History Characters / Preacher2016MainCharacters

* HealingFactor: Falling from a plane and splattering on the ground leaves him only temporarily immobilized until he gets an unwitting cow to approach him and drink its blood to heal.

A small town preacher with a criminal past and a newly discovered superpower to command others to do as he says. When Jesse learns God is missing, he makes it his personal mission to find Him. He hits the road with his badass girlfriend Tulip and best friend Cassidy on a crazy search to either help God if He’s in trouble, or to kick His ass.

* DarkAndTroubledPast: Soaked in mystery and only hinted at, for the most part, we are still shown that Jesse watched his father get shot and killed as a child.

* GoodIsNotSoft: He's a nice guy who's willing to do the right thing, but cross him and it will not end well.

** Jesse in fact was not totally "soulless"; he siphoned off only 1% of his soul, and that is what he gave to The Saint. That minute amount was enough to disable use of The Word, but apparently not sufficient to seriously impair him in any other way.

* KnightTemplar: Slowly heads down the road and as of "Sundowner", he is firmly there, refusing to believe he could possibly be wrong about anything because of the Word of God he possesses. He does eventually realize the error of his ways but it takes him sending Eugene to hell to do so. However, as of Season 2, he still doesn't seem to have learned his lesson, as he continues to insist that Genesis was ''meant'' for him and he'll continue to use it despite the danger it causes.

* ReformedCriminal: Details are scarce but Jesse did jobs with the killer, Tulip and in the first episode, Donnie's son asks him to violently stop his father's abuse of his mother, saying that people talk of how Jesse used to be on the darker side of the law. Hoping to make up for his wrongdoings, Jesse now preaches the word of God.

* SmokingIsCool: Jesse is both a badass fighter and seems to smoke in places that are just odd, such as church when he's praying to God. [[note]]Admittedly, he's doing this right after his prayer is seemingly ignored, so it's out of spite at this moment.[[/note]]
* SmugSuper: Jesse is adamant that God meant for him to receive Genesis and won't even listen to actual angels telling him this isn't so. Even when Eugene says it was unfair that he forced a woman to forgive him he eventually gets angry enough with the accusations to use his voice to tell Eugene to go to Hell.

* ATragedyOfImpulsiveness: Jesse can only look on in terror after he tells Eugene to go to Hell in a fit of anger with horrifying results.

** Likewise when he hangs Viktor up in the torture room and ponders how he'll kill him.

* WifeBasherBasher: Although he's unwilling to attack Betsy's husband Donnie at first, wanting Betsy to go to the police and still reluctant to hit Donnie back when Betsy makes it clear she doesn't want Jesse involved, Jesse eventually breaks the husband's arm when his threat to assault his own son sets Jesse off beyond what he's willing to sit by.

A volatile, hell-raising force of nature, Tulip O’Hare is Jesse Custer’s ex-girlfriend and one true love. She’s also a gifted criminal who’s not afraid to steal, cheat or kill to get what she wants.

* ActionGirl: Introduced fighting a man while also driving a car and after killing him, takes out a helicopter with a homemade bazooka.

* ArchEnemy: She and Featherstone become really personal enemies, especially after Featherstone kills her and Tulip later suckerpunches her in return and almost gives her to the Angel of Death.

* DoubleEntendre: {{Troll}}s Jesse by showing up at his church and forcing him to baptize her lest he draw attention to the fact they know each other, she thanks him for "getting [her] wet" afterwards.
* DidYouJustFlipOffCthulhu: Has a giant habit of this when it comes to celestial entities, like God; and even going so far to call as the Angel of Death Satan's bitch and God knows what she would do to Tulip if she keeps up being snarky, no pun intended. She even dares to taunt [[TheDreaded The Saint of Killers]] himself, but this is to help enact her escape from the Hellbound bus.

* HotForPreacher: Her and Jesse may be exes but Tulip's monologue to the two children she met in her opening scene about always pursuing the one you love, her seductive tone with Jesse and the way she sat on his lap and whispered into his ear in the second episode leave little doubt she's attracted to him.

* JerkassHasAPoint: Tulip dismisses [[TheAtoner Jesse's]] attempts to be a good guy by telling him that "there aren't any [[TheHero good guys]]. There are just guys." This is definitely not what Jesse wants or needs to hear, but given [[BlackAndGrayMorality what we've seen]] [[CrapsackWorld of the series' world so far]], it's hard to deny that she's got a point. Even the people who try the hardest to be good, like Jesse and Emily, have definite dark sides.

* MsFanservice: Tulip tends to wear outfits that show off her shapely midriff and her dialogue with Jesse oozes with sexual tone and entendres.

