Preacher Season 4 premiere recap: Masada and Last Supper

The Preacher season premiere was two back-to-back episodes and a lot of raising hell. Here’s what happened in Preacher season 4, episodes 1 and 2.

The final season of Preacher is so intense, AMC started it by airing the first two episodes as one two-hour block. That gave a fairly good idea of what fans could expect from “Masada” and “Last Supper.”

“Masada” is the name of The Grail’s headquarters, which is like Disneyland for religious fanatics. The only thing it doesn’t seem to have is a Churro stand. But it’s where Cassidy (Joseph Gilgun) is being held, and tortured as an example for the next generation of henchmen.

So that’s also where Tulip O’Hare (Ruth Negga) and Jesse Custer (Dominic Cooper) are determined to break into. The episode opens with Tulip and Cassidy getting hot and heavy, before Jesse gets a literal crash landing—falling from the sky in Australia. When he lands, he is very much dead.

Well, that was a short-lived season, wasn’t it?

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Preacher backs up several months earlier, where it’s Tulip and Jesse getting intimate in the front seat of a car in the Middle East. They’re on their way to a bar populated by members of The Grail, whom he uses The Word on to get them to help with the jailbreak.

While Tulip rounds up the troops—and the Saint of Killers (Graham McTavish) and Arseface (Ian Colletti) are surveying the ruins of Angelville—Jesse decides to walk through the front door. Literally.

This gives us the hilarious visual of the fact that Masada has a TSA-style checkpoint in the middle of the freaking desert. And its massive doors have a “Push to Close” automatic button. Ah, technology.

Anyway, Jesse eventually meets with Herr Starr (Pip Torrens, chewing as much scenery as ever) to sort of talk about Cassidy’s release. Sort of because the conversation goes nowhere, so more Grail thugs are soon shooting each other up while Jesse utilizes The Word again and is brought directly to the room where his best friend is being held.

He makes quick work of Cassidy’s torturer and half a classroom full of even more Grail members in a scene that’s a callback to the Preacher pilot, because Jesse’s got that same satisfied smirk on his face when he’s done. Cassidy, meanwhile, looks like “Dude, now you’re just showing off.”

Their plan to escape goes sideways because Tulip’s end of the mission implodes, prompting The Grail to go to Defcon One. She’s stuck outside trying to pry open the doors (which now have a half-alive person squished between them), while they’re brawling—and bickering—inside. The sight of Dominic Cooper with a big gun brings back memories of Stratton, but without the nerve gas. And funnier dialogue.

"Cassidy: You cut me into pieces and tried to mail me. Not even first class!"

Tulip climbs her way to the top of the mountain outside, looking for the backup door switch, but finds Lara Featherstone (Julie Ann Emery). The two engage in a ferocious fight that ends with the latter gliding away, but it’s nothing compared to the brawl Cassidy and Jesse are into over Tulip. As the door opens, Jesse is busy choking the vampire from behind. With that on his mind, Cassidy chooses not to leave Masada, telling the preacher “I got this.”

That makes for one lame welcome back party when Tulip and Jesse reconvene at the bar. She asks if the two fought; he says nothing happened. Then he turns it back around on her, asking if she had sex with Cassidy. Tulip says no, which Preacher viewers know from the opening is a lie. This is not the healthiest relationship.

That night, a restless Jesse sees Armageddon from the bedroom window and gets a phone call telling him that it’s time to find God, and that he’d “better hurry up [because] big things are coming for you.” That quickly turns into him choking Starr, which is actually him choking Tulip, who refers to it as “your wake-up call.”

None of this is real, but it’s enough for a visibly dejected Jesse to leave his girlfriend a letter and disappear. While he hitches a ride for parts unknown, and Cassidy is locked back up, Starr cracks open a cold Diet Dr. Pepper—and meets with God. That’s right, God knows what Starr was trying to do to Jesse, and tells him, “Let’s make him suffer.”

Isn’t he just a ray of sugar-free sunshine.

