‘Preacher’ Recap: ‘Deviant’

Written by John Edward Betancourt

THIS IS THE EMERGENCY SPOILER ALERT SYSTEM...YOU ARE ADVISED TO READ AT YOUR OWN RISK...

At some point or another in our lives, we are forced to reflect upon some of the decisions we’ve made that bring us to a current situation, one that is often negative in nature. And we take the time to reflect, because it is a surprisingly positive process, even though it doesn’t seem to be worth our while in the midst of a bad moment. But taking the time to ponder, allows for us to see what matters in our lives and helps us to understand our missteps so that we don’t repeat them going forward and it just so happens that Jesse Custer and his beloved friends were forced to endure a moment of reflection during last night’s episode of Preacher.
​
Because ‘Deviant’ allowed for a little bit of downtime for our characters, and downtime is a perfect time for inflection, especially when one is tied to a hospital bed at the Grail’s headquarters, as was the case with Tulip. And while her introspective moments weren’t quite as profound as her cohorts, since we already know a great deal about her, it was still important for her to deal with the loss of Jesse and her feelings in regard to their current tiff. Plus it was just great to see Tulip embrace her anger when confronted with it and be able to escape into Grail HQ regardless of the threat she posed to everyone within the building and it should be interesting to see what comes next for her now that Cassidy has already been transferred out to his next foreskin assignment.

Speaking of Cass, his moment of reflection revealed a great many things about his past and why he lives such a wild and carefree life, and it is surprisingly not directly related to his rebirth as a vampire. If anything, we came to learn that Cassidy firmly believes he is a failure in life (and death and rebirth), and that stems from a time when he tried to play the hero. For he joined up with the IRA to take part in the Easter Rising of 1916 in the hopes of ending British rule in his homeland, and rather than rise up and fight as he intended; he ran, he hid and he eventually found himself under attack from a vampire and rather than go home and see his family and reveal his missteps and his fear, he stepped out into the world as a vampire and has in essence, given up for the time being. Plus, we also learned his first name is actually Prioinsias, so, that’s a thing.

But truly the centerpiece of the night was Jesse’s journey. For his quiet time took place aboard another private plane ride, and while he was high in the skies he came to realize that this journey to find God and use Genesis for the benefit of the universe has in many ways gone off the rails and transformed him in the process. For the reformed Jesse Custer we met in season one, has more or less disappeared from the landscape, instead replaced with a man filled with raw anger and rage over the lies he’s discovered and the pain he’s experienced. And while his attempts to make the world a better place are genuine in nature, his fury causes more harm than good, as was evidenced by the flashback of what happened in that strange brothel he and Steve the pilot visited last week, and truly Steve made quite the point in this episode when he asked Jesse, ‘what kind of Preacher are you?’

If anything, hopefully Jesse can figure out the answer to that question after he deals with this latest crisis since his plane is going down and really when all is said and done, this episode was downright brilliant. Because this is exactly what you want from the final season of a show, since the characters are finally dealing with their demons and we are getting the answers to all of our questions since Cassidy’s backstory finally came to fruition and all of this left me supremely excited. Because getting all of this important stuff out of the way early on in the season means that bigger and juicer plot points await us down the line and we are also likely going to be treated to one powerful finale that brings together everything this series has been toying with over the past four years, and something tells me from the care that went into this tale that the grand finale is going to be thoughtful and magnificent and I truly cannot wait to reach the finish line. Until next time. 

---