Before you press play
Watch if
You missed having Reacher at the centre of his own show, and you like a slow build to a big finish.
Wait if
You want a twisty mystery. This one is straightforward.
In Season 3, Jack Reacher (Alan Ritchson) meets two versions of himself. Susan Duffy (Sonya Cassidy) is Lady Reacher, the DEA agent he works with. Paulie (Olivier Richters) is Mega Reacher, the bodyguard at the Beck house. It is the most focused the show has been since its first season.
Adapted from Lee Child's Persuader, it sends Reacher undercover into the Maine home of Zachary Beck (Anthony Michael Hall), a rug importer who tests his nerve with a game of Russian roulette before giving him a job. Duffy's informant went inside Beck's business and vanished. Reacher wants Quinn (Brian Tee), an army officer he investigated years ago for selling secrets and believed he had killed, who has turned up alive in one of Beck's cars.
Is Reacher Season 3 worth watching?
Yes. For its first few episodes it looks smaller than the last season, with one house on the Maine coast and one missing informant. By the middle of the season the people in that house turn out to be dealing with something far bigger.
The build-up is the season's strength. The first episodes are about getting inside Beck's operation and rising through it, while Reacher slowly wins over Beck's son.
Alan Ritchson as Jack Reacher
Alan Ritchson was born to play Reacher, and three seasons in it is hard to imagine anyone else in the part. His mannerisms and his personality fit the role exactly.
Reacher can be a total tank, and he is just as good at solving mysteries. He was an investigator in the Army's military police before he became a drifter, and he still thinks like one. Alan Ritchson is great at both.
Sonya Cassidy as Susan Duffy
Sonya Cassidy does a brilliant job of making Duffy stand on her own, in a show where every new character arrives while the audience still remembers the old ones.
For the first couple of episodes she seems to be playing it flat. By the end of the second episode, the personality comes through: the Boston accent, the mannerisms and the way she moves.
She is Lady Reacher because she works the way he does: her own operation, off the books, for her own reasons. Those reasons are thinner than his. Reacher's motive is clear from the first episode, while Duffy's rests mostly on the informant she sent into Beck's business.
Who plays Paulie in Reacher Season 3?
Paulie is basically a Pokémon evolution of Reacher.
He is played by Olivier Richters, a Dutch bodybuilder who stands seven feet two inches tall. The fun of their fight is that it reverses the usual arrangement. Usually it is Reacher who shrugs off a hit. Against Paulie his punches barely register, and the first time Paulie hits him you find out what being hit by Reacher must feel like.
Quinn and the flashbacks
Quinn's best quality as a villain is his past. He is the first main villain in three seasons who shares a history with Reacher, and the season cuts between the original case and the present.
The flashbacks to the original case show the rule Reacher lives by. He does not care who you are, man or woman, only whether you are on the right side, and he makes sure the people who do the work get the credit. You see both in how he treats Dominique Kohl (Mariah Robinson), a sergeant newly assigned to him.
The supporting cast: Frances Neagley and Richard Beck
Frances Neagley (Maria Sten) is still Reacher's ride-or-die, the fun friend you want on your side.
She works better in a smaller role, and she has one this season. Last season she was one of four old army friends who were everywhere at once, and it felt like watching Reacher in different shapes and sizes. This time she gets a limited stretch, mostly working the case from her office in Chicago, and she remains the person Reacher calls when he needs something found.
Richard Beck (Johnny Berchtold), Zachary's son, was kidnapped as a teenager, and his father only paid the ransom after the kidnappers cut off his ear. He is fragile and often close to tears, still trying to recover. Johnny Berchtold does a great job with him.
The action and the plotting
The action is excellent. The car chase in the first episode sets the standard, and the finale lives up to it. Both the shootouts and the fights are good, down to the body language.
The opening is a banger, as the show's openings have been before. Reacher steps in to stop a young man being kidnapped, a signature Reacher move, and it hooks you before you know why anyone is doing anything. By the end of the first episode you know why he was standing there, and the next few episodes go back for everyone else's reasons.
Keeping the plot straightforward helps. It takes its time and explains things as it shows them.
Is Reacher Season 3 better than Season 2?
Yes, by half a bulb. Season 2 split the show between too many characters, all competing for the same scenes. This one reminds you a little of the first season, when Reacher was something new. He is back as the hero, and by now you know how he thinks and what drives him.
A content note: the season includes an attempted sexual assault.
It gets three and a half bulbs, Glowing, and it came close to four.
