Preacher Episode 2: See Recap With Spoilers

A girl sleeps with a doll in her arms in a cabin in 1881. She’s sick and her parents are tending to her. The mother tells the father he has to go but tells him to keep to his affairs and come back to them. The man rides out through the dry plains. It is a three-day journey. He’s stopped by a boy who is part of a caravan. He offers the man dinner. The man joins them by the campfire. The boy’s father tells him about how they left St. Louis to strike a claim on the wilderness before it was all gone. Dogs bark in the background. The man comments on how quiet the traveler is, and on how this country is more than geography, but a promised paradise for the righteous. The traveler says it ain’t paradise. Later, the man travels past a tree with scalped and mutilated Native Americans hanging from it outside the town of Ratwater.

Jesse baptizes the members of his congregation. The two strangers watch with binoculars from a distance. Tulip steps up and asks Jesse to save her. Jesse baptizes her, but Tulip whispers to him that it’s time to get to work. Jesse watches Jesse watches Tulip drives off. Emily asks who that was, but then goes inside to make coffee. Cassidy pulls her aside to ask for payment for his services. He doesn’t get anywhere. Miles and Sheriff Root discuss what happened with Ted cutting his own heart out. Emily tells Jesse that there’s some church wine missing since Cassidy got there and Jesse says he’ll talk to him. Cassidy startles at the sight of Eugene. Sheriff Root pulls Eugene aside. Jesse tells Cassidy that Eugene tried to kill himself with a shotgun but survived. Jesse asks Cassidy not to make trouble. As the sheriff and Eugene walk away from the church, a man accuses Eugene of being a murderer.

A man named Linus confesses to Jesse about his inappropriate feelings towards a young girl. He asks for forgiveness, and Jesse tells him he can only be forgiven if he’s truly sorry and doesn’t act on his feelings. Later, Jesse smokes on the church step. He speaks with the “voice of god,” telling a barking dog in the distance to be quiet. The dog obeys.

A car, two vans, and a mack truck drive down a road. They’re marked for Quincannon Meat and Power. Odin Quincannon explains a zero sum proposition to two people in their home. Donnie hands over a contract, though someone has to pick up the pen after Donnie drops it, and Odin tells the man to sign it. Quincannon’s people remove the family’s furniture and demolish their home. Donnie slams the face of the man who picked up the pen into the van steering wheel.

Jesse and Emily are taking suggestions for the church when Jesse sees a school bus go by. He gets into his truck, but his steering wheel is gone. Tulip pulls up and taunts him about his boring life and then drives away. Jesse finds his steering wheel hanging from a streetlight.

Jesse returns to the church and finds Cassidy standing outside with a bottle. They go inside and drink and smoke in the darkness of the church. Cassidy is skeptical of the idea that God has a plan for Jesse or anyone else. Jesse says his plan is to be one of the good guys. Cassidy says that’s a dumb plan. Jesse accuses Cassidy of selfishness, but Cassidy says it’s honest life. They argue and Jesse calls Cassidy a loser. Jesse says boring isn’t the worst thing someone can be, but Cassidy disagrees. Cassidy asks if it was Jesse’s dad who taught him how to fight, but Jesse says it was someone else. Cassidy tells Jesse that he’s an 119-year-old vampire from Ireland who is on the run from religious, vampire hunting vigilantes. Jesse laughs it off. Cassidy takes a drunk from a flask. He warns Jesse that the contents are too potent, but Jesse drinks it anyway and immediately falls over. Cassidy takes Jesse’s keys and leaves.

Room service offers towels to the two strangers. They awkwardly refuse, then leave their room with a large trunk in two.

Cassidy steals Jesse’s truck and this the road.

We see inside Jesse, where the strange cosmic entity seems to be struggling. He’s still unconscious when Fiore and DeBlanc find him. They prepare a particularly intimidating music box and Fiore plays it and while DeBlanc sings, apparently to the being inside of Jesse. They seem to have expected the entity to leave Jesse’s body, but it does not. DeBlanc says it doesn’t make any sense. Fiore calls for plan b, a chainsaw. Cassidy arrives and tells them that it’s him they’re looking for. He begins ranting, but DeBlanc shoots him down while the Fiore revs the chainsaw. Cassidy bites DeBlanc and fights the two intruders. Cassidy knocks DeBlanc out and turns the chainsaw on Fiore, cutting off his arm. The chainsaw crawls down the church aisle towards Jesse, but Cassidy stops it in time.

At the Toadvine Whorehouse, employees of Quincannon Meat and Power are enjoying a party. Several are playing poker with Tulip, who is cleaning up. A sore loser named Clive leaves the table and goes upstairs with a woman. A woman named Mosey asks about Tulip’s uncle, Walter. A man in a corner laughs, but Tulip tells a story of some of Walt’s drunken antics, then passes it off, saying “just kidding.” Tulip gets a call from a man named Tom, says she’s got her’s and asks Mosey if she can borrow a room.

Cassidy heals up some in the church, then surveys the damage all around him. He uses the chainsaw to disassemble the bodies and toss them in their trunk. He cleans the church up, but can’t leave because it’s morning.

Emily finds Jesse on the floor of the church. She notes that it smells like something died in there. She gives him a casserole to take to the family he agreed to visit. The daughter is in a coma. Jesse expresses his condolences, but the mother says they’re fine. Jesse says they’re not fine, that there’s a pain with them like there was a pain with him. He tells her that someday the light of the Lord will reach them both and something will happen and something will change. She says those are lovely words, but that that’s all they are.

Jesse drives and stops on the side of the road to examine something. Someone sneaks up behind him and tasers him. He wakes up chained to a bed. Tulip comes inside that Danny wants the map, and that Danny’s client is going to give them information in exchange. Jesse says he doesn’t care about the information. Tulip remains convinced that Jesse can only play preacher for so long. She straddles him. She predicts that Jesse is going to refuse to do this job, but she’s going to keep asking because she’s not going to do the job without him and eventually the bad man he Jesse is going to come out and say yes.

Later, Jesse is sawing away at the chain around his ankle when Eugene visits and says that he lied when he said he was changed by the baptism. He wants to try the baptism again to hope he can hear God, but Jesse says Eugene just has to keep trying, but Eugene wonders about if this is just who God wants him to be.

Jesse breaks into Linus’s home. He searches the place and hears a cough from the bathroom. He finds Linus there flossing. Jesse punches him and tells Linus that he’s going to forget her. Jesse starts running hot water in the tub. Linus says he’s sick and addicted and that he’s going to try harder and that his sins were cleansed and that he repented. Jesse shoves Linus’s face into the hot water, saying “forget her” over and over. He says it once with the “word of god,” and Linus really does forget the girl ever existed.

Cassidy buries the bodies under a tree. The tree looks the same as the tree outside Ratwater. Meanwhile, Sheriff Root meets with the sam two men, who claim to be from the government.

Jesse visits the same family again and asks to pray with the daughter. The mother lets him in. He sits with the girl, then speaks the words “open your eyes” with the voice of god.