In the TV series adaptation of American Gods , Mr. Wednesday and Shadow Moon criss - cross all over America to recruit old - schooling celestial beings for a come struggle with divinity of the modern daylight . This workweek ’s episode had them meeting with Vulcan and realise how the god of the forge has reinvent himself for advanced times , along with a sequence that envisage Jesus Christ as a Mexican immigrant .
“ A Murder of Gods ” lives up to its name in its very first sequence . sequence six opens south of the border , focusing on a group of Mexicans getting ready to illegally enter the United States . They beg to God for a safe transition but , despite a scout ’s monition about the perilously unassailable river currents , one man finds himself overwhelmed and drowning . It looks like all is lost for the valet de chambre until a manus reaches into the water system and draw him up . The rescued world gives thanks and ask his Jesus what his name is , to which the prospicient - hairy savior answer , “ You already know my name . ” Yep , that hand belongs toJesus , specifically a Mexican Jesus who walks on water to get hold of the shore .
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Their poignant encounter gets cut off short when motortruck loudly pull up a few foot away . After a few tense beats of muteness , guns begin firing and the migrants scramble . Mexican Jesus holds up a hand to seek to intercept the bloodshed but gets a bullet shot through his ribbon . He then gets shot through the heart , blood seeping through his ashen shirt in a pattern that resembles vulgar religious images . Jesus is idle , killed by rifles engraved with the words “ Thy Kingdom Come ” .
The bullets fired on Jesus and the Mexican immigrant carry the mark name of Vulcan on them and much of this instalment focuses on the fiefdom that the Greco - Roman immortal has built for himself in America . But , before that happen , we catch up with Shadow and Wednesday after they escape the horrors of the police station destroyed by the new god last installment . Shadow ’s hurt , injure by a secret Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree growing out of a man ’s mouth , and exasperated all to hell . He yell at Wednesday for an explanation and the older con Isle of Man indirectly answers by speak about the nature of gods and mankind ’s momentaneous awareness of them . Shadow ’s uncertainty and doubt about everything that ’s happening remain but he state Wednesday that he knows that the impossible is potential because he ’s run into and talked to his dead wife .
When the two go back to the Starlite Motel to get their thing , Wednesday order Shadow to let go of thinking of the freshly arisen Laura . Then he peels out in a rush so a running Laura — still at the motel after her free-for-all with Mad Sweeney — can’t catch up with them . Laura and Sweeney meet each other again and she goad him to steal a railcar so they can surveil Shadow and Wednesday . As they chaff , Sweeney makes credit of someone he knows who can do a proper Resurrection of Christ on Laura , making her more than a decomposing cadaver . The railcar that Sweeney ’s trying to steal is a yellow hack and , upon see the attempted thievery , the man who possess it draw in a gun on the leprechaun . This military man holding the gun is Salim , last watch bump boots with a djinny two episode ago .
Salim , Sweeney , and Laura become unbelievable road stumble chum guide to Kentucky , where Sweeney says they ’ll find a bunch of gods , superman , and special tribe . Each person in the cab is taste to cut through down something or someone they require to complete them . Salim ’s looking for the jinni who concede him this freer new life , Laura ’s looking for Shadow , and Sweeney want Laura to get what she wants so he can get his magic lucky coin back .
After a abbreviated meditation on anal gender by Mad Sweeney , Laura has Salim take a detour so she can see her kinsfolk but , as seen subsequently in the installment as Shadow conceive of her , she can only watch from outside a window . She ca n’t go back to her sure-enough lifespan ; her only mode frontwards is through Shadow and these foreign new people she ’s gather , none of whom she can really trust as yet .
