Stream It Or Skip It?
As Reacher returns for Season 3, it’s with Prime Video’s announcement that it’s already been renewed for a fourth season. The Nick Santora-developed series adapts Persuader this time, the seventh novel in author (and exec producer) Lee Child’s Reacher book series. And in Season 3, while Alan Ritchson will again be joined again by Maria Sten as Jack Reacher’s former MP colleague Frances Neagley – Prime has also announced plans to expand the Reacher universe with a Neagley-focused spinoff – the immediate circumstances of Reacher’s wandering have led him to a partnership with a group of DEA agents trying to extricate one of their own from a dangerous undercover situation. Sonya Cassidy, Anthony Michael Hall, Brian Tee, Johnny Berchtold, and Olivier Richters – can’t miss him – join the cast.
Opening Shot: “The sign says you buy vinyl.” Jack Reacher (Ritchson) is standing inside a Maine college town record shop. As usual he looks incongruously huge in there. And as usual he’s more attuned to what’s going on outside.
The Gist: It only takes a few seconds. Down the street from the shop, as a kid climbs into a chauffeured luxury sedan outside the college’s art school, the vehicle is rammed by a guy in an old Toyota pickup. He sprays bullets from his submachine gun, hauls the kid into his truck, tosses a live grenade into the sedan, and is about to flee the scene when Reacher appears in the middle of the street. The chrome-plated revolver he fires at the getaway vehicle is nearly as big as he is.
If this was a kidnapping, then Reacher’s decisive action stopped it. But in the chaos he also seems to have shot a nearby cop and instantly become the new bodyguard of Richard Beck (Berchtold), the art student, who says his dad is rich and can help this armed drifter/sudden savior avoid any consequences from the incursion. Reacher goes along with this. And before long, he and Richard have arrived at a New England mansion set against the rocky Atlantic coast. Given the events of the day – Richard shows off his mangled ear from a previous kidnapping – and with one look at Paulie (Richters), the estate’s sneering Big Gulp of a gatehouse guard, Reacher knows Zachary Beck (Hall), Richard’s father and apparently his new boss, isn’t any kind of normal businessman.
It’s a feature of Reacher’s post-military existence that he drifts into new opportunities, from thwarting a town takeover in Season 1 to avenging the deaths of his old army unit in Season 2. And in Reacher season 3, the big fella is coordinating with a whole new team. For DEA agent Susan Duffy (Cassidy), Reacher’s involvement with Zachary Beck could lead to answers about Teresa Daniel (Storm Steenson), her trusted informant, who went missing inside Beck’s operation. But it was an entirely personal revelation that put Reacher onto this federal agent partnership in the first place. A few weeks before he met Agent Duffy and inserted himself loudly into Richard Beck’s life, Reacher saw a man walking on a busy city street. A man who should be dead. Because years before, Reacher already killed him once.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Reacher series developer Nick Santora is also the creator of the Netflix action-comedy FUBAR, Season 2 of which the streamer has announced will feature Carrie-Anne Moss. And you might recognize Sonya Cassidy, who plays Susan Duffy in Season 3 of Reacher, as Dud’s twin sister Liz on the late lamented AMC dramedy Lodge 49.
Our Take: With the opening of its third season, Reacher proves to again be skilled in managing to move its titular character away from his stated goal of solitary wandering and toward an evolving situation where the rules aren’t defined, there is almost no one to trust, and it’s more than likely he’ll have to whale on a bunch of people. This is the format of literally every one of the 29 titles in the Reacher book series, and it has migrated well to television. But in case you needed further assurance, with the addition of Olivier Richters, the third season gets a guy even bigger than Alan Ritchson to stare down Jack Reacher like a musclebound prophecy of the physical showdown to come.
We’re fully on board with gags like this, because it means Reacher remains happy to reside in the space between its protagonist’s meathooks. As with seasons past, it adds enough pieces around Ritchson to make things interesting – pieces Reacher will ally with, and pieces he will destroy – and sets the whole thing in motion toward resolution without much thought for reasonability, or how the latest setup is more preposterous than the last. Reacher doesn’t live in a home, but he doesn’t live in anything resembling a rules-based society, either. It’s more like a closed loop existence. And if you’re inside, he’s either helping you or killing you. Everything else gets sorted out in between, which makes for a refreshingly simple, satisfyingly trashy viewing experience.
Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode, anyway, but in the books as well as the series, Reacher’s drifting usually leads him toward a new bedroom.
Parting Shot: Reacher was locked into his quarters on the Beck estate, but like that matters – he’s gonna sneak out, thoroughly case the grounds, and then find a way to contact Agent Duffy on the outside.
Sleeper Star: Maria Sten was the breakout addition to Reacher Season 2, as proven by Prime’s plans to focus a spinoff on her character. There was no way the streamer was gonna leave Sten out of Reacher Season 3, and we’re happy they didn’t, even if Neagley doesn’t appear in the book on which it’s based. As the bell rings on Reacher’s latest round of trouble, you can expect Neagley to arrive in his corner.
Most Pilot-y Line: “He’s the single worst person I’ve ever known.” This new Big Bad must be really, really bad, because as the leader of the army’s 110th Special Investigations MP unit, or as a wanderer with his own concept of justice, Jack Reacher has known a lot of worst persons.
Our Call: Stream It! Reacher season 3 brings back the big boy – and pits him against, among others, an even bigger boy – for another round of random trouble, which Reacher will aim to solve with new allies and a little help from an old friend.
Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.
