by Jeff Alan, Contributing Writer
The hit Amazon series, Reacher, returns with another outstanding season and all-out action, and Season Three was announced before Season Two even aired! Quite honestly, it was no surprise, given the level of talent and fun in the premiere episodes alone. Alan Ritchson returns to portray the titular Jack Reacher, based on the Lee Child’s book series, with this season adapting the book Bad Luck and Trouble.
Season Two begins with Reacher continuing to drift through small towns (and stopping a carjacker shaking down a woman and her child in the most Reacher way possible), before he gets a coded message through an ATM transaction from his former teammate, Neagley (Maria Sten). She informs Reacher that another former Army teammate of theirs was just discovered dead in the Catskills of New York, apparently having been pushed from high in the sky, killing him on impact. The two of them meet up and begin investigating his death further, while believing their other teammates could be in the same kind of trouble.
As they begin looking for the rest of their unit, they notice that they are being tailed by someone who is revealed to be NYPD detective Guy Russo (Domenick Lombardozzi). Reacher and Neagley team up with two other members of their unit, David O’Donnell (Shaun Sipos) and Karla Dixon (Serinda Swan), to head to Atlantic City where other teammates of theirs now work as security guards. Upon arrival, they discover that Sanchez (Andres Collantes) and Orozco (Eddsson Morales) have also been found dead in the same location as the previous deceased teammate. There, Reacher acquires the name of the company and person behind the murders, New Age Technologies, headed up by a man named Langston (Robert Patrick).
This season brings the action to an all-time high and throws Reacher into uncharted territory, with his professional past colliding with his present, and a new threat standing at the center of it all. Not having read any of Child’s work, I cannot attest to if this season is true to the source material, but even if it isn’t, it is still fun and engaging, and is a blast both metaphorically and literally!
The action sequences are exciting; I could watch Ritchson beat the living hell out of bad guys all day, because he makes it look effortless. His hulking, broad stature truly makes you feel like you are watching some sort of superhuman man just mow down anyone who defies him with ease. And his teammates even have a lot of moments to shine, and their stunt choreography is well executed.
There are two flaws in this season that I am not sure I am a big fan of. The first being Langston. While it’s always nice to see Patrick coming into a new franchise and playing a villain role, his character doesn’t really have much depth to it besides being a bad guy trying to do a bad thing. The only thing we really learn about this character over the course of the season is his name; that’s it. No backstory, no character development. It’s just a waste of a good talent. Not to mention that most episodes set aside a little bit of time to show another villain-type character who we also don’t learn much about, and whose motives and intentions aren’t made clear until the very last episode. And when you do learn them, it falls flat. You get the sense that this character is up to something devious throughout the small interactions we have with him, but they don’t pay off.
The other flaw I have with this season – and it’s very possible this could just be my ignorance to the source material – is Reacher himself. He comes across as this man who needs nothing and wants nothing (literally, he only walks around with the clothes on his back and nothing else). Even his teammates chastise him for never owning a house or car, or having any sort of possessions to his name, which started as a fun little character quirk, but slowly starts to get annoying as time goes on, mostly because you just can’t relate to his ideology of not wanting to have those things in his life. It’s a smaller detail, but it is a glaring after a while, and it made me not connect with him as much.
Those are the only flaws I could find in the series. They don’t take away from my enjoyment, but I could maybe see others pointing them out as well.
Regardless of those two points, the season really hits the action squarely on the head, and keeps an ultimately satisfying mystery going. While there is no tease or direction on where the show is heading, Season Three is currently in production, and I cannot wait to see more of this show come to Prime. With Season Three being announce before the Season Two premiere, and knowing that filming has already begun, I am optimistic that we will see the new season earlier than previously expected!
Rating: High Side of Liked It
Reacher is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video
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