Why Preacher Season 1 Is So Controversial (& Why It’s Actually Really Good)

Preacher season 1 has finally hit Netflix, and audiences who missed it on AMC when it was airing can finally see the controversial – but incredibly good – first season. Preacher is one of the best non-superhero graphic novels, written by legendary creator Garth Ennis, following a character named Jesse Custer (Dominic Cooper), a preacher in a small Texas town who embarks on a harrowing quest to find God after he’s accidentally fused with a half-demon, half-angel entity known as Genesis. It grants him the incredible power of compulsion, known as the Word of God. As he travels his lonely road, Jesse discovers more about his awe-inspiring powers and his place in the world.

Along the way, Jesse runs into various bizarre and scary characters in Preacher, as well as his closest allies, his ex-girlfriend Tulip O’Hare (Ruth Negga) and the Irish vampire Cassidy (Joseph Gilgun). The story involves angels, demons, secret government-controlling religious cults, rednecks, sex workers, a character named Arseface, and more. Like all Ennis creations, Preacher is weird, subversive, compelling, and often disturbing. Those who read the comic books back in the mid-90s likely viewed it as unable to be adapted. Luckily, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg felt differently and, more than 20 years later, successfully brought it to the small screen – but not without Preacher making some changes to the comics.

Preacher Season 1 Is A Prequel To The Comic Story

It Was A Controversial But Important Change

In an interesting twist, Preacher season 1 does not actually adapt the comic books, but instead serves as a prequel to the story of the comics. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg made the daring decision to eschew the comics for the first season, as they wanted to see Dominic Cooper’s Jesse Custer actually being a preacher and working his flock, something that wasn’t included in the comics. While it’s clear that he’s a man of the cloth who is seriously questioning his faith and place in the world, it still sets up Jesse in an interesting way that differs from the graphic novels.

Preacher Season 1’s Story Change Makes Sense For The TV Adaptation

The Slow Burn And Character Development Sets The Rest Of The Series Up For Success

While some die-hard fans of the graphic novels hated how much the show changed the comics, it makes sense to change it for the TV format – and arguably makes it a better story than what the comic books offered. Rogen and Goldberg could have made the decision to drop the characters in media res into a story already underway, but that wouldn’t have been a wise idea. Preacher is an infinitely weird, edgy series (as is all of Garth Ennis’ work), and the audience needed to buy into the premise, and especially buy into the characters. If they hadn’t cared for the characters, the entire show wouldn’t have worked.

Making the first season of Preacher a prequel to the comics gives the three main characters a lot more backstory and fleshing out by the time the show catches up to the events of the comics (even though those are also significantly changed). In the comics, they’re not as finely drawn or fully realized, with much of their character development and backstory happening in oblique references or brief flashbacks. Wisely, the show chooses to incorporate this into the actual series, thus bringing audiences along for the slow-burn ride from the start.

Preacher Gets Even Better In Season 2

Season 2 Can Hit The Ground Running

Even though Preacher season 2 is still quite different than the comics, it really picks up the pace and intensity. Season 1 was a slow-burn, setting up the world, the stakes, and the character dynamics, and with a world and characters as strange as those of Preacher, it understandably took a while to get there. After all, Preacher season 1 came out in 2016, years before edgy comic book TV adaptations like Doom Patrol and Ennis’ other famous creation The Boys normalized weird and subversive: Preacher paved the way.

Thanks to the buildup of season 1, Preacher season 2 can hit the ground running, confident that the audience is on board with the weirdness of the world. It makes for a crazy, hugely entertaining ride in which all the main characters are allowed to shine at individual times as they’re pulled ever-deeper into the strange underbelly of life, engaging with the sacred and the profane, with angelic and demonic forces, and the most off-putting and dark characters the world has to offer. The slow burn of Preacher season 1 makes season 2’s chaos even punchier and proves the series was right to make its changes from the source material.

Preacher

Preacher follows Jesse Custer, a preacher from Texas with a criminal past who is gifted extraordinary powers after experiencing a crisis of faith. Setting out to quite literally find God, Jesse enlists the help of his volatile girlfriend Tulip and newfound vampire companion Cassidy. Preacher stars Dominic Cooper as Jesse Custer, with Joseph Gilgun, Ruth Negga, and Graham McTavish.

Cast

W. Earl Brown , Derek Wilson , Tom Brooke , Ruth Negga , Lucy Griffiths , Joseph Gilgun , Ian Colletti , Dominic Cooper , Jackie Earle Haley , Anatol Yusef

Release Date

May 22, 2016

Seasons

4

Franchise(s)

Preacher

Writers

Sam Catlin , Dominic Cooper , Seth Rogen , Evan Goldberg

Directors

Evan Goldberg

Showrunner

Sam Catlin

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