'Preacher' season three premiere recap: 'Angelville'

I have a feeling this season is about to get weird.

AMC’s Preacher is back for its third season and, don’t worry, because we’re here to walk you through whatever that weirdness might entail.

Season two of Preacher ended with Tulip (Ruth Negga) dead leaving Jesse (Dominic Cooper), with nowhere else to turn, forced to revisit the home in which he grew up in to try and bring her back.

The first episode of season three — “Angelville” — picks up right there. Jesse and Cassidy (Joseph Gilgun) have made it to this mysterious swamp-like land, against all of Jesse’s better judgments.

We still don’t know what, exactly, is so terrible about this place — other than the fact that it had something to do with the death of his father and there appears to be some kind of witchcraft/voodoo happening — but we begin to get a taste during the cold-open.

Gran’ma (Betty Buckley) runs this whole joint and she likes things her way. She’ll see clients who want certain spells or curses placed on themselves or others (for a fee, of course), but she also seems to be up to some other sinister stuff behind the scenes.

That’s revealed when one of her own daughter Christina (Liz McGeever) tries to hide an old photograph from her. Christina figures the only way it’ll ever be truly safe is if she eats it, right in front of Gran’ma. But does that stop Gran’ma? No, no it doesn’t. She cuts open her stomach and removes the picture from her intestines — she’s that scary.

The picture is a little boy and you can probably already guess who he grows up to be. “Don’t you take my son,” Christina yells. “Not my boy. Not Jesse.”

Back in present day, Jesse and Cass arrive at the old mansion to find it abandoned. They’re both still pretty angry at each other, so Cass decides to let it slip that he and Tulip had sex back in Texas and, for all Jesse knows, she might love him more.

Pretty savage move but, hey, Jesse is kind of a d*ck so he had it coming.

They get in a fist-fight, only to Gran’ma — who was watching the whole time — to come out of the shadows and reveal herself.

At first, she wants nothing to do with Jesse. He abandoned this family (even though this really doesn’t seem like much of a family at all) long ago, so why should he help him? Especially when there’s nothing in it for her?

So, Jesse puts something in it for her. He swears — under some kind of magical oath or something — that if Gran’ma brings Tulip back, he’ll do anything she asks.

Now she’s interested. In order to bring her back, however, she needs some things — a few of her favorite items, which Cass is tasked with getting, and Jesse has to go find someone named Jody (Jeremy Childs) to get some kind of magical potion or something. It’s really more of a McGuffin than anything, but whatever.

Turns out there’s some bad blood between Jody and Jesse, as Jody is the one who killed Jesse’s father all those years ago. That doesn’t seem to really be it though, as Jody is the one who is pissed off, not Jesse.

He still agrees to help and the two go on some heist mission that results in lots of dead bodies in an old motel. Jody tries to turn on Jesse at the last minute and make him fight for the potion, which results in more blood before Gran’ma cuts them off.

Tulip, meanwhile, is stuck in purgatory this whole time. She’s forced to watch a younger version of herself wait for her dad — a criminal trying to reform — to come home with a candy bar, only to see him gunned down by police.

Death is quickly coming for her, as Gran’ma begins the process of bringing her back. The set around Tulip begins to crumble as her time is running out but, due to some quick thinking, she figures out how to respond to either Jesse’s love chants or Cass playing music in the background. It’s left purposefully ambiguous as to which one she actually responded to, so that they can further play out this love triangle.

Before coming back, Tulip has an odd encounter with a certain someone — God. God, who we now know is the latex dog from earlier in season two. God tells Tulip that she’s chosen for great things and that he wants her to get something, but she’s brought back by Gran’ma before finding out what that something is.

Early prediction is that it’ll be something to either stop or kill Jesse, because I’m guessing he goes off the rails crazy throughout this season.

We then end with Jesse and Gran’ma sitting around a table. Jesse threatens to kill Gran’ma to get out of the debt he’s gotten himself into, but Gran’ma said she already thought of that. Seemingly, she’s placed some kind of spell that would prevent that from happening.

Looks like Jesse is in this for the long haul, and it probably isn’t going to be pretty. Still, this is a good start for Preacher. I’m still worried that this season is 13 episodes rather than 10 — Preacher season two really felt stretched out and dragged a lot of the time — but I like the set-up so far and I’m curious to know more about Angelville.

Tune in to AMC tonight to check out the next episode of Preacher!