“Preacher” has been dropping hints about the importance of the Alamo throughout its first seven episodes, but it initially just seemed like a nod to its Texas setting. Odin Quincannon (Jackie Earle Haley) finished the detailed diorama of the battle in his office in the previous episode, and he wants to reenact it here. Even the hour’s title – “El Valero” – slyly references its original name: Mission San Antonio de Valero. Like Santa Anna, Odin and the QM&P men are set to stage a siege of the church, and despite a valiant effort from Jesse (Dominic Cooper), they’re ultimately as successful as their predecessors were.
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With “El Valero,” “Preacher” returns to its early-episode tradition of the bonkers, seemingly unrelated opening. In the ’80s in Vail, a ski lift crashes into the mountain, carrying what we later learn are all of Odin’s family. It’s our villain’s origin story, leading him to contemplate the existence of a soul or merciful God — or lack thereof. Generally, the violence on “Preacher” has resided in the realm of gloriously goofy and cartoonish, reducing the emotional impact of what’s actually happening on screen. “El Valero” has plenty of moments that are as sick as they are silly, particularly when Jesse shoots the penis off one of Odin’s henchman during the siege. It’s played for laughs, but it’s in sharp contrast to the somber scene where Odin is standing over the bodies of his family and a slaughtered cow and realizing there’s no difference in what he sees. “It’s all meat. There’s no spirit,” he says to a shocked John Custer (Nathan Darrow) before telling him to denounce God publicly. A generation later, he hasn’t given up his quest to remove God from Annville, and a Custer is still his primary target.
Other than the action outside the church, “Preacher” spends its first 15 minutes establishing hope in its dusty, cruel world and then quickly tearing it away inside the chapel walls. The (imagined) return of Eugene (Ian Colletti) feels too good to be true, and it is. But what was remarkable about the early scenes in the church wasn’t just Eugene’s escape from hell; it was that Jesse was seeing the light. He promises to return Genesis if only Eugene will come back, and immediately Eugene crawls back through the earth, parched and covered in dirt. After the previous episode “He Gone,” Jesse seemed to be on the road to hell himself. Even after the show reveals that Eugene’s return is only in Jesse’s head, the preacher’s change of heart appears valid. After fighting off waves of Odin’s men, he calls for DeBlanc (Anatol Yusef) and Fiore (Tom Brooke) to bring Eugene back. He finally agrees to return Genesis in exchange for their help after he can’t adequately answer DeBlanc’s question: “What good have you done with it?”
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But for all his lack of impact with the power, as soon as DeBlanc and Fiore extract Genesis from Jesse’s body, it returns to him almost immediately. The easy way — singing “Wynken, Blynken, and Nod” — hasn’t solved their problem, and the agents/angels will have to resort to the hard way to get Genesis back, which may mean the return of the chainsaw. After DeBlanc and Fiore leave, Donnie (Derek Wilson) makes it past Jesse’s defenses into the church. He has figured out a route past Genesis’s power — by causing his own deafness with a gunshot — and he’s immune to Jesse’s words. He knocks the preacher unconscious, and Jesse awakens surrounded by Odin’s men. He’s reluctantly ready to sign away the church’s land, but he then tells Odin that if he can’t force people to come to God, he’ll get God to come to them and answer their questions. “If we don’t like his answers, I will denounce the bastard then and there,” Jesse says.
The final moments of the episode return to the control room seen in episode 5, and again, the pressure is at dangerous levels. A man presses a button, and the gauges return to safe levels. He goes back to reading a magazine as though this is nothing extraordinary. We’re not sure exactly what we’re seeing or why, but it’s growing clear than Annville is more than it appears and Odin and his company are likely to blame. There’s an odd energy during the attack on the church, with townspeople showing up to watch the carnage like it’s a show. The camera pans across a group of onlookers, and we see the school mascot, Pedro the Prairie Dog, in their midst. His seemingly random appearance here and elsewhere throughout the show feels like something out of a David Lynch universe, and it’s unsettling evidence that Annville isn’t the average nice small town. Like Lumberton in “Blue Velvet,” there’s something sinister beneath the surface, and here that’s both literal and figurative.
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Despite all its action, “El Valero” feels mostly like a place-setting episode for both Jesse’s story and his friends’ plotline for the two hours remaining this season. We only get about two minutes of time with Tulip (Ruth Negga) this week, and Cassidy’s absence is keenly felt. It’s only in the final seconds of Tulip’s arc in this episode that we realize that her adoption of a hound dog earlier in the hour isn’t charity — at least not for the animal. Instead, once she leads it into a room at her uncle’s house and we hear sounds of violence, we can assume that she’s bringing Cassidy (Joseph Gilgun) back in the only way she knows how. In the siege on the church, Mayor Miles (Ricky Mabe) says to Emily (Lucy Griffiths), “Sometimes sacrifices have to be made for the betterment of the community,” and it’s clear it applies to more than just Annville as a whole. The ends appear to justify the means in “Preacher,” but just how far will its characters go in getting to something good?