Welcome back brothers and sisters to our weekly feature, the Preacher Book Club, where we talk about the latest episode of AMC‘s Preacher, dissecting the episode at hand, annotating the changes made from the Garth Ennis/Steve Dillon comic book series and attempting to predict about what will be coming next. So let’s dive right into our thoughts and annotations on Preacher Episode 2.11!
Little Jesse in the swamp
The episode begins with a flashback of Jesse down in Angelville with his mother’s family, The L’Angelles. This scene is nearly identical to how it appears in the pages of the Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon comic book series, right down to the concrete weights suspended on the side of the coffin. It’s scary accurate. The scene in the comic plays out simply as a punishment for young Jesse while the TV series adds the undercurrent of the L’Angelles trying to out the “Custer” from Jesse. All of the talk about the L’Angelles this whole season, and with just a few episodes left in the season, I have to think they’ll play into Season 3 quite heavily. If I’m making another prediction for the next season it would be that Jesus DeSade will also appear.
The Saint is gone….or is he?
It should surprise no one that The Grail has the resources to fish out The Saint of Killers from The Swamp, and their plan is likely a simple one, and one with roots in the source material. In the comics, after The Saint finds out God has left his throne in Heaven, he is free to do what he wants as no one is left to command him. I imagine now that The Grail knows this information as well, they’ve told The Saint this information and “unleashed” him on the world. He’ll likely go back after Jesse though – he wants those guns back.
The Saint’s guns
Speaking of his guns, as I’ve said previously, The Saint of Killer’s guns were forged from the melted down sword of the angel of death, smelted in the fires of hell themselves. I imagine that we’ll get the backstory on them by the time he gets them back.
Back in hell
Again, none of this Hell subplot is from the comics but it all feels very in line with the tone of Preacher to me. Hopefully it actually goes somewhere though,
God is Man-Dog
Jesse comes to the conclusion from Humperdoo’s drawings that God in fact WAS the Man-Dog that he saw in the first episode, something I’m still not so sure about since “The Messiah” isn’t all that bright. None of this hails from the comics so who knows where they’re headed with it just yet.
Jesse’s prayers
The bit about Jesse’s prayers being on a reel to reel is a pretty clever idea but not found in the pages of Preacher.
Way down in the hole
As Hitler and Eugene jump down into the hole, we’re left with the promise that there is a back door out of hell down there. Like they say though, you can’t trust Hitler, so I’m thinking even more bad news is in store for Eugene. However, they could pull a reverse on us and Hitler helps him escape at the cost of himself. It would certainly be weird to make Hitler kind of a hero in that regard, but he’s still going to be stuck in hell so….everybody wins?
You can watch previews for next week’s episode below!