Meanwhile , a cheery montage in a shooter manufactory remainder in an accident that post a man fall into a ad valorem tax of liquified alloy . Then we see Shadow and Wednesday get to their destination , a belittled burg called Vulcan , Virginia , where seemingly everyone is carrying a gun . They come upon a funeral march for the dead manufacturing plant foreman . The march is led by Vulcan and end with a gun salute that wrench into a pelting of bullets . Wednesday and Vulcan catch up and the confidence game man says he necessitate Vulcan by his side for the conflict that ’s coming . Vulcan ’s aliveness high off the hog and the smithy god — who has a hang tree outside his mansion , which freak Shadow out — invites Shadow and Wednesday into his hearth . Vulcan does n’t deign to give the black man a drink and then explains that he ’s franchise his organized religion so that the power of fire has become firepower . Turnarounds and tension aside , Vulcan agree to devise a blade for Wednesday to tire out at the big god meet - up that going down in Wisconsin .
Shadow understandably does n’t care Vulcan and his talk with Wednesday tease the idea that , because of pointed input about how hanging men allow a sure kind of knowledge and power , Vulcan may be communicating with the new god . When the blade - spirt ’s all done , Wednesday face Vulcan about this . Vulcan says that he ’s ratted out Shadow and Wednesday because the novel god are an inevitability that he owes his re - innovation to . As the two god jaw at each other , the lecture heart on how the struggle for god dominance requires a martyr . Vulcan state it ’s going to be Wednesday but Wednesday balk at that dramatically , slit through the smithy god ’s neck opening and kicking the headless cadaver into a vat of liquefied metal .
The episode ends with Salim praying and then verbalize with Laura . When he says Allahu akbar / God is great , she retorts with “ life is bully . ” He check and smiling , while excited Sweeney looks on disparagingly in the desktop . Sweeney ’s life is going down the tubes , while Laura and Salim are ascending , if not heavenward , then somewhere serious for them .
“ A Murder of Gods ” stands as my least favorite episode of American Gods so far . It come up across as more soft and disjointed than common , particularly in its innovation of Vulcan . I did n’t take care the creepy allegoric commentary correspond by the smithy god ’s dictatorial view and cult - like small townsfolk . I just hate that we met and saw the the last of Vulcan in the span of one instalment because his death means that we wo n’t get to see the creators grapple more with the ideas Vulcan represents . They made a shiny bit of polemic , held it up for folks to engage with and melt it into molten slurry that may or may not be repurposed later down the cable .
Vulcan ’s discourse is the opposite word of Salim ’s unexpected role on the show , which be much of what I ’ve enjoyed about American Gods . Salim was a done - in - one type in the account book ; he was never seen after his initial skirmish with the jinnee . But he ’s still around on the show , a pick symbolizing how our liaison with the divine change us . He needs to know more about the ability that gave him new lifetime , a stark contrast from how Laura ’s dealing with her own un - mortality . Despite her own “ WTF are you mass ? ” exchange with Sweeney , she really does n’t require to know more about the other plane of beingness he and the graven image hail from . She ’s fixated on Shadow and a possible resurrection in a decidedly more insalubrious room and that fixation hinges on guilt and rue , all too often ingredients in our relationships with faith and gamy powers .
It ’s more clear in this installment that Wednesday is manipulating Shadow to nameless ends . The “ what came first ? ” talk he has with Shadow , along the sequence where he hustles them away from a possible brush with Laura , seem to hint that he involve Shadow as a piece in a grand architectural plan . Anything that could undersell that — like Laura ’s return — is evidently a danger to Wednesday ’s schemes . Wednesday needs Shadow ’s opinion to eat his own existence and the possible action of Shadow believing in someone or something else is too bang-up for Wednesday to risk . If the show follows the Scripture , heavy foreshadowing is being laid down here but there ’s still the opportunity that the show does something unlike .
Assorted Musings
• Vulcan had my preferent uncomfortable lineage of the sequence , hitting on the shuddery fringe white populism feeling that feels all too conversant in the current cultural moment :
I was a narration people forgot to remember to say . They gave me a gun . They put power back in my hand and , I got ta tell ya , it feel unspoilt .
• I enjoy how candid American Gods can be sometimes but , homo , everything about the town of Vulcan , Virginia made me queasy . The brokenheartedness armband , doubling as a reference to a Nazi - style aesthetic , especially made me wince .
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