The staged kidnapping. Learning that the opening rescue was staged is when the season really picks up. DEA agents Steven Elliot (Daniel David Stewart) and Guillermo Villanueva (Roberto Montesinos), working with Susan Duffy (Sonya Cassidy), play the kidnapper and the police officer with blanks. It gets Jack Reacher (Alan Ritchson) through the door of Zachary Beck (Anthony Michael Hall) as the man who saved his son, Richard Beck (Johnny Berchtold). It works on the audience because it looks exactly like a signature Reacher move.
The swim. It is exactly the kind of thing Reacher would do: when he needs to slip out of the Beck house to meet Duffy, he swims out across the water.
Dominique Kohl. The backstory explains why Reacher is the way he is. In the flashbacks he lets Dominique Kohl (Mariah Robinson) make the arrest because she did the work, and Quinn (Brian Tee) takes her and tortures her to death. Reacher shoots Quinn and leaves him for dead in a river. Quinn survives, but years later he cannot place Reacher.
Elliot's death. It is stupid and sad at the same time. Elliot lights a cigarette for the bodyguard the team has held captive since the staged kidnapping, and the man spits alcohol through the flame into his face, then beats him to death. Elliot is a good man undone by one careless favour.
The flashbacks set up the parallel. Reacher tells a young MP, Private Tony Frasconi (Robert Bazzocchi), never to turn his back on a live enemy to save another soldier, and Frasconi dies breaking that rule while trying to protect Kohl. Elliot drops his guard in the present for far less.
The weapons. The scale of the season changes once you learn what Beck's business is moving. The DEA has been looking for drugs. Quinn is using the rug business to move weapons, for buyers planning terrorist attacks on American targets.
The fight with Paulie. Reacher meets someone he cannot outfight, so he has to outthink him. The fight goes off a cliff and into the sea, and Paulie (Olivier Richters) still comes back. Reacher plugs the barrel of Paulie's machine gun with a bullet from its own belt, and when Paulie fires it, the gun kills him.
Duffy saves Teresa. This is Duffy's moment, and the shot is pure fan service. She reaches Teresa Daniel (Storm Steenson) just in time. Quinn has given Teresa to one of the buyers, who is about to rape her, and Duffy shoots him in the groin.
Zachary and Richard. Two of the finale's great moments belong to the Becks: the father's last words, and the son finding his nerve. Zachary faces Quinn with a toy gun from Richard, and Quinn shoots him when the bluff fails. He dies reminding Richard that he promised not to let them hurt him again. Then Richard picks up a real gun and shoots at Quinn himself.
Quinn's death. The finale pays off the backstory, and the Russians are a great touch. Taktarov (Aleks Paunovic), the Russian crime boss Quinn is in trouble with, catches him outside the Beck house, and Frances Neagley (Maria Sten) trades him the buyers' money for Quinn. Reacher tells Quinn Kohl's name, waits until he remembers her, then kills him.
The ending. Lady Reacher gets the last word. It is fun because it flips the show's usual goodbye. For two seasons Reacher has been the one who leaves. This time Duffy gets in first, telling him she does not do commitment.
Bright Bulbs
- Jack Reacher (Alan Ritchson) spends most of the season undercover, playing a drifter glad of any work, and he does a great job of it.
- Paulie (Olivier Richters) is a fight waiting to happen from his first scene with Reacher.
- Hints dropped in the first episodes pay off in the last ones.
Dull Bulbs
- Quinn (Brian Tee) is sharper in the flashbacks than in the present day, where his setup could have been better.
- Guillermo Villanueva (Roberto Montesinos), the older DEA agent, is okay, but he gets little of the humour or sharpness the rest of the team has.
Cast
- Alan Ritchson as Jack Reacher
- Sonya Cassidy as Susan Duffy
- Maria Sten as Frances Neagley
- Anthony Michael Hall as Zachary Beck
- Johnny Berchtold as Richard Beck
- Brian Tee as Francis Xavier Quinn
- Olivier Richters as Paulie
- Roberto Montesinos as Guillermo Villanueva
- Daniel David Stewart as Steven Elliot
- Mariah Robinson as Dominique Kohl
- Robert Bazzocchi as Tony Frasconi
- Storm Steenson as Teresa Daniel
- Ronnie Rowe Jr. as John Cooper
- Donald Sales as Chapman Duke
- Manuel Rodriguez-Saenz as Angel "Angel Doll" Dole
- Brendan Fletcher as Harley
- Andreas Apergis as Leon Garber
- Aleks Paunovic as Taktarov
- Anousha Alamian as Nasser
- Greg Bryk as Darien Prado
More from Reacher
Reacher Season 1
Reacher Season 2
Reacher Season 3