Aside from some coverage in the buildup to its release, I have avoided covering season 3 of Reacher until its conclusion, which only came to pass last week. The reason for this is because I found myself fawning over season 2 of Reacher for the first few episodes, only to feel let down in the end.
It’s not that it was an overall bad season of television, it just fell noticeably short of the Reacher’s excellent first season. Reacher’s allies for that season, his old army buddies, were boring and one-dimensional, meanwhile the whole ‘Tony Swan-seems-like-a-villain-but-he’s-actually-not’ storyline was so predictable it served only to insult the audience’s intelligence. And this is all without mentioning the surprisingly shoddy action, both in terms of how it was choreographed and shot, with the fight scene in the parking lot against the bikers being the biggest culprit. Domenick Lombardozzi’s performance as Gaitano Russo certainly helped elevate things, but even this is offset by the disappointing conclusion of the villainous mercenary A.M.’s (Ferdinand Kingsley) subplot, which made his entire story come off as bafflingly pointless filler.
Suffice to say, lessons needed to be learned from season 2 of Reacher, something that Alan Ritchson himself acknowledged going into this latest season. Rest assured, I can confirm that lessons have certainly been learned, and while I have my gripes, it’s Reacher as it should be, from start to finish.
Reacher has never been a show that was great at mystery; if it’s hinting that someone might be the actual villain, for example, it’s usually so overt that it’s obvious, and this extends to the rest of the show, where Occam’s razor applies more often than you think. Yet, the entire opening sequence of season 3 had me pretty duped, as I bought into the elaborate plan Reacher concocted with DEA Agent Susan Duffy (Sonya Cassidy) and her team hook, line and sinker. In fact, it’s the best executed opening to a season so far, and immediately a statement was made for what was to come.
From there, the plot sees Reacher embedded in the compound seemingly owned by arms dealer Zachary Beck (Anthony Michael Hall), though it would later be revealed that he is under the thumb of the merciless Julius McCabe (Brian Tee), who is actually a former member of the military by the name of Xavier Quinn. Reacher had previously investigated Quinn with Sergeant Dominique Kohl (Mariah Robinson), though Kohl was murdered by him and Reacher would consequently shoot Quinn execution-style, only for Reacher to discover he was still alive years later.
Despite Quinn being a notably uncomplicated villain, he is nonetheless compelling in his ice-cold disposition, sadistic nature, and what he ultimately brings out in Reacher. It’s not just that he evokes a near-uncompromising thirst for vengeance in our titular hero, but he also induces the most emotive moment from Reacher in the entire series when he finds the tortured body of Kohl, buoyed by a beautifully balanced performance from Ritchson during the scene, who is excellent as ever in the role throughout the season as a whole.
Yet, Reacher’s inevitable confrontation with Quinn is not even the villainous showdown fans had been craving all season, as that title is reserved for the enormous henchman Paulie, played by Dutch bodybuilder Olivier Richters. The faceoff between these two physical juggernauts was heavily advertised in season 3’s trailers, and it certainly does not disappoint. Richters’ performance is admittedly quite wooden, though he’s not there to deliver some introspective soliloquy, but to be the first truly physically imposing adversary for Reacher in the series and the writers do a wonderful job of building on the tension between Reacher and Paulie until their battle in the explosive season finale. It’s the slugfest fans were craving and then some, akin to a set-piece more than just a fight sequence, as the two duke it out until Reacher is finally able to outwit the man he simply could not overcome physically. Credit must also be given to the visceral manner in which it was shot, with Ritchson even admitting that it was a gruelling sequence to shoot, to the point that he was knocked out performing.
This was emblematic of the action in season 3 as a whole, which was decidedly much better shot and executed than in the previous season, while the story was a lot more focused without any unnecessary fluff like the aforementioned Tony Swan or A.M. affairs.
Where the season primarily faltered is with Reacher’s supporting characters. Don’t get me wrong, his love interest Duffy and her partner Guillermo Villanueva (Roberto Montesinos) are definite improvements over the former members of the 110 from last season. Duffy’s hardened, no-nonsense personality gelled well with Reacher’s only similar disposition right from the get-go, and the chemistry was certainly palpable, but British actress Sonya Cassidy leaned into her Boston accent a little too ‘hahrd’ too often, coming off as a distracting caricature rather than an actual Bostonian. Villanueva, then, is kind of just there for much of the show, and I never really felt like he quite clicked with Reacher, even when the writers were pretty much trying to try to say, ‘No, no, they really are chums,’ in the final episodes. At least the father/son dynamic between Hall’s Beck and Johnny Berchtold’s Richard was reasonably executed, even if it’s nothing to write home about.
Regardless of my nitpicking, Reacher is back in fighting form with season 3, and it’s comforting for the show’s future to know that those behind the show are always looking to improve upon what came before, even if the show has not quite reached the heights of its first season. For me at least, the show has yet to match the strength of season 1’s supporting characters Roscoe Conklin (Willa Fitzgerald) and Oscar Finaly (Malcolm Goodwin).
It will be exciting to learn in the coming months where Reacher will go next, and in the meantime, we can eagerly await the spinoff show, Neagley, which will be released sometime next year before Reacher’s 4th season.
