and tried to save his life by re-opening the Tombs, something he told Gran’ma earlier he didn’t want to do. The selfish jerk Jesse Custer from season two might just be a thing of the past.
