“The Gospel According to Collier” is episode eleven of season three of The 4400.
In the previous episode, “The Starzl Mutation”, Jordan Collier appeared at Shawn’s wedding, the first time he’s been seen since the season two finale, “Mommy’s Bosses”, showed he wasn’t still dead. Collier is now gone and Shawn is trying to find him, and confirming that Tom saw him too. Despite looking, they can’t find Collier and Diana asks if they are sure he was there. Tom agrees it did look like Collier, but he only saw him briefly. NTAC will be called and Richard comes out to find out what’s going on. It’s explained and Shawn wants to go with Tom and Diana. Richard reminds him there’s a wedding. Shawn wants him to do damage control and to tell Isabelle that the wedding is postponed.
Tom has gone to see Kyle, who hasn’t wanted to speak to him, and in fact hasn’t been seen this season. Tom tells him it couldn’t wait. Jordan Collier is alive. He will find him and get Kyle out.
Shawn returns to see Isabelle. He needs to find Collier. She wants to know what that means to them. He says the wedding is happening; just not today. Not until he figures out what’s going on with Jordan. Isabelle tells Shawn to find him.
Diana returns home to be met by April. Who didn’t call, because Diana might have refused to see her. April says she’s moving to Seattle. No, she isn’t in trouble, she’s in love. This guy is a keeper. He’s parking the car. Maia is happy to see them. April’s boyfriend, Ben, is a photographer. They’ve just returned from India and he’s doing a show at the Museum of Contemporary Art. He and Diana chat, because he has some photos of an area she visited; as they leave, Diana tells April Ben is a keeper.
Shawn, Diana and Tom arrive at another house belonging to Collier. This one has had someone living in it and there are flyers from a soup kitchen and a journal filled with descriptions of the last city. Back at NTAC, Marco says that, though the writing looks different from Collier’s, the software says it’s a probable match. If Collier did write it, he saw some interesting stuff. Talk about a walled city and the last few pages are filled with the same phrase: ‘The war for the future will be fought in the past.’
Diana is at home when Maia comes out. She couldn’t sleep. Maia says their family is going to get bigger now. Because Diana is going to get married. To the man they just met. Ben. Maia thinks this is the best thing; Diana clearly thinks poaching her sister’s boyfriend isn’t. Then Tom rings.
She, Tom and Shawn are at a soup kitchen. They do recognise Collier and he often speaks to Will. Will says Collier’s the Preacher, and takes them to see a painting of Collier. Collier claims to see the future, and the people there believe him.
Isabelle enters her room and finds Collier there. He says she lied to him. Then she wakes. She heads to see Richard and talks about what little she remembers from when she was a baby. And that before Collier died, he came to her, wanting to know if it was safe to go ahead with the party he was planning. Collier wanted power and acclaim and to live on after he died. So, that’s what Isabelle showed him. And he had the party and got shot. She made that happen. Now he’s back. Richard reassures Isabelle that Collier is just a man. Isabelle says he was. She doesn’t know what he is now.
Marco has run the graffiti mural against the national database of such. Collier has been all over the country.
Diana is talking to Maia; she hasn’t seen Ben and isn’t going to. Ben promptly arrives with the photos he promised. Maia leaves them alone. Diana tells Ben what Maia said and says they can’t see each other.
Collier has gone to see Kyle in prison, to ask Kyle if Kyle killed him. Kyle starts shouting it’s Jordan Collier. Collier turns and asks if that’s who he is. Collier is brought to NTAC. He was using a different name, because it was on a library card in his pocket. He thought he looked like Collier. According to Collier, he wandered for hundreds, thousands of years. The world kept getting worse. The skies filled with smoke; the machines stopped working. The streets and rivers were filled with the dead. He’s told those events haven’t happened yet.
Collier seems to have seen a very bad future. He also doesn’t remember who he is. Tom wants him to, because Kyle is only guilty of attempted murder now, but that’s still a serious charge.