Big events can hinge on small coincidences.Lee Child’sJack Reacherseries of crime thriller novels usually build around the smallest of decisions and snowball into wild conspiracies featuring some truly vile criminals, and Prime Video’sReacherseries stays true to this conceit.Faithfully adaptingChild’s first Reacher book,Killing Floor, the show starsAlan Ritchson(Smallville) as Jack Reacher, a former military investigator who now essentially wanders the United States. In Reacher’s words, he’s more of a “hobo” than a vagrant.
BeforeTom Cruisehanded the keys to hisMission: Impossiblefranchise over toChristopher McQuarrie, theUsual Suspectsscreenwriter adapted and directedOne Shot, theninth Reacher book, as the 2012 thrillerJack Reacher. That film accurately caught the book’s tone, and while Cruise is clearly not a physical match for the 6’5”, 230 lb. beast described in Child’s books, that first film was good enough for longtime readers to grudgingly get on board. Cruise’s follow-up,Jack Reacher: Never Look Back, was a bland, by-the-numbers military thriller (unlike the very good book it’s based on). After that film was met with a collective yawn from audiences and critics alike, Jack Reacher went into hibernation.
Now, all eight episodes of the newReacherseries’ first season is available to stream on Amazon Prime. Let’s take a look at how this inaugural season ended, and what we can infer about Reacher’s next adventure now that the show has already been renewed for a Season 2.
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The Mystery Begins
Jack Reacher is a former major with a military investigation unit, now retired and essentially wandering the country. He arrives in the small town of Margrave, Georgia, hoping for nothing more than to find the burial site of the legendary bluesman Blind Blake. Unfortunately for Reacher, he arrives in town the morning after a local named Pete Jobling is found brutally murdered, along with another, as-yet-unidentified man.
An eyewitness has placed Reacher near the scene, so the local Margrave cops bring the big stranger in, using extreme caution and depriving him of a piece of famous Georgia peach pie. Reacher meets Finlay (Malcolm Goodwin), Margrave’s chief detective, a transplant from Boston with his own ghosts, and Roscoe (Willa Fitzgerald), a local cop who becomes Reacher’s love interest.
Reacher can prove that he was on a Greyhound bus when the murders took place, but when he agrees to take a look at the mystery victim, he is stunned to discover it’s his older brother, Joe Reacher (Christopher Russel). It was Joe who first told Reacher about Blind Blake and his supposed place of rest, and even though the brothers haven’t kept in touch, Reacher is determined to stay in town until Joe’s killers are found.
Spoonful of Lightning
While Finlay checks out Reacher’s story, Reacher spends a weekend in the lockup with Paul Hubble (Marc Bendavid), a banker who works in Atlanta. When evidence from the crime scene leads to Hubble’s door, the milquetoast Banker immediately (and unconvincingly) confesses to the crimes. Rather than place Reacher and Hubble in a temporary holding facility, someone conspires to place them with the maximum security population. A group of convicts attacks them, but Reacher lays them all out with ease.
Who wants Hubble dead and why? It definitely has something to do with the town’s newly dead police chief, who is found nailed to a wall and missing a delicate part of his anatomy. Finlay wants Reacher on the sidelines, while the mayor, Grover Teale (Bruce McGill), names himself the new police chief, and wants him out of town. Reacher discovers that the town of Margrave was very recently restored by the rich and powerful Kliner (Currie Graham), who pulls the mayor’s strings.
Every step of the way, a new discovery is intercut with scenes from Reacher’s childhood, which is the series’ major new addition to the story. This device helps flesh out this unstoppable force of a man, who can be a bit of a cipher on the page. Ritchson is careful not to overplay Reacher, letting his imposing physique and low-key charm do the heavy lifting. This approach works well enough to positionReacheras a new go-to for fans of brutal procedurals like Prime Video’sBosch.
The Killing Floor
With the help of an ex-colleague, the unassailable badass Frances Neagley (Maria Sten), Reacher discovers that his brother, a Secret Service agent, was investigating a massive counterfeiting ring. Meanwhile, Kliner’s unstable son KJ (Chris Webster) harasses Roscoe and threatens to divulge what he knows about Reacher’s past. While stationed in Afghanistan, Reacher discovers that the town’s young children had been abused by local militiamen. He stops them, and when more predictably come after him, he kills them all.
The bodies in Margrave pile up as Reacher evades several ambushes. Finlay sends Hubble’s wife and daughters to a remote cabin in the care of his old FBI agent friend, Picard (Martin Roach). Reacher’s investigation leads him to another small town where the Kliners’ operation came, took over, and then decimated. The Kliners indeed run a counterfeiting operation, but it’s more complicated than Reacher had assumed. Instead of being the U.S. distribution arm, the Kliners acquire the special paper used for American currency. They bleach thousands of $1 bills, reprint them with forged $100 bill plates, and then ship this bogus currency to Venezuela. The runoff from this operation devastated the river at the town before Margrave, and from everything Reacher has seen, the same will happen in the small Georgia town fate brought him through.
Picard reveals himself to be on Kliner’s payroll, and when Reacher shows up to gather Hubble’s family, he discovers that KJ is a psychopath who has taken over his father’s business. The various plot strands come together in an assault on the Kliner clan’s warehouse. The show slips into action-thriller formula for its final showdown, but the whole thing is solidly staged and directed. Reacher, Neagley, Hubble, Finlay, and Roscoe storm the warehouse and destroy the Kliner operation in a hail of gunfire, surrounded by CG flames.
Reacher’s Baggage
All the principal characters emerge alive (and without any major wounds). Finlay elects to leave Margrave’s police force, seeing as how his old friend, ex-boss, and even the now-dead mayor were all on the take. Reacher suggests that Roscoe run for mayor, and acknowledges that if anyone could convince him to settle down, it would be her. Given the number of still-fresh corpses that the incoming authorities could easily attribute to him, he decides to move on. Like in nearly every Reacher book, the last shot is of Jack Reacher strolling out of town with nothing but the shirt on his back (and maybe a toothbrush stowed somewhere).
We know thatReacherhas already been renewed for a second season, and while showrunnerNick Santorahasn’t said which book might form the basis of the sophomore outing, plenty of fans and pundits predict that he could choose the second book in the series,Die Trying. This is a logical next step, but with the show adding scenes of Reacher’s childhood, subsequent seasons could choose to adapt portions of several books at once.
One major change is the introduction of Neagley, who does not appear in the book series until 2002’sWithout Fail. This happens to be one of the best Reacher books of all, and has a direct connection to Reacher’s brother Joe.Without Failfollows an assassination attempt on the Vice-President of the United States and Reacher’s attempts to identify the conspirators. It’s a sprawling, action-packed story, and Neagley is central to the action.
Since there are 26 Jack Reacher books (and counting), there is no shortage of source material. Stay tuned for more as news onReacher’s second season becomes available.