That brings Preacher to “Last Supper,” an appropriate title for the second episode of the evening. It starts with some old-school, film reel-type footage of God at the beginning of the world. There are dinosaurs. But even back then, God’s kind of a jerk, and he blows everything up.

Back in present times, Jesse is explaining his mission to the woman he got a ride from, who turns out to be a former porn star who “electrocuted two of my co-stars.” Yeowch. When he says he isn’t quite sure where he’s going, the woman briefly turns into Tulip, who chastizes him for not having a clue. Jesse gets out of the truck to help a child in need, ends up sans wallet and shoes, and finds a new ride on a camel.

Cassidy is still being tortured for perverse educational value in Masada, and continues to be vague about why he wouldn’t leave when Jesse rescued him. Tulip returns with a rocket launcher, but she doesn’t know Featherstone has already spotted her. She goes to the bar looking for Tulip, intent on putting her head on a pike, which is kinda intense.

The bartender passes that information on to Tulip, who’s repairing her car and tells him that Jesse “ain’t coming back.” No, he’s on the back of a camel and then trying to referee a fight between two Middle Eastern dudes, which ends in the unfortunate death of both guys and two camels. That’s because The Word doesn’t work on people who don’t understand English.

And oh look, a plane! This premiere is turning into a messed-up version of Planes, Trains & Automobiles.

Speaking of people from foreign countries, Herr Starr assures an assemblage of dignitaries that everything is fine. The rep from New Zealand questions him, and is told to get into a very small box while holding an active grenade. It blows up, the box is carted off, and everyone else doesn’t look surprised at all. Or enthused. Or much of anything.

Preacher cuts to Cassidy impersonating a Grail scientist, which gets Featherstone to open the big front door. But when he sees the sunlight outside, not wanting to roast to death, he turns around. This ends up being a mistake, because the next time he’s in the elevator, it’s with his torturer. The fight is on, and the vampire strolls out in a cloud of white powder and blood. Except there’s that guy with a shotgun behind him.

Jesse, meanwhile, has made it to an airport (where New Delhi is spelled wrong on the flight board!) and gets more information on the rock he believes is the key to salvation. It’s in Australia, as more giant on-screen text informs us. Seriously, the font size on Preacher is pretty emphatic.

He also realizes that he left his beloved lighter in the ex-porn star’s truck, which bears the logo for Jesus de Sade. But that’s not the worst news: the bartender Kamal is snitching on Tulip! He makes a call to Featherstone, who’s thrilled to get the information. She brings an entire strike team, and that results in a car chase, which turns into a game of vehicular chicken that Featherstone loses. Our heroine escapes in a cloud of dust.

The final act of the Preacher premiere involves clarifying all these disparate storylines. Jesse gets his lighter back, but as you’d imagine from a place with “de Sade” in the title, there’s some weird stuff going on in that building—and the pilot who’s driven him there urges him to do something about it. Jesse hesitates, but eventually follows the determined pilot inside.

What he doesn’t know is that for some reason, Starr can see this on a security camera—as he’s getting a new ear made out of pieces that’ve been cut off of Cassidy. While Preacher fans cringe at that, Grail paramedics come to clean up the car chase carnage, and that’s when it’s revealed that the whole thing was a setup to get Tulip inside Masada. Kamal intentionally lured Featherstone et al out, and he was driving the car, so Tulip could break out her white suit and blonde wig.

So while the two people he loves most are trapped in the sadistic equivalent of a megachurch, Jesse Custer is smoking a cigarette on a flight to Australia. He’s gotten his boots back, but he’s also seeing Cassidy sitting beside him on the airplane. And where is God in all this? With another Diet Dr. Pepper and contemplating his next move. Because he’s still a jerk. If you were looking for a silver lining, the Preacher premiere didn’t give it to you—just a lot of bodies, some body parts, and hopefully some compensation for that product placement!

Preacher airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on AMC. For more on Preacher and other AMC shows, follow the AMC category at Hidden Remote.