Preacher Review: Sundowner (Season 1 Episode 6)

Now we’re really talkin’, Preacher! You are speaking our plot thirsty language this week with “Sundowner,” and we are feeling it. 

Where to even begin?!

The best place is usually the beginning, so, let’s start from there and work our way through everything.

Possibly the most important order of business to discuss this week is the fact that we have a name for the entity that has possessed Jesse (inhabited him? Possessed him? Jury’s out on that one)!

So, this thing is called Genesis, and it’s the spawn of an angel and a demon, which brings us to wonder if maybe those two sides of the entity — Good and Evil — are why it has chosen Jesse as a host!

All season, we’ve been watching Jesse war with two sides of himself:

The Good Preacher who wants to serve God and save his town.

And Jesse, the Bad Man who craves carnage and violence and revenge.

Perhaps this is the balance Genesis was looking for when it was choosing its host and blowing up religious figures around the country (shout out to Tom Cruise) at the start of the season. Maybe it needed to find someone who has the capacity for both immeasurable good and indescribable evil inside of them, and perhaps Jesse is that man.

With that being said, we see some interesting changes in Jesse this week. There is definitely something off about him — he’s cocky, short tempered, disturbing — and one can’t help but wonder if Genesis is starting to have a really negative affect on him and his mental state.

We saw a bit of this strange hold the entity has over Jesse when Jesse and Cassidy were toying around with the power in “The Possibilities”. We saw then how things escalated during innocent experimentation and, now, it seems like we are seeing Genesis’ power escalate in a far more sinister way (poor Eugene).

It’s manipulating Jesse’s mind and making him volatile, impulsive, and dangerous.

What’s really so great about this episode is that we are delving deep enough in to the plot now that questions like this are starting to come up — we are getting more development, we’re noticing more because the lights are coming on and we are being allowed to see clues to help us attempt to solve the mysteries that are slowly unfolding on our screens.

This week is the week when the show has taken a strong leap toward becoming the outstanding Sci-Fi series that it has always had the immense potential to be.

“Sundowner” is a game changer.

And, simply because it feels strange not to discuss her in a review, honorable mention goes to Tulip (Ruth Negga) for being endearing, adorable, and completely badass all at once, as always. She’s absolutely wonderful to watch.

What did you think of this week’s episode? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

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Preacher airs Sundays 9/8c on AMC.

Becky Peters

Becky is a television, literature, and pop culture enthusiast who spends more of her time exploring fictional worlds than she does living in the real one. Post-apocalyptic and dystopian settings are her kryptonite, and she has a strange soft spot for anything that involves the walking dead (the creatures themselves, not the show -- but the show is good, too). You can usually find her engrossed in shows like Preacher, The Walking Dead, Sense8, or any one of the many other series that tickle her fancy. Follow Becky on Twitter: @epic_bcky