Who’s the white, hulking prick
That’s a sex killing machine unlike most private dicks?
Reacher
You damn right
With apologies to Isaac Hayes.
In 2022, after only its second week of release, Reacher became the first Amazon Prime video series to top Nielsen’s streaming video on demand (SVOD) rankings. This led to the show being renewed for a second season that same week. The third season was renewed before the second premiered, and a fourth go-round has already been greenlit ahead of No. 3.
Never underestimate the appeal of a large dude beating the hell out of people and taking his shirt off more often than Matthew McConaughey.
Season 3 finds our itinerant murder machine once again doing what he does best: getting unwillingly drawn into troubling circumstances and committing lots of extrajudicial killings. This time, he witnesses the (attempted) kidnapping of the son of the Zachary Beck (Anthony Michael Hall), the richest guy in town. Reacher naturally intervenes, which brings him to Beck’s attention. Problem is, Beck has also drawn the interest of the DEA, who suspect Beck of using his rug importing business as a front for drug smuggling.
The first two episodes go lighter than usual on the violence (for Reacher, rest assured there are still plenty of cracked skulls), but heavier on the bared torsos. Alan Ritchson looks like he’s lost a little of the bulk he brought to S2, so maybe he’s celebrating by giving us more skin, including one hilarious standalone scene involving a dangerously loose towel, an elderly couple, and a laundromat.
The writers this season (Scott Sullivan, Penny Cox, and Cait Duffy, among others) are also doing a better job keeping things moving than novelist Lee Child, though I suspect Child’s younger brother Andrew is the culprit, as he’s co-written the last few novels and seems more interested in descriptors and dialogue than big bro.
Joining Reacher this time are DEA agents Susan Duffy (Sonya Cassidy) and Guillermo Villanueva (Roberto Montesino), from the Boston office. Cassidy’s accent is so good I was honestly shocked to find out she’s actually British. The way she says, “Fuck that traitor” when Tom Brady is brought up would bring a tear to any New Englander’s eye.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a Jack Reacher show without a big bad, though the person I’m describing in this case is Big, Actually. Dutch bodybuilder Olivier Richters(!) plays Paulie, the head of Beck’s security team. Standing 7′ 2″ tall, he legitimately towers over Reacher, and showrunner Nick Santora does a nice (if maddening) job teasing their inevitable clash across eight episodes.
There’s more, of course. Beck is linked to a mysterious figure that Reacher may crossed paths with back in his military career. And while I was initially getting impatient with the lack of Neagley (Maria Sten) in the early episodes, they make up for this on the back end.
And beyond that, I’m really not allowed to say much. Amazon’s list of “do not reveals” for this season is extensive. I don’t know how it compares to DNRs from previous seasons because, uh, I didn’t read them. My bad. Is it a spoiler to say Reacher survives to kill again? Considering the show was renewed for a fourth season way back in October, I’m gonna say no.
After that slow start, this season really amps up the violence. We’ve got a more murderous Reacher this time around, and some sequences are legitimately disturbing, largely thanks to [REDACTED]. Gone is the cheesy dialogue (“I want to throw you out of a plane,” etc.) from the show’s second season, while constricting the number of extra characters and flashbacks makes for a faster-moving narrative.
As entertaining as the series has been, it speaks a lot to how we, as Americans, like our justice dispensed. Reacher is still uninterested in due process, even for an ex-cop. A telling exchange — Duffy: “Have you ever been diagnosed as a sociopath?” Reacher: “Diagnosed? No.” And like Morgan Freeman in Se7en, I sympathize with this attitude. It is easier to just pitch a bad guy off a cliff than to go through the legal system.
Reacher also still has the best haircut on any vagrant I’ve ever seen. And while I know this is Fantasy Macho Land, Ritchson’s physique is still ludicrous for a guy who’s only exercise is intermittently beating the tar out of people.
Santora and Prime Video have struck streaming gold with Reacher, and there’s no reason they can’t keep at it until Alan Ritchson’s body gives out or his boss Jeff Bezos fires him for being mean to his buddy Donald Trump.
Season 3 of Reacher premieres February 20 on Prime Video.
