Review I Preacher – Finish The Song

Our Rating

Episode score7
7

Preacher goes to Hell, who’s coming with me?

Oooh yay, Ratwater!!

We open this week on the dingy Deadwood wannabe town of Ratwater and a Chinese guy singing in the saloon. The Saint arrives and the sleazy preacher who we saw a few weeks ago confronts him. The saloon falls silent as the preacher talks. The Saint calmly orders the singer to Finish the Song. He begins singing again as the Saint calmly massacres the entire saloon, then the singer, before pouring himself a whisky as a storm of Biblical proportions hits the town.

Back in present day Annville Jesse escapes from the backseat of Root’s patrol car after a pleasant little story time about what happens to child killers in prison. Root is sure that Jesse has killed his son rather than, y’know, sending him to Hell just by saying it. Across town DeBlanc and Fiore visit a rather peculiar travel agent. Peculiar as in she arranges tickets and transportation to take them to Hell. Who knew they had travel agents for that?!

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Tom Brooke as Fiore, Anatol Yusef as DeBlanc, Tara Karsian as Lucinda
Photo Credit: Lewis Jacobs/Sony Pictures Television/AMC

Emily arrives at Tulip’s place to find it turned into a petting zoo full of critters for Cassidy to snack on. Emily is given a crash course in tending to crispy fried vampire before Tulip leaves. She’s going to Albuquerque to kill a man.

While waiting for their transportation to hell our favourite Angels decide they don’t actually want to go. They’d rather turn themselves in to Heaven and accept the consequences. Fiore looks under the bed for the hotline to Heaven but it’s missing (spoiler – Jesse stole it). Unable to call home they resolve to go to Hell after all. They pack up their trunk of heavenly-who-knows-what and leave the Sundowner motel. They leave behind the dismembered Angel in the bathtub and a room that’s basically been repainted in blood splatter. Seriously, no wonder they took off so fast, they’d be looking at some serious deep cleaning charges. The motel owner calls Root who turns up and finds the Angel in the tub. She begs him to kill her and he obliges, thinking he’s releasing her from her torment. She respawns once she is dead and takes off, whether in search of DeBlanc and Fiore or Jesse I can’t be sure.

In possibly the most surprising moment of this episode, Mayor Miles receives a call from Emily. She sounds terrified, begs him to come help her and of course he heads right on over to Tulip’s place. Once there he searches for Emily and finds his way into the locked room Cassidy is in. Emily locks the door behind him and listens as Cass kills her sort-of-boyfriend.

DeBlanc and Fiore wait for the bus to Hell (incidentally in the exact same spot where Walter White waited for his relocation in Breaking Bad *shakes fist at sneaky show runner Sam Catlin*). When it arrives they are told that they can’t take luggage and Fiore is distraught, he doesn’t want to leave his comics behind but DeBlanc tells him it’ll be ok. He might have a disturbing love for chainsaw dismemberment but Fiore really is an adorable little puppy at times.

Jesse shows up at Tulip’s and finds Emily releasing guinea pigs in the yard, she tells him Cassidy is inside and they finally talk.

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Dominic Cooper as Jesse Custer, Joe Gilgun as Cassidy
Photo Credit: Lewis Jacobs/Sony Pictures Television/AMC

It seems that Jesse did put Cassidy out after all. Jesse tells Cassidy the plan, that he’s going to call God on the heaven phone. Jesse calls Tulip and leaves her a rambling voicemail about how much he cares, he even says To The End of the World. I can’t lie, I might have cheered just a teensy bit at that. Meanwhile in Albuquerque Tulip has Carlos and a bunch of torture implements she looks slightly apprehensive about using.

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Ruth Negga as Tulip O’Hare, Desmin Borges as Carlos
Photo Credit: Lewis Jacobs/Sony Pictures Television/AMC

When Jesse returns to Cassidy he finds him playing with the heavenly hotline and they realise that it needs Angel hands to operate. Cassidy knows where they can get some.

Then things get kinda weird. We see the Saint heading to Ratwater to buy the medicine for his daughter, encountering the preacher who kills his horse and delays his return so that his daughter dies. We’ve seen this exact sequence before a few episodes ago and then again at the start of this one. Then it plays again. And again. Faster and faster like Groundhog Day on speed. Is he reliving the death of his family as some sort of punishment? Wait…is he in hell? Suddenly the storm stops – DeBlanc and Fiore arrive in the saloon and meet the Saint. DeBlanc says they have a job for him but won’t tell him what it is. So the Saint shoots him in the head. A justifiably terrified Fiore confesses they want him to kill a Preacher.

So an Angel gets shot awakening the Saint of Killers from Hell to go after Jesse Custer who is possessed by Genesis… Tulip may be about to botch a sort of “hit”… Hold the phone, has this actually almost turned into the comics?

This season so far has been a pretty hit and miss, but the biggest hit by far for me has been Graham McTavish’s portrayal of The Saint of Killers. He is the perfect embodiment of the taciturn, stone-cold, heavenly hitman and I’m never happier than when he is on the screen. His gruff slayer of, well, everything, is so iconic. He is literally the most badass cowboy you have ever seen and even without having seen what he is capable of you just get the feeling from looking at him that he is not to be messed with!

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Graham McTavish as The Cowboy – Saint of Killers
Photo Credit: Lewis Jacobs/Sony Pictures Television/AMC

Anatol Yusef and Tom Brooke as DeBlanc and Fiore come a close joint second. They were a little frustrating to begin with but I’ve really grown to love them. I really hope that’s not the last we see of DeBlanc though, poor Fiore is just too innocent for this world on his own.

About author(s)

Clare Hemsworth

Hey, I'm Clare, aka Ciara or C. My current fandoms are RWBY and The Last Kingdom along with a bunch of other stuff I tend to let build up and then binge! I'm a keen, albeit amateur, cosplayer and love attending cons in various cosplays. I'm also the resident comic book girl around these parts, especially small press comics, so if you've got an indie book you want reviewed, I'm your gal! When I'm not doing the fangirl thing I am a keen long-distance hiker, having completed Te Araroa in New Zealand and The Pacific Crest Trail on the West Coast of the US.