PREACHER Season 4 again failed to match the humorous whimsy and wonder of its first season, but with a hard stop to the series at the end of the fourth, it didn’t meander but instead came to a strongly coherent and powerful finish, complete with a bittersweet denouement.
In this season, Jesse wants to stop God and his agent, the Grail cult, from bringing about the apocalypse. He is in full command of his Genesis power but refuses to use it against God, whom he believes he can convince to not destroy the world if he proves his devotion. This leads Jesse on a spiritual journey of trying to do the right thing only to fail repeatedly, along with a visit to the afterlife where he is tempted. God is the season’s antagonist, demanding and cruel and narcissistic and otherwise the full-fledged Old Testament God, while we see Hitler representing Hell and Jesus representing Heaven in divine negotiations over who gets what souls when the world ends. In all the silliness and outrageousness, there is a genuine poignancy that comes through about the nature of humanity and its relationship to the divine.
Overall, I enjoyed PREACHER’s realization on the screen. I didn’t love it the way I did better shows like THE WIRE and GAME OF THRONES, but it was a fun ride, overall solid, and it ended as well as it began.
