Reacher Season 4 Review: Alan Ritchson’s Human Wrecking Ball Is Back - and This Might Be His Best Season Yet
There’s something about Reacher that makes me smile. Maybe it’s the simplicity of watching Alan Ritchson’s former military police officer walk into a situation that is clearly above everyone else’s pay grade and somehow make it his personal mission to fix it. Maybe it’s Reacher’s particular brand of justice, where bad decisions tend to end with broken bones. Or maybe it’s the fact that Ritchson somehow appears even more massive and physically imposing with each season. Whatever the reason, Prime Video’s Reacher has become one of those rare action series that consistently knows how to give its fans exactly what they came for.
The hit action series officially returned today, August 12, with the first three of its eight-episode fourth season now streaming on Prime Video. New episodes will arrive weekly through the September 16 finale. This season adapts Lee Child’s Gone Tomorrow, the 13th novel in the Jack Reacher series, and wastes very little time throwing its hero into another dangerous mystery. While the series has already given us three wildly entertaining seasons, Season 4 feels like the show has found an even sharper balance between mystery, action, humor and the larger than life character at its center.
Having screened the entire season, it's hard to picture anyone else in this role. Alan Ritchson has completely embodied Jack Reacher in a way that feels almost impossible to separate from the character at this point. He has the physical presence, the intimidating stare and the ability to make standing completely still somehow feel like a threat. Ritchson doesn't simply look the part, he understands what makes Reacher such an entertaining character. He's physically intimidating, incredibly observant, emotionally guarded and just compassionate enough to keep you invested in the man underneath all those muscles. He may walk around looking like he could put a hole through a brick wall, but Reacher's greatest weapon has always been his brain. Season 4 puts all of those qualities on full display.
The season opens in the City of Brotherly Love, where Reacher finds himself aboard a subway train with a distraught woman named Anna Merrick (Karen Kwong-Chip). Reacher initially believes she's a suicide bomber and tries to talk her down. When he tells her that he is a cop, it triggers her even further and Anna kills herself. Her death becomes the catalyst for a dangerous investigation involving government secrets, political corruption, espionage, and people operating at some very high levels of power, sending Reacher into a tangled web involving government cover-ups, political power, and assassins.
The opening three episodes do exactly what they need to do: establish the mystery, introduce the new players and remind us why this series works so well. The mystery moves quickly, the action is plentiful and the supporting cast gives Ritchson plenty of new personalities to bounce off of. Reacher has always been a sucker for a pretty face, and Lila Hoth's (Agnez Mo) initial story is enough to convince him to get involved and help her and her mother, Amisha (Anggun Cipta Sasmi). What appears to be a relatively straightforward request for help quickly pulls him toward U.S. congressman John Sampson (Marc Blucas) and into a much larger federal maze. From there, the story starts expanding. What begins as one mysterious death becomes something much bigger, and every answer seems to create another question. And that's where Season 4 really finds its groove. The mystery isn't simply about figuring out who the bad guy is. It's about understanding how deep the conspiracy goes and how many powerful people may have something to lose if Reacher gets too close to the truth.
Reacher has a strong supporting cast this season that works tangibly well. When Anna’s brother, Jacob (Christopher Rodriguez Marquette), and detective Tamara Green ( an excellent Sydelle Noel) enter the fray, the mystery deepens, and the action takes center stage with Reacher punching his way through excellent choreographed action sequences that keep you on the edge of your seat. Detective Shaun Docherty (Kevin Corrigan) and journalist Russell Plum (Kevin Weisman) round out the supporting cast in highly entertaining scenes.
The action remains one of the show's biggest selling points, and showrunner Nick Santora delivers plenty of it. Let's be clear: nobody is watching Reacher for a quiet meditation on international diplomacy. We're here for the fights and Season 4 delivers. The action sequences are brutal and impressively choreographed, with Reacher once again using his size, strength and military training to turn seemingly impossible situations into opportunities to rearrange somebody's face.
After Season 3 gave us the enormous Paul "Paulie" Van Hovind (Olivier Richters) and the monster showdown, the bar was set pretty high for Reacher's next definitive challenge. The Season 3 showdown was one of the most memorable fights in the series, and Season 4 wisely doesn't try to simply copy it by finding an even bigger human being and throwing him at Ritchson. Instead, the season builds toward its defining confrontation, and when that climactic fight finally arrives, it is chaotic, vicious, and exactly the kind of glorious Reacher spectacle fans have come to expect.
For all the punching, kicking, and general destruction, one of the favorite things about Reacher continues to be the comedy. The humor is easy to overlook because the show is marketed as an action thriller, but some of its funniest moments come from Ritchson's completely deadpan delivery.
One particularly hilarious moment involves Reacher sizing up three federal agents and giving them the unofficial nicknames "Snap, Crackle and Pop." After observing them for a few moments, he determines that they're the "B" team. Maybe even the "C" team. It's such a ridiculous moment, but Ritchson plays it with such complete seriousness that it lands perfectly.
There are very few actors who become so closely associated with a character that you stop imagining the character without them. Ritchson has reached that point with Reacher. He has embraced the character's physicality without allowing the performance to become one dimensional. Reacher may be enormous, but he's not stupid. His intelligence is arguably just as dangerous as his fists. He studies people, remembers details and recognizes patterns that