Go back far enough in television history and you’re going to watch a lot of westerns. There were hundreds of westerns airing in primetime throughout the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, but as our love affair with the Wild West waned, a new genre emerged: cop shows. All the hallmarks were there. The good guys were good and the bad guys were bad. The justice was swift and often violent. The hero always got his man. Those TV cops and cowboys weren’t superheroes per se, but often possessed a superhuman competency that made us believe they could do just about anything. And right now, the most popular show on Amazon has the greatest lawman of his generation.
Reacher is based on the book series by Lee Childs, which has spawned 29 novels—the 30th is planned for later this year.. Loyal readers may remember the 2012 Tom Cruise movie Jack Reacher, where Cruise played the titular hero to the dismay of fans who didn’t feel the 5’7” Cruise could measure up to the 6’5” brick shithouse from the books. Despite the shortcomings, the movie earned more than $200 million and even spawned a sequel. Still, it never felt like the onscreen Reacher fans had been picturing.
Enter Alan Ritchson, the lead on Amazon’s smash-hit series that recently wrapped its third season. He is nearly every inch Jack Reacher, standing 6’3” and a hulking 235 pounds. More importantly, he plays Reacher with a cowboy’s competence that makes us believe he can do anything he wants. Often, this means solving crimes with a mix of brains and blunt force trauma.
Screenshot via Amazon
Reacher Was a Rolling Stone
Jack Reacher has a background as impressive and imposing as his physique. A former military intelligence officer, Reacher packs a skillset full of all the things that make for a great TV cop. Obviously he’s a crackshot with any gun he can get his meaty paws on. And a crackneck on any goons who think they can throw punches at a man whose arms are like legs and whose legs are like people.
He’s not all brawn, like you might expect. Reacher possesses a Holmes-ian intuition for clues, motives, and details. This serves him well in his role as a wandering do-gooder. You see, Reacher has no home, no car, and rarely more than the clothes on his back and a meager military pension he spends mostly on fleabag motels and cups of diner coffee that look like dollhouse furniture in his hands. So what does he do? Trouble. Trouble has a way of finding Reacher that borders on the comical. The second season opens with Reacher disrupting a kidnapping and extortion plot before the credits roll simply because he noticed a nervous woman at an ATM.
If this implausibility seems eye-rolling, well, you’ll either be in or out pretty quick. But because Ritchson is so compelling, and the character is so damn fun, you actively want trouble to find him.
Screenshot via Amazon
Well Seasoned
The real litmus test of a great television character is momentum. It’s easy for a character to grab your attention with something cool or shocking. But can they hold that attention episode after episode? Scene after scene? Across its three gritty, fast-paced seasons, Reacher has cemented itself as one of the most compelling action-thrillers on streaming. The template is simple. Reacher drifts from town to town with nothing but the clothes on his back, a folding toothbrush, and a moral code as unshakable as his fists.
The first season saw Reacher arrive in the sleepy town of Margrave, Georgia, only to be arrested for murder within hours. What follows is a twisty conspiracy involving counterfeiting, family secrets, and corruption. Reacher dismantles the operation with brutal efficiency, and soon discovers how the crime ties into his brother’s death.
In Season 2, Reacher reunites with his old army unit after one of their own is found dead. The stakes are higher, the body count steeper, but again, Reacher’s compassion guides his actions. He’s not just solving a mystery, he’s protecting those who once had his back. Robert Patrick—of T-1000 fame—is an excellent foil for Reacher as a corrupt military contractor with access to a private army’s worth of guns and goons for Reacher to muscle through.
Season 3 finds Reacher undercover, infiltrating a drug-trafficking ring along the Maine coast. The first episode opens on a helluva twist, and we really start to see Ritchson’s ability to bring range and depth to the character. It’s a lonelier, more emotionally charged season, where Reacher’s sense of loyalty and guilt collide. While he operates with ruthless precision, it’s his empathy for victims, innocents, and even the broken people caught in the crossfire that makes him more than a one-man wrecking crew. It also features an iconic fight scene between Reacher and a bodyguard named Paulie, played by “The dutch Giant” Olivier Richters. He is appropriately named at 7’2” and 350 lbs, and manages to play Goliath to Reacher’s David.
Season 3 has earned the highest fan and critical ratings of any season, and for good reason. We see a lot more of Reacher’s humanity, have a great father-son story swirling around the villain (or is he?), and the ongoing tension with Paulie culminating in an absolute slobberknocker is as fan service-y as it gets. It bodes well for the fourth season, expected sometime in 2026. Which gives you plenty of time to get caught up, and maybe even read a book or two.
