Preacher Season 1 Episode Guide:
1.01 "Pilot" - Review!
1.02 "See" - Review!
1.03 "The Possibilities" - Review!
1.04 "Monster Swamp" - Review!
1.05 "South Will Rise Again" - Review!
1.06 "Sundowner" - Review!
1.07 "He Gone" - Review!
1.08 "El Valero" - (Airs July 17)
1.09 "Finish the Song" - (Airs July 24)
1.10 "Call and Response" - (Airs July 31)
Preacher 1.07: "He Gone" - Review:
Directed by Michael Morris & Written by Mary Laws
We're well into the first season of Preacher now and after the absolutely batshit insane opening twenty minutes of Sundowner it looks like Preacher is following The Walking Dead approach of having one intense episode followed by a mostly quieter one that doesn't have as much action. Here we begin immediately after the previous episode where Jesse is following Eugene's disappearance. We see him return to the sermon where he notices that Sherriff Root is wondering where his son could have possibly gotten to. He's so shaken by the events that he doesn't use Genesis' powers to tell people to serve God.
It turns out that Jesse believes he's sent Eugene to actual hell and doesn't care much about it. It's an interesting move to drag Jesse down to his deepest and darkest, hitting home with a deadly consequence after his near-constant abuse of power in the previous episode. He's turned near unlikable and whilst this will probably be expected by those who haven't read the comics, it came as a shock to me that the writers are adopting this approach when the series is still relatively young.
However that said despite Jesse thinking that Eugene is in hell, it isn't something that's likely to happen especially given that it was already established that he can't command people to go to somewhere that they don't already know, so having Eugene go straight to hell - unless of course there's something more to him that we don't already know - he can't exactly have gone there immediately. And there's the added factor of the burned bodies from Quincannon's murder spree a few episodes ago.
We also learnt a bit more about Eugene's past in this episode that had Jesse wondering whether or not he actually deserved to go to hell during a conversation with Cassidy who witnessed Jesse sending Eugene to hell. He wants to get Jesse to undo it but we learn that Eugene shot Tracy Loach following her rejection of him, followed by shooting himself. So that was interesting to learn more about Eugene's past, but It doesn't completely justifies Jesse's actions as Eugene seems to have actually changed around completely from who he once was. Oh, and Cassidy revealed to Jesse that he was a vampire.
Meanwhile, Emily is trying to tell Jesse about her feelings just around the time that Tulip is trying to get to know him a bit more. And Quincannon still wants to take possession of the Church despite being commanded by Jesse not to. Quincannon may have been told to serve God but that once again means that Quincannon can serve God in his own views, doing his best to make his family great again. It's clear that this is a set-up for next week's episode where Jesse will defend the Church and it'll be interesting to see what happens with his use of the Word and whether or not he will abuse it. On paper at the moment he's both outgunned and and outnumbered by Quincannon and his men, but Jesse does have his Word and Genesis.
This should no doubt make things interesting for sure and I can't wait until next Sunday to find out. Preacher's first season has so far been one of the best new shows of the year so I can't wait to see where it goes from here. Be sure to let me know what you thought of He Gone in the comments section below!
