Reacher is now streaming on Prime Video.
Many were apprehensive when Reacher arrived on Prime Video in the spring of 2022. Firstly, Lee Child praised Tom Cruise, even though the fictional Jack Reacher could easily fit the world’s biggest movie star in his pocket. Secondly, Alan Ritchson was cast. While fitting the look with obvious physical gifts, the actor was best known for his role as “Young Scully” on Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
While anyone might place Ritchson’s performance as a youthful version of Scully in the Mount Rushmore of sitcom guest stars (not really, but work with me here), how many would have guessed that the star of The Turkey Bowl, The Blue Mountain State, and the uncredited role of Thad on Frasier could be the biggest, baddest, and best Jack Reacher ever?
Well, we should have. That’s because Ritchson possesses pitch-perfect comic delivery with an edge that creator Nick Santora knew was the key to Prime Video’s Reacher’s success. Ritchson’s portrayal is Dirty Harry with muscle and the deductive reasoning of a Hercule Poirot without the need to fill the air with exhausting explanations.
Reacher is the badass we all envision ourselves in the couch potatoes among us.
Prime Video’s Reacher Season 2 Plot Summary and Review
The second season picks up with Reacher (Ritchson) receiving a coded message from Nealy (Maria Sten), who tells him the bad news: one of the members of their dismantled special investigators unit was murdered. His name was Calvin Franz, a man Reacher recruited himself. Even more disturbing, he was tortured and dropped hundreds of feet from a helicopter to the frozen ground below.
As the duo investigates, they find their old colleagues, his only family, are being hunted. One by one, they keep tallying up the bodies until they find the last two left. Reacher’s old crush, Karla Dixon (Inhumans star Serinda Swan), and David O’Donnell (Shaun Sipos), the group’s resident playboy, who is now a family man.
In an effort to limit spoilers, we will say the foursome is now determined to find out the truth and apply some sweet, vengeful, cutthroat revenge as they delve deeper into the mystery. So, sit back and watch the skull-crushing antics where a swift kick to a fender can have airbags deploy and dislocate an elbow with a simple yet powerful headbutt. It’s going to be a long, windy, and ultraviolent ride.
Reacher is enthralling, exciting, and relentlessly entertaining.
Reacher’s sophomore effort is based on Lee Child‘s eleventh novel in the Jack Reacher series, Bad Luck and Trouble, and the entire second season was made available for critics. It’s a riveting season, even better than the first, with more bone-crunching action, Teflon attitudes, and dark, sardonic quips that made the character so famous.
The new cast works incredibly well here. Even though Stern’s Neagley has more personality than the characters in the book, her turn is a gem, almost acting as a bridge between the outside world and the titular character. The Wire’s Domenick Lombardozzi, gives award-worthy supporting work. He encompasses the same intensity as James Gandolfini, with a tender side.
The addition of Sipos’s O’Donnell brings some comic relief and utilizes more of a “face” from the A-Team. While shameless, it works. The casting may seem too on the nose, including Robert Patrick’s villainous turn he takes annually, but you cannot argue its effectiveness.
Domenick Lombardozzi and Ian Ritchson are in Reacher (2023) | Image via Amazon Studios.
Is Reacher Season 2 Worth Watching?
Reacher’s second season is worth watching because Santora, writer/director Cait Duffy, and Lillian Wang know this isn’t Gosford Park. This is “dad television” on steroids, and that means a great love interest. Enter Serinda Swan, and they have palpable chemistry.
Swan is an underrated actress who can be an action star, comedy scene-stealer, and magnetic screen presence (she gave Reacher a wink that would make most men faint). Swan encompasses all of that and more here.
However, when it’s all said and done, the show stands with Ritchson, encapsulating the very essence of the man he vividly brought to life, the Jack Kerouac-inspired journey answering the call for television viewers craving a hero.
The second season is a tremendous success, and the adaptation we’ve been yearning for is now the best Reacher ever. Enthralling, exciting, and relentlessly entertaining, and officially now Prime Video’s best series.
10/10
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