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Over the four seasons of Preacher, we are given a pretty good idea of how Genesis works and what it can and cannot do:

  • Genesis is not a genie and cannot just bend the reality according to its host's wishes. It only affects intelligent beings' minds to make them obey to verbal commands of the host. Affected persons execute the command immediately and utterly.

    This comes with pretty logical restrictions related to verbal commands:

    • The person must be able to hear the command. Being deaf or using earplugs makes one immune to Genesis powers.

      E.g. the Grail successfully uses military grade ear protection when confronting Jesse Custer, or brings in a deaf person to be able to communicate with him without the use of spoken words.

    • The person must be able to understand the language in which the command is spoken.

      E.g. when Jesse commands the two cameleers to reconcile, one obeys and the other does not because he does not speak English.

    • The person must be able to execute the command.

      E.g. when Jesse orders the badly hurt pilot to not die, he dies anyway, because it's beyond him to stay alive at this point.

With that being the case, how could Jesse send Eugene to hell by ordering him to "Go to hell"? Was it clearly not within the boy's power to execute that command?

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  • Indeed, that looks like the only exception to the rule in the series... But these limitations also came after season 1, mostly for comic effect, so maybe the rules are not so rigid if needed for the plot.
    – Luciano
    Sep 9, 2019 at 9:01

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According to the Fandom page

The Word of God also grants Jesse authority over the souls of others and where they reside, as he commanded Eugene to "go to hell" and a moment later Eugene vanished, awakening in hell.

So perhaps Eugene's soul could go straight to hell under Genesis orders. It seems there's no problem coming back to the living world in tangible/physical form as we see later on with the Saint of Killers and others,

like Eugene and Hitler.

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  • Okay, but if Jesse has authority over where a soul should reside, then why couldn't he make the pilot's soul stay?
    – GSerg
    Sep 9, 2019 at 15:21
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    In that case the body died, so he couldn't do much. According to your rule 3, the pilot wasn't able to execute the command. The soul alone couldn't keep the body alive. If there's no body, there's no place for the soul to reside (it looks like).
    – Luciano
    Sep 10, 2019 at 8:20

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