The mysterious man above has appeared a couple of times in AMC’s first season of Preacher, including this week’s episode, “El Valero.” I’ve written about his significance to the series elsewhere, and alluded to it here, but with just two episodes remaining this season, and that man’s significance likely to resurface in next week’s episode, “Finish the Song,” it’s worth mentioning again.
My theory? That man is going to indirectly lead to the destruction of Jesse Custer’s church.
Minor Comic Book Spoilers to Follow
Garth Ennis’ Preacher comic series essentially begins with the explosion of Jesse Custer’s church. He gets in a fight in a bar the night before, and the whole town of Anville shows up to church the next morning out of curiosity. During the church service, Genesis inhabits him and the church goes boom. Everyone inside dies except for Jesse.
That’s what’s coming to AMC’s Preacher possibly as soon as next week. We know from this week’s episode that he has one more chance to preach, and given the interest surrounding Jesse after he stood his ground against Odin Quincannon, and the general interest in attending the last service, the church is going to be packed. It’s going to blow up, and as Dominic Cooper promised us at the beginning of the season, the end of season one ends around where the comic series begins.
What’s the guy above have to do with the church exploding? Each time we’ve seen him, he’s pushed button to release PPR pressure, which refers to pressure from pipes. It’s a gaseous pressure, and while I’m not positive where the gaseous pressure originates, my guess is that it’s methane pressure from Quincannon’s meat processing plant. On the series, when the pressure gets high, the man above hits a button to release that pressure.
My guess is that the man is not going to be around to release the pressure this time. Why? I’m not sure. He doesn’t look like the picture of health, so maybe he has a heart attack. The point is, the pressure is going to build in the pipes, and it’s going to result in the church explosion.
How do we know? There have been several inexplicable shots of this release valve near the church over the course of the series.
I think that when the man pushes the button to release the pressure, that valve next to Jesse’s church opens up. When that man fails to open the valve this time, however, the pressure will build inside the pipes and blow Jesse’s church to smithereens. Only he will survive, at which point he will join Tulip and Cassidy and set out what he meant to do at his last church service: Get answers from God.
That’s when the road trip kicks off, and Preacher begins in earnest.