* RaceLift: Tulip is a white blonde in the comic, but biracial[[note]]Flashbacks in Season 3 show that her mother was white and her father was African-American.[[/note]] in the TV show.

* AdaptationalBadass: Cassidy, from his introduction, seems to be a far more capable and strategic fighter than he is in the comics. The source material depicts him as being UnskilledButStrong, relying wholly upon his great strength and regenerative powers to outlast and ultimately beat opponents. But here, in his fight against the vampire hunters on the plane in the pilot episode, he shows considerable combat skills and ingenuity, with a healthy portion of CombatPragmatism his comic counterpart would not be capable of. This is apparently to make up up for his SuperStrength being considerably lesser in the TV series than in the original comic.

* BewareTheSillyOnes: Cassidy is generally a semi-benevolent slacker, too busy getting drunk, stoned or laid to be a credible threat to anyone... right up until he needs to feed or someone pisses him off. Exemplified in one of his earliest scenes, in which he spends the first half snorting coke and telling anecdotes about ass-hamsters - and the second half gleefully wiping the floor with the vampire hunters he was joking with a few seconds ago.

** He also seems to believe that [[{{Squick}} baby foreskin]] is being put into skin cream ([[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-cut-above-the-rest-wrin/ which is actually true]]) and other products, and is paranoid around tap water.

* DeathlessAndDebauched: As with the original comic, Cassidy is a hundred-year-old vampire with a taste for booze, drugs, and grotesque sexual escapades. In his first scene alone, he's encountered doing a line of cocaine and regaling a gang of human revellers with the fact that they'll have to learn how to say "[[BestialityIsDepraved ass-hamster]]" in Spanish before they get to Tijuana, while in Season 4, he's such an UndiscriminatingAddict that he'll happily resort to huffing ''flame retardant'' in lean times.

* INeedAFreakingDrink: After literally crashing into Annville, Cassidy comes to the bar Jesse's in and requests his whiskey of choice, before declaring he'll drink rat water if it's all they've got.

* OddFriendship: Jesse is a preacher, Cassidy is a vampire. Despite this, the two get along really well and Jesse says that he enjoys having him around. This instantly guarantees fierce loyalty on Cassidy's part.

* AbsurdlySharpBlade: His Civil War saber sword, which can even cut through steel easily.

* AdaptationalIntelligence: In the series he figures out himself that the death of his family was ultimately all part of God's plan, and confronts Satan about it. In the comics Jesse learned about this and told the Saint.
* AdaptationalSuperpowerChange: He's immune to the Word, and can track Jesse whenever he uses it; neither are abilities he or anyone else had in the comics. However, he becomes susceptible to the Word once he receives a small percentage of Jesse's soul.

** ''Fear of the Lord'' implies that the Saint may be [[spoiler: the fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse, Death.]] This may be an hallucination, however. The Saint's name is never explained.

* CurbstompBattle: The inevitable result of any fight involving [[NighInvulnerable The Saint of Killers]]. Season 2's "On Your Knees" sees The Saint beat the shit out of not only [[BadassNormal certified tough guys]] Jesse and Tulip, but also the vampiric Cassidy and Denis... nearly all at once.
* TheCynic: He comes from a hard life and when asked by an optimistic traveler if he believes America to be a paradise, he immediately shoots the notion down.

* TheDogBitesBack: And '''how'''. After being horrifically flogged by Satan and forced to act as his errand boy, the first thing The Saint does after regaining his Walker Colts is blow The Devil's brains out.

** The Cowboy is certainly not a good or nice man, but seeing the tragic fate of a family in a dangerous western town, the mother gang-raped while her son is forced to watch and her husband is killed, motivates him to try and prevent another family from falling victim to the same fate. It doesn't end well...
** When he's working for Satan to bring Eugene and Tulip to Hell, he's appalled to learn that Satan is trying to take advantage of God's absence by bringing in and keeping people who aren't supposed to be dead.

* NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished: As he leaves the town the Saint has an attack of conscience, remembering the sad fate of the family he witnessed earlier and goes back to warn the family of travelers who helped him earlier. Only when he gets there he finds they are selling Native American scalps for coin, then he is beaten and attacked by the people who he thought would have hurt the family, and gets his horse killed by a preacher who claims to remember him from the Battle of Gettysburg. This means he doesn't get back in time to give his daughter medicine and finds both her and his wife dead with crows eating what remains.

* PetTheDog: [[spoiler:After killing Satan upon learning that not only did he have a hand in his family's death, but he was taking advantage of God's absence by keeping people in Hell who aren't supposed to be dead, he allows Eugene to leave with him.]]

