Season 2 of Reacher premieres Friday, December 15 on Prime with the first three episodes. Subsequent episodes will arrive every Friday until January 19, 2024.
After establishing Jack Reacher’s skull-crushing credentials by adapting author Lee Child’s 1997 debut novel, Killing Floor, for season 1, Prime’s Reacher leaps forward through the former military cop’s long-running catalogue of crime solving for its sophomore year. Taking on the 11th Reacher book, Bad Luck and Trouble, is a smart move: Not only is it one of the strongest stories in the series, but it’s also the perfect way to surround Reacher with old peers who are immediately on board with his particular brand of vigilante justice.
While drifting back and forth across the United States with no phone and no home, Reacher (Alan Ritchson) receives a coded emergency message via his bank balance from former teammate Frances Neagley (Maria Sten) – returning from season 1 for a much larger role this time around. Members of the US Army squad Reacher commanded are being killed, so he reunites with the survivors of the 110th MP Special Investigations unit to both find out who’s responsible and to return the favour.
The action (which, in the book, occurred across Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and the desert) has been switched to New York, Atlantic City, and the Catskills. In broad terms, the move to an urban backdrop provides a nice contrast to the small-town Georgia setting of season 1 – and the shift from the west coast to the east otherwise has no noticeable negative impact on the core of the story. If anything, it’s a plus: It allows for the introduction of The Wire’s Domenick Lombardozzi as a character altogether new to the Reacher saga, NYPD detective Gaitano Russo. Despite playing a pastiche of just about every hard-boiled, fictional cop to ever stand behind an NYPD shield, Lombardozzi delivers a strong and likeable performance as the foul-mouthed but principled Russo, and he earns the respect of viewers with his refusal to be intimidated by Reacher.
Reacher himself continues to be a powerful lead character, both literally and figuratively, and season 2 sees a barn-sized Ritchson fully crystallised in a role that’s now quite hard to imagine anyone else taking on. With the brain of Sherlock Holmes and the frame of a linebacker whose favourite movies are simply everything Arnold Schwarzenegger made before Jingle All the Way, Ritchson’s Reacher carries himself with the almost impossible confidence of a man who is usually the smartest person in the room, and is always the biggest.
That level of confidence probably comes with certain dramatic drawbacks, and it’d be fair to argue that Reacher as a character operates within a narrow band of emotions. Ritchson brings other dimensions to the character that aren’t measured with feet or inches, though. For instance, this season does a better job of letting Reacher look uncomfortable at times (whether that’s awkwardly withdrawing from the lounge room of the widow of an old friend, or stuffed into a suit and dress shoes – carrying his hiking boots in his hand because he doesn’t own a bag). There’s no getting around the fact that a hulking vagrant who kills with absolute dispassion – and whose only possession is a toothbrush – is a little bit of a weirdo, and Ritchson does well to display glimmers of that throughout the season.
Sten does equally well again as the shrewd and skilful Neagley, whose out-of-continuity appearance last season makes a lot more sense in light of her crucial role here. Having the audience already familiar with Neagley’s capabilities and her relationship with Reacher frees up headroom to bring in new characters and fellow 110th vets Karla Dixon (Serinda Swan) and David O’Donnell (Shaun Sipos). Ferdinand Kingsley and Robert Patrick’s villains are perhaps a little thinly drawn, but they’re sufficiently ruthless enough to have us actively rooting for their downfall – and it’s hard to deny the menace provided by a purse-lipped Patrick.
The steady stream of shootouts, car chases, and brawls that lie between Reacher’s crew and the criminals they seek are generally well-crafted, save for a slightly on-the-nose firefight mid-season that appears to be against the two worst snipers in the history of hired goons. While his team gets time to shine, the action is always at its best when Reacher’s turkey-sized fists are the ones flying. It’s grimly satisfying that every one of Reacher’s strikes and kicks feels like a finishing move, because taking his opponents out of the fight as quickly as possible is his only setting. In his own words, after being gently berated by O’Donnell in episode 2 for hitting someone too hard: “I don’t hit soft.”
Reacher rollicks along to a largely typical and action-fuelled finale – but this really isn’t a criticism. The fact that Reacher himself is as inevitable and unstoppable as an incoming tide is the entire appeal. As with season 1, the show colours outside the lines a little more as it crescendos – veering away from the more patient solution Reacher employs in the novel for something a little more conventionally action-packed. But there are some things that probably work better on paper than they would on camera, and Reacher hiding in long grass in the dark for two hours is almost certainly one of them. The tweak also provides the season’s best piece of music editing, a needle drop in the closing moments of the penultimate episode, “The Man Goes Through,” that turns up the testosterone to 11 and serves as an irresistible little alley-oop for the inescapable ass-kicking the audience knows is coming.
