Hard to believe, but the third season of REACHER is not only equal to the quality of storytelling present in the first two seasons, but this go-round might even be the best one yet as it deepens the title character played by Alan Ritchson exponentially. The show wisely broadens Reacher’s backstory with some very personal stakes, but it also ups the ante of the characters in his orbit this time too. There are far more innocents in his way as Reacher’s elite military colleagues are all out of the picture this time, save for Frances Neagly (Maria Sten). Instead, Reacher’s partners include three average DEA agents he’s agreed to work with, not to mention other souls who will get caught up in Reacher’s assignment when he goes undercover to infiltrate a gun-running cabal.
The fun of the series this time lies in how Jack Reacher spies from within the operation working to bring it down, all the while risking being discovered. That tension adds a lot of edge to this story adapted from one of Lee Child’s most popular Reacher novels entitled Persuader. With thugs all around him, Reacher can’t even go to the bathroom without raising suspicions about ‘the new guy,’ let alone finding adequate time to sneak away to fill in his DEA partners about what he’s discovered.
Such stakes ground the series considering Reacher is somewhat of a ludicrous construct. He’s not only a decorated, gung-ho American patriot who decides to bum around the States, walking the Earth as if he’s Caine from the 70s TV series KUNG FU, but he’s too good to be true in every skill set. He’s an expert marksman, adept at all kinds of weaponry, great at martial arts, intellectual like Sherlock Holmes, and built like a 6-foot-plus brick shithouse. Still, as fantastical as such a figure seems, Ritchson makes him believable and even relatable. For starters, Ritchson underplays him, never overdoing an expression, a roundhouse kick, or a witty rejoinder. He also lets us see the man thinking, often searching for a solution that isn’t readily apparent. This Batman-esque super sleuth may come up with the answers, but we see him contemplating options, and that makes him more vulnerable and relatable. Finally, there’s something inherently boyish about Ritchson even though he’s even buffer and gruffer this time out with an even more defined physique and a week’s stubble that is close to being a beard. Dare I say, his Reacher seems almost like a babe in the woods sometimes, so pure and straightforward, he’s like a giant boy scout.
Ritchson’s Reacher also edges towards romance in this series. He has a lot of screen time with DEA Agent Susan Duffy (Sonya Cassidy) and they make a quippy, fun pair in the MOONLIGHTING or CHEERS mode. Cassidy is terrific, tempering her character’s braying Boston accent with moments of sensitivity and even some girlishness. She and Ritchson exhibit great chemistry. Reacher also develops a rapport with his gun-running boss Zachary Beck (played as sympathetically as possible by Anthony Michael Hall), his insecure teenage son Richie (Johnny Berchtold), and even the two cooks in Beck’s kitchen. Sure, Reacher runs afoul of a couple of Beck’s brutes, but he is hardly the bull in a China shop here. The character must tread rather lightly this time out and that makes him all the more humane. Even when the show leans into bone-crunching violence, vicious deaths, and some excessive fight sequences that drag on too long, this season feels evolutionary compared to some of the overwrought brutality of seasons past.
To tell you anything more about the third season would be giving away far too many of the pleasures and rug pulls in store. REACHER should remain one of Amazon’s biggest hits with this superb new season, and with the many books available as source material, the show could go on for years and years. Let’s hope Mr. Bezos hasn’t spent too much money on that Melania Trump documentary and reserved plenty of moolah to budget further REACHER adventures. The franchise deserves it, and so do we, especially in these fraught times where the good guys are getting harder and harder to identify, let alone identify with.
