REACHER – Season Three

In a world where television has filled itself with “complex” (i.e. cynical) and “morally ambiguous” (i.e. psychopathic) anti-heroes, it’s nice to see an action star fully embrace the good-guy role. That’s what Jack Reacher (Alan Ritchson) gives us in Prime Video’s popular action series, Reacher.

We first met Jack Reacher decades before this show even existed. The former military special investigator and physically gifted fighter has starred in a series of thriller novels written by Lee Child since 1997 and by his brother, Andrew Child, since 2020. Our live-action introduction to this imposing 6’5″ giant was, somewhat ironically, played by Tom Cruise (who stands at 5’7″) in the film Reacher (2012) and its poorly received sequel Reacher: Never Go Back (2016).

After listening to reader feedback that Reacher’s height and muscular frame played a big part in who the character was, Child decided to produce a reboot in an episodic streaming format with an actor closer to his creation’s description. They found Alan Ritchson and, since 2022, have now released three seasons, each following a different story from the Reacher novels.

The first season (based on the first book Killing Floor) took a few episodes to get going, but by the time we arrived at its climactic and exciting fight scenes, the audience was pretty much on board. Then, the complex mystery within Season 2 (based on the 2007 book Bad Luck and Trouble) kept viewers on edge from the beginning, and the mysteries only deepened as the season went on. By the end of that previous season, audiences were thrilled at the prospect of what Season 3 would bring. Now that it’s here, adapting 2003’s story Persuader, I’m more than happy to report it doesn’t disappoint.

Here, Reacher, who’s retired from the military and now roams the country taking odd jobs, finds himself working security for the owner of a shady rug importer, Beck (Anthony Michael Hall), after he saves Beck’s son Richard (Johnny Berchtold) from an attempted kidnapping. While working for Beck, Reacher also works as an undercover informant for a DEA agent, Susan Duffy (Sonya Cassidy), and her team as they attempt to find a female DEA informant who went missing while working for Beck and providing information on Beck’s even shadier boss Julius McCabe, who Reacher knows as Xavier Quinn (Brian Tee). A former corrupt military intelligence officer who Reacher previously believed to be dead. Namely, because Reacher shot him. The past animosity between Reacher and Quinn is at the heart of the mystery for most of the season, and Reacher’s desire to exact revenge on Quinn is his primary motivation as a character.

While this might seem like a typical revenge thriller, the layer of complexity that the missing DEA informant adds makes the series stand apart. Cassidy’s Duffy is equally determined to bring her informant home, as she feels responsible for putting her in the situation in the first place, as Reacher is to find and kill Quinn. The collision of these two deeply personal and emotional motivations makes for compelling television viewing.

At points in the series, both Reacher and Duffy are forced to reconcile the feasibility of their goals. Given Beck and Quinn’s take-no-prisoners style of doing business, Duffy is, more than once, forced to confront the possibility that her informant is dead, a concept she had, before, stubbornly refused to contemplate.

Likewise, Reacher is confronted with the idea that taking Quinn out might spell death for the girl he and his team are attempting to save. While he insists that he wants to kill Quinn no matter what, the audience can see he does struggle with the moral quandary. Add to this a complex relationship between Beck and his college-aged son, whom he keeps at arm’s length in a desperate attempt to keep the boy safe, and it all makes for much more complex and interesting viewing than your average out-for-revenge action plot. For a plot with so many moving parts, the writers make everything feel seamless.

The new characters are well-written and engaging. Particular stand-outs are Beck (Anthony Michael Hall), who, in a more “modern” iteration of this same plot, would be interesting enough to have been billed as the main anti-hero, and the hulking Paulie (Olivier Richters), Beck’s security guard, who dwarfs everyone around him and is strong in a fight, but stupid enough to be knocked out by his own hand.

Sonya Cassidy is serviceable as Susan Duffy, who is at her best when worrying about her informant and consumed with guilt for putting the young girl in that position. When she is forced into a semi-romantic relationship with Reacher, however, everything about the encounter is less than believable. This is partly because, when it comes to acting, Ritchson is at his best when he is either cleverly divulging information or fighting. Perhaps fittingly for his character, the actor falters when the writers force him to display more nuanced emotions.

However, even if Ritchson was at ease with the romantic scenes, one can’t help but feel the relationship between Duffy and Reacher feels forced because it is. It seems as though Game of Thrones (2011-19) has thrust us (pun intended) into a world where a streaming show can’t go one season without its attractive lead actors taking their clothes off and hopping into bed with one another.

The forced romance seems particularly out of place in this series, in my opinion, because the audience is not watching this series for personal relationships and emotional ties. Part of the reason Ritchson, despite being wooden at times, is engaging in this role is because it’s not about the acting. We watch Reacher to see a good mystery plot play out, enjoy some clever writing, and thrill over the kick-ass action scenes. And, forced romantic side-plots aside, Reacher’s third season delivers.

The main villain, Quinn, remains a mysterious background character for much of the series, but that works to the show’s benefit. It helps that once he’s revealed, he’s easily one of the more sadistic bad guys I’ve ever seen. And, coming after Game of Thrones, that’s saying something! By the end of this season, we’re rooting for his demise every bit as much as Reacher is.

It’s equally fun when we see Season 2’s standout character, Frances Neagly (Maria Sten), in several adrenaline-filled scenes. It’s always nice to see a smart, competent female character with no hint of a forced love interest or romantic story arc.

Though the action is fun and the writing clever, there’s one thing that makes Reacher stand head and shoulders above every spy, action, and thriller series out there at the moment. Reacher gives us a genuine good guy. No matter how complex or compromised the recurring characters might be, Jack Reacher will always be on the right — that is, the moral— side of any issue. You know he’ll always fight bullies and bring down drug cartels. Not for profit, but simply because it’s the right thing to do. In a world of anti-heroes, Jack Reacher stands as a very tall and strong lone sentinel in the fight for good guys everywhere. As cheesy as that might sound, it’s exactly what we need right now.

USA | 2025 | 8 EPISODES | 16:9 HD | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

writers: Scott Sullivan, Penny Cox, Cait Duffy, Lillian Wang, Michael J. Gutierrez & Scott Sullivan (based on the novel ‘Persuader’ by Lee Child).
directors: Sam Hill & Gary Fleder.
starring: Alan Ritchson, Sonya Cassidy, Johnny Berchtold, Roberto Montesinos, Olivier Richters, Brian Tee & Anthony Michael Hall.