Preacher Season 4 is going next level existential, and we’re here for it

Preacher is posing some serious existential questions with Jesse Custer’s recent story arc, and taking Preacher Season 4 to emotionally riveting places.

SPOILER ALERT: This article contains details of the Preacher episodes “The Lost Apostle” and “Messiahs.”

Over the last two weeks, Preacher has become the most thought-provoking show on television.

The AMC series is no stranger to prompting questions; its whole calling card is how creative and often, how bizarre it can be. The first part of Preacher Season 4 has included dinosaurs, a fetish party that became a fistfight, and several creative uses for parts of human anatomy.

But in the most recent episodes, it’s showing how spiritual, intelligent and challenging a series has always been underneath all of that organized chaos.

The show’s ultimate endgame was revealed in Sunday’s episode “Messiahs,” when Jesse Custer (Dominic Cooper) realized that the pending apocalypse was God’s divine plan—because God was planning to wipe out humanity and create a new form of life.

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That’s one hell of a way to end a series, pun intended. You can’t get higher stakes than the elimination of humankind. But there’s another narrative here, one that centers on Jesse and the journey that he’s been on over four seasons—something that’s genuinely fascinating, heartbreaking and inspiring all at the same time.

“Messiahs” confirmed that Jesse is most definitely dead. But that just brought him to a purgatory-type place where a version of his old frenemy Fiore (Tom Brooke, making his first appearance since Preacher Season 2) made him a tempting but sacrilegious offer: ascend to heaven and take over God’s throne since it’s been vacant since 2015.

Jesse’s first instinct, understandably, was to reject the job—but will he? Should he? What does it all say about him, and us?

Preacher has been, from the start, about one man’s search for God. His whole profession is being in the service of God, and his entire journey is focused on finding him and then confronting him. It never included anything about becoming him.

But that’s what makes Preacher Season 4 so brilliant. From the start there’s also been a dialogue about what is God and what is man. What is God’s will versus free will? What comes from God and what do we find within ourselves? The show is really a long debate about the nature of humanity and if it’s just part of one guy’s celestial social experiment.

It becomes more interesting when you consider what Mark Harelik has said about his approach to playing his character:

"“If you guys want to believe in a God that created man in his own image, you have to do some reverse engineering as well—which means that man has also created God in his own image. That it’s a mirror image going two ways.”"

That duality is the heart of Preacher. You have God, who’s out freewheeling around like a human and being a jerk like a human, on one side. Then you have Jesse, who is the ideal personification of humanity (since Genesis chose him and didn’t destroy him), but the reason why he’s ideal is that balance of light and darkness within his soul—not because he’s perfect. Far from it.

So think about that, and then consider this: what happens if Jesse Custer’s quest to find God ends with him being God? And if he does so, is it a product of God’s will or is it ultimately his choice?

Essentially, what “Messiahs” proposes is that Jesse could ultimately find God within himself. That he could have been on this whole quest to find himself. There’s a sort of warped empowerment in that; the idea that by being the most human, he’s also the most godlike.

Jesse’s journey up to that point has been a series of moments that affirm his humanity. Going back to “The Lost Apostle,” the only time in that episode Jesse has complete agency is when he compels Cassidy (Joseph Gilgun) to let him fall to his death. He does the most human thing that anyone can do: sacrifice his life for the greater good, in this case saving the lives of his two friends—his only friends, as he tells Fiore in “Messiahs.”

And the choice that’s now in front of him is just that: a choice. He has to make the decision to sit on that throne. Again, that’s a human moment, especially if he bases it on what he’s just learned and accepts the role thinking it will help preserve the human race. He would again be sacrificing himself, this time for the literal rest of humanity.

Because logic would suggest that once Jesse Custer becomes God, he’s no longer human.

But there’s another way to look at this, as Fiore posits: that the whole thing is God’s will and he wants Jesse to replace him. After all, it was God who set the trap for Jesse and who used his own powers to create the threat that cost Jesse his life.

And Jesse had to use Genesis to get Cassidy to let him die. He utilized a higher power in order to do something deeply, unquestionably human. So after an act wholly caused by God, which made him use a godlike power, Jesse ends up in faux-Heaven as God’s possible replacement. See how the dominoes fall?

Is it the humanity in Jesse that makes God want him to replace him on the throne?

Between “The Lost Apostles” and “Messiahs,” Preacher is posing a litany of questions about Jesse Custer’s fate, his motivation, and what makes him a hero. Whether he chooses to be the next God or not, his decision will come from a very human place.

And when he ultimately has the chance to confront God—which he hopefully will; we’ve waited four seasons for that—he’ll be doing it with the weight of humanity on his shoulders.

It’s not Genesis that makes Jesse Custer special. It’s who he is as a person, as a human being, that makes him special. The otherworldly power just enabled that, and now we’re seeing that all come together as he faces a decision that feels both unbelievable and like we were building toward this all along.

Preacher airs Sundays at 10 p.m. on AMC. For more on Preacher and other AMC shows, follow the AMC category at Hidden Remote.