* TheQuietOne: He rarely speaks, even before his embittered rampage. He doesn't say anything to his wife when he leaves to get medicine for his daughter. While dining with a group of travelers, he only gives one sentence: "It ain't", when asked if he believes America to be paradise. When he visits the doctor, he wordlessly hands over the scrap of paper with the requested medicine.

* SupernaturalFearInducer: He is hinted to cause a supernatural sense of dread by some form of aura.
* WouldHitAGirl: As well as shoot and kill one, as he's done many, many times.
** In Season 3 he slams a female foster agency worker through a wall. He later rips out the eyes of Sydney, The Angel of Death, when she [[BullyingADragon mocks his family's fate]].

* AdaptationalVillainy: In the comics, Arseface didn't shoot a girl (and then himself) because she rejected him. He and a friend made a suicide pact to emulate their idol Kurt Cobain. Subverted, as this is just what everybody believed, in reality he tried to talk her down from suicide (which failed after he revealed his feeling for her) and then shot himself because he both blamed himself for her death and was afraid of being punished for it.

* BrokenPedestal: After blindly following and looking up to "Preacher Custer" for so long as a bastion of propriety, Eugene is shocked and appalled at his arrogant and borderline megalomaniacal attitude near the end of Season 1. And Jesse (inadvertently) sending him to Hell understandably makes it worse.
* BungledSuicide: His disfigurement was brought about by attempting to kill himself with a shotgun to the face.
* TheDogBitesBack: Eugene [[spoiler: shoots an apologetic Jesse in the back in Season 4]].
* DraggedOffToHell: At the conclusion of "Sundowner", his requests for Jesse to undo the Word of God forcing a woman to forgive Eugene causes Jesse to become angry and accidentally use the Word on Eugene, sending him to hell.

* IfICantHaveYou: Everyone believed he shot the local prom queen because she rejected him. In reality, he actually talked her down from suicide, only for her to try to kill herself because he was attracted to her.
* IJustWantToBeNormal: Socially anyway. He accepts his disfigurement as punishment for his suicide attempt but wants to go to church and interact with the community. His father won't let him.
* ImaginaryFriend: Jesse's guilt over sending Eugene to hell has manifested into the form of a hallucination of him.
* IWasQuiteALooker: The flashback at the beginning of "Damsels" shows that Eugene was pretty handsome before he shot himself.
* MarkOfShame: He's gotten a tattoo of Tracy's name on his back in Hell that could fall under this.

* NiceGuy: Eugene has a good heart; he's supportive of Jesse, he's respectful of his own father's wishes for him to stay out of church and is a devout Christian. He also has a great deal of personal integrity, refusing to accept what he wants if it comes at the cost of someone else's safety or free will.

* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: Of a sort. After being baptized he goes to see Jesse, and tells him that he doesn't feel any different than before, wondering if his place in God's plan is where he already is. This causes Jesse to re-embrace his rage, and he goes to the house of a school bus driver who had been having sexual thoughts about a young girl. He proceeds to break into his house, fill his bathtub with boiling water and baptise him in it, while telling him to "forget her." On the other hand, this causes Jesse to realise his power, and he later attempts to use it to make a comatose girl with severe brain damage "see."

* VoiceOfTheLegion: The Word of God distorts Jesse's voice.

* DrivenToSuicide: His disfigurement was brought about by attempting to kill himself with a shotgun to the face.

* BareYourMidriff: Tulip wears a cut-off shirt that exposes her stomach. As a law-breaking and immodest young woman, this suits her personality.

* MsFanservice: Tulip tends to wear outfits that show off her shapely [[BareYourMidriff midriff]] and her dialogue with Jesse oozes with sexual tone and entendres.

* NiceHat: Wears a comically oversized Vietnamese peasant hat when he has to go out in daylight.

%%* BadassBeard

* DiesDifferentlyInTheAdaptation: In the comics, [[spoiler: Cassidy becomes human after the end and leaves for parts unknown. In the series, he decides to kill himself after his companions have passed on forty years later.]]

* ImprobableAimingSkills: During the siege on the church, Jesse provides examples of his aiming skills by disarming many of Quinncannon's men, even shooting one of the weapons in a way so that it becomes lodged in its wielder's shoulder.

* BiTheWay: This man has a history with women for most of his long life. Come Season 3, [[spoiler:where he hooks up with Eccarius, a ''male'' vampire.]]

* JerkassHasAPoint: Tulip dismisses [[TheAtoner Jesse's]] attempts to be a good guy by telling him that "there aren't any [[TheHero good guys]]. There are just guys." This is definitely not what Jesse wants or needs to hear, but given [[GrayAndBlackMorality what we've seen]] [[CrapsackWorld of the series' world so far]], it's hard to deny that she's got a point. Even the people who try the hardest to be good, like Jesse and Emily, have definite dark sides.