WARNING: The following contains spoilers for this week's episode of Preacher, "The Coffin," which premiered Sunday on AMC.


Despite the quality of its writing, execution and performances, AMC's Preacher continues to alienate fans of the comic by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon with its somewhat-odd avoidance of its own source material. The first two seasons were peppered with storylines and references from various points in the comic, but they were rarely if ever as straightforward an adaptation as shows like The Walking Dead or Game of Thrones. The upside of that creative choice is that it’s allowed the series to develop new arcs that arguably enhance the source material instead of betraying it (Hitler and Eugene represent the perfect example), but the downside is the alienation of what could’ve been a core fan base for a show that’s struggled a bit to find its audience.

Thankfully, Season 3 appears to have achieved a solid balance between new material and old, and this week Preacher continued that trend by introducing three classic characters from the comics.

As foretold in the teasers, Jonny Coyne finally appeared as Allfather D’Arronique. Whereas Betty Buckley (Gran’ma) tempered her brittle comics’ counterpart with a touch of misery and desire, Coyne blows out every depraved shade of the Allfather, lifting him off the page and presenting us with something palpably grotesque. He’s impossibly obese and indulgently disgusting, but beneath the layers of fat, greasy skin covered in whatever food is lucky enough to miss his mouth lurks the spark of something powerful and frightening. There’s a reason he’s in the position he is, despite that he’s physically incapacitated by his girth.

RELATED: Preacher Aims to Offend At SDCC, With Cooper, Negga & More

He might be the closest thing to Jabba the Hut that humanity’s ever seen, but he’s also formidable enough to put the literal fear of God into Herr Starr. Watching the head of the Grail's Samson unit squirm for once was a refreshing departure from Starr's normally unflappable and bored countenance. And it didn’t hurt that D’Arronique’s debut came wrapped in a tap dancing Messiah sequence that perfectly illustrated Preacher's disturbing and playful sense of humor.

Elsewhere, in New Orleans, Cassidy’s attempts to move on from the loss of what amounted to his family up until a few days before. That lasts for about 12 hours, until he’s kidnapped by the Grail and held for ransom to induce Jesse’s return to the fold. That lasts for about 12 minutes, and then he’s whisked away by Les Enfants du Sang, a vampire-worshiping cult led by Eccarius (Supernatural's Adam Croasdell). In the comics Eccarius is a young-ish vampire who learned everything he needed to know about vampirin’ from pop fiction. Cassidy attempts to show him a more realistic, less-douchey existence, and it goes … not great. But his appearance this week is minimal, so we’ll have to wait and see how the show will adapt his storyline.

Page 2: [valnet-url-page page=2 paginated=0 text='Fans%20Know%20Who%20the%20Missouri%20Cowboy%20Really%20Is']

And finally, someone fans had given up hope of ever seeing: John Wayne. Played by Danny Vinson, who's credited only as "Missouri Cowboy," the figment so central to Jesse’s character in the comics has only been briefly referenced on the show, much to the dismay and confusion of fans. The Duke appears in the first issue as a quintessentially Preacher-esque version of Jiminy Cricket and continues as Jesse's constant imaginary friend throughout the rest of the series. Weirdly, until this week, it appeared as if the show had written around Wayne, with Eugene, Cassidy and Tulip serving as Jesse's conscience, for better or for worse. So, it was quite the pleasant surprise when Jesse hallucinated his childhood idol in the midst of his panic and claustrophobia locked in a coffin at the bottom of a swamp.

RELATED: Jesse, Tulip & Cassidy Turn Some Corners in "The Tombs"

The two play out a generic Western scene that gets Jesse motivated to break out of that coffin and make sure he never goes back. (Not for nothing, this sequence felt like the cartoon version of the Saint of Killers’ Ratwater flashbacks in Season 1, which should give you an idea of just how far apart the Saint and Jesse are in terms of common ground.)

While fans of the comics likely won’t catch the greater significance of this sequence, John Wayne’s appearance harks back to Jesse’s relationship with his father in the first season. The show feels incredibly far removed from the events that took place in Annville, but the appearance of Wayne has lent a badly needed through line to this spectacular, but occasionally unfocused narrative.


Airing Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on AMC, Preacher stars Dominic Cooper as Preacher Jesse Custer, Ruth Negga as Tulip and Joe Gilgun as Cassidy the Vampire. Betty Buckley (Gran’ma), Colin Cunningham (T.C.), Jeremy Childs (Jody) and Liz McGeever (Christina), John Coyne (Allfather D'Arronique) also join the cast.