"The Light Above" – Preacher S03E10 review

So season 3 and "The Light Above" wraps up as most of the plotlines come together into several resolutions. Not much really gets resolved, but then again the show is coming back for another season. So they can't wrap up everything.

Rick (somehow) finds the Hell bus and attacks it. This means the Saint and the Angel of Death team up to take on Nazis. The Angel can't resist taunting the Saint about the crows pecking out the Saint's daughter's eyes. The Saint gets cut in half by a tank tread rolling over him, but frees himself and takes the Angel's eyes.

God has stopped by and offered to help Tulip if she tells Jesse to stop looking for Him. She refuses, even though God has dropped hints Cassidy is in jeopardy and Tulip needs God's help to save him. With the Nazis gone, the Saint lets Tulip go and takes Eugene and Hitler to Hell.

Jesse gets to Angelville and first takes on Jody to kill the man who killed Jesse's father. After a grueling fight with T.C. looking on, Jesse beats Jody unconscious, then sets him on fire and walks away. T.C. (Colin Cunningham) can't bear to leave Angelville because it's the only home he has, and stays behind.

In the manor, Jesse confronts Marie. She explains she made a deal with Lucifer if Jesse kills her, Jesse will go to Hell. Jesse uses Genesis to force her to destroy the souls, but can't leave it at that, goes back, straps her into her soul-sucking machine, and kills her.

Eccarius frees Cassidy once he's convinced Cassidy will join with him. However, in the follow-up to Cassidy's chat with Mrs. Rosen, Mrs. Rosen has confirmed none of the Children who "flew" are alive. She released Cassidy, who turned her and the other Children into vampires. They turn against Eccarius and kill him. FJ arrives but it's a trick to get inside the house so the Grail can show up, take out the Children, shoot Cassidy with whale tranquilizer, and cart him to the Grail base in Masada.

Tulip gets to the house, find Mrs. Rosen and her son Kevin (who survived by hiding in coffins), and they tell her the Grail took Cassidy. Driving back to Angelville, Tulip picks up Jesse.

In Hell, Lucifer gives the Saint his weapons. The Saint wants to know if Lucifer was responsible for his daughter's eyes being pecked out by crows. When Lucifer says that it was God's idea, the Saint kills him anyway and leaves with Eugene. Hitler starts eyeing Lucifer's office chair.

At Masada, FJ is standing around with an umbrella hat. When he reminds Starr he's now a vampire, Starr knocks the hat off of FJ's head and he burns. Starr then tells Lara he's going to torture Cassidy, then torture Jesse when he comes for his friend and finally kill him. They put on sound-insulating headphones as soldiers and fighter jets prepare for Jesse's arrival. And ... that's it for season 3.

Overall, season 3 was ... okay. The fact t was only ten episodes instead of season 2's thirteen helped. There still seemed to be a lot of padding, and the subplots never seemed to quite come together. Particularly Cassidy's story. Yes, it shone a lot of light on Cassidy and his sad, sad existence. The lover he sought betrayed him pretty quickly while turning out to be a serial killer. And Cassidy was forced to kill him. But it never really went anywhere. It gave Joseph Gilgun a lot to do, but it was mostly on his own once he left Angelville.

We found out a bit more about the O'Hare Curse, and how Tulip has been trying to succeed in her own life despite her family's tradition of failures. And she provided a lot of the comic relief, interacting with Lara and T.C.

Jesse got to have it out with Jody (Jeremy Childs), and it seemed like their relationship was more affecting than Jesse's with Marie. Kudos to Childs, who managed to do humor, pathos, and a weird parental pride in Jesse after Jesse was finally able to beat him.

Compared to that, the relationship between Jesse and Marie (Betty Buckley) was relatively weak. She was apparently more sympathetic than in the comics, but that undermined the menace she presented. At the end of the day, Marie was just a tired old witch who was doing whatever she could to stay alive.

The Grail remains as quirky and strange as they were in season 2. We never got anything to match Starr's origin story. But Pip Torrens succeeded in conveying a sense of menace along with a weird sense of humor. Which is appropriate to Preacher. FJ (Malcolm Barrett) didn't deserve the fate he got, but then that's pretty par for the course. But I suppose this frees up the actor to appear in the Timeless two-hour finale.

So we're left with Cassidy imprisoned by the Grail, and Jesse and Tulip presumably coming to rescue him. Which more or less follows the plot in the comics, apparently. Starr no longer wants Jesse as the Messiah, and has an army ready to greet the Preacher. Meanwhile, the Saint is loose on Earth and looking for Jesse, and Eugene has finally worked out the Saint is after the same man who sent Eugene to Hell. And God has said Jesse (with Genesis) mustn't find him.

So it's hard to imagine what season 4 holds for our heroes. Jesse and Tulip take on the Grail, Cassidy gets tortured, the Saint comes looking for Jesse. That doesn't exactly lead to a coherent 10-episode storyline. But then again, it didn't look the end of season 2 had much for season 3 to latch onto, either. So we'll see what happens. Judging from all the weird jokes and characters, it'll be entertaining if nothing else.

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?