Preacher Season 2 finally arrives on AMC on Sunday, June 25.
This season, Jesse Custer, Cassidy, and Tulip hit the road finally in their search for God. For fans who missed out on the first season, or just need a quick primer to catch you back up to date for this second season, here is what you need to know about Preacher before the Season 2 premiere on Sunday night.
Spoilers for Preacher Season 1 as well as the comic book stories connected with Season 1 follow.
Genesis
Much like the first book of the Bible, the first season of Preacher was all about the introduction of Genesis. In the Preacher comic books, the first issue started with Genesis rushing into Reverend Jesse Custer and blowing up his church, killing everyone in it. That did not happen on the TV show. In the comics, under 14 total pages showed Jesse with the townspeople before Genesis showed up and killed everyone. The entire length of Season 1 (10 episodes) dealt with Jesse and the townspeople.
The TV show also showed that Jesse Custer was not the first preacher that Genesis tried to enter the body of but he was the first to survive, another interesting change from the comics.
Image Credit: AMC
So, what is Genesis?
An angel and a demon that was battling in the never-ending war between Heaven and Hell fell in love and had a baby. The angel and demon were destroyed and the baby was captured and imprisoned in a box. This is all because the baby – called Genesis – is the most powerful creature ever born and could sway the battle lines in the war if the warrior angels or demons find out.
With Genesis in Jesse Custer, he can speak the “Word” and people must do whatever he tells them to do, with no self-control. The first season is about Jesse coming to terms with Genesis, his new powers, and his relationship with God.
Photo by Skip Bolen/AMC
Jesse, Tulip, and Cassidy
The three main characters introduced are Jesse, Tulip, and Cassidy. Jesse is a preacher with a mysterious past. The only thing we learned about Jesse in Season 1 is that he is the son of a preacher (another change from the comics, where his dad was a military man getting out of Vietnam before Jesse was born) and he went wild as a young man after his father was murdered, robbing banks with Tulip. He has since repented for reasons yet to be explained and has been working as a preacher in Annville, Texas.
Tulip is the daughter of a prostitute from Annville, who is now dead. She lives with her uncle, who is always drunk, and people in the town consider her white trash thanks to her family’s reputation. As a result, she has grown to be tough as nails.
I want to take a break here to say that Tulip on the Preacher TV show is miles better than she was in the Preacher comics. In the books, she was a shrew who hated everyone and everything and was a caricature of what a male writer thinks a scorned woman should act like. There is nothing redeemable about Tulip in the early Preacher comic books.
Tulip on the TV show is a brilliant character, very well-rounded. She is angry and she is furious that Jesse Custer would turn his back on her to be a preacher. She is mean and takes it out on those she feels wronged her. However, Tulip also helps those in need and cares about those she loves. She is a real character on the Preacher TV show and is a marvel all throughout Season 1.
Cassidy is an Irish vampire.
Cassidy is also one of the MVPs of the first season. When first introduced, he is on an airplane and is attacked by vampire hunters. He has an amazing battle with them and then jumps from the plane, is burnt to a crisp by the sun, and then eats a cow to bring himself back to life. Then, things really get crazy.
Photo by Skip Bolen/AMC/Sony Pictures Television
The Angels
In the Preacher comics, there are angels in Heaven who want to get Genesis back and there are warrior angels in Heaven who know about Genesis escaping. In the Preacher TV show, the angels from Heaven who want to get Genesis back are represented by two angels who come to Earth and try to convince Jesse to turn over Genesis. These angels are played by Tom Brooke (Fiore) and Anatol Yusef (DeBlanc). They are fantastic characters that bring a lot of life and humor to the first season.
There were even moments where the two, along with Jesse and Cassidy, had to battle another angel that came down to arrest DeBlanc and Fiore for coming to Earth without permission (the battle angels don’t know about Genesis yet). The best thing is that, when an angel dies, their body remains dead but they revive close by and the battles continue. It was a highlight of Season 1.
By the start of Preacher Season 2, Fiore is the only one still alive.
Photo by Skip Bolen/AMC/Sony Pictures Television
The Saint of Killers
While he is never called the Saint of Killers, this is the comic book name for The Cowboy from Preacher Season 1. Almost the entire season, the story of the Saint of Killers is shown in flashbacks before or during episodes. He lived in the Old West and was on his way to town to get medicine to save his daughter’s life. On the way, he meets a family and learns that they consider the Old West to be paradise, something he disagrees with.
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When the Saint of Killers reaches town, a preacher in town recognizes him but is not sure where from. He leaves without incident but not before seeing townspeople raping a woman in front of her child before he departed. On his way back home with the medicine, the people he met earlier are on their way to that town and he realizes the fate that could await them. He races back to do the right thing and help them but sees they have been killing and hanging Native Americans and selling their scalps for money. That is when the preacher sucker punches him.
The preacher then explains that he knows the Saint of Killers was a brutal killer in the Civil War and he shoots his horse. This causes the cowboy to get back home too late to save his family, his wife and his daughter are both dead. He returns to the town and kills everybody. The real twist came at the end of the season when it turns out that he is in Hell and is reliving this over and over and over again. DeBlanc and Fiore arrive in Hell and ask him to kill Jesse. The Saint shoots DeBlanc, killing him, and then heads back to Earth to complete this task.
When there, he finds the battle angel from the earlier fight and kills her with his gun. The guns belonging to the Saint of Killers can kill anyone, human, angel, or demon. And he is after Jesse Custer in Preacher Season 2.
Annville
The town of Annville plays a huge role in the first season. Jesse had a lot of enemies in this town and very few allies. However, when the season ended, an accident caused the entire town to explode, killing everyone in it.
Before this happened, Jesse was able to place a call to Heaven in front of his congregation to ask God why things on Earth was so bad. However, it ended up being an Angel pretending to be God and Jesse used the “Word” to force the Angel to admit that God disappeared after Genesis was born and no one knows where he went. The town lost their faith and Jesse left with Cassidy and Tulip.
The only thing from the town that should play into Preacher Season 2 is the police investigating the explosion that decimated the town and the fact that Jesse Custer, using the “Word,” accidentally sent a teenage boy named Eugene (Arseface) to Hell. That never happened in the comics but now Arseface is haunting Jesse Custer.
Next: Preacher Season 2: 5 Things we want to see this season
Preacher Season 2 debuts on Sunday night, June 25, at 9:01 p.m.