Imagine if AMC’s very first trailer for The Walking Dead tried to hide that it was a show about the survivors of a zombie apocalypse. That’s pretty hard to picture, isn’t it? And yet AMC’s newly released Preacher trailer has essentially hidden the show’s supernatural and fantasy premise. It’s definitely an intense preview of things to come, but it’s perhaps not the best example of what to expect.

Without those trappings, what’s left is Jesse Custer (Dominic Cooper), a hard man who is not to be crossed. Even as a small town preacher in Texas, Jesse Custer still has a reputation for bad assery. In the trailer, a young member of Jesse’s congregation asks his preacher to “hurt” his abusive father, and while Jesse explains the repercussions of that violence in great detail, he still acts on the boy’s request by the end of the two minute preview.

The first preview trailer also offers a brief glimpse of Jesse’s ex-girlfriend (who is also an assassin), Tulip (Ruth Negga), and Cassidy (Joseph Gilgun), an Irish vampire destined to be Jesse’s best friend. But since AMC didn’t bother to explain what the series is about, we will.

Preacher is based on the classic Vertigo comic book series by writer Garth Ennis and artist Steve Dillon that followed Jesse Custer’s search for God. And that’s not a religious euphemism. God has literally abandoned Heaven, and Jesse has taken it upon himself to find the almighty alongside Cassidy and Tulip. Jesse also possesses the word of God, a power which allows him to command almost any being in creation. That power comes from Jesse’s merger with the offspring of a demon and an angel, and that power will ultimately put him and his friends in all manner of danger.

AMC will debut the first season of Preacher in mid-2016.

Preacher fans, what did you think of the first trailer? Share your thoughts below!

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Image Credit: AMC/Sony Pictures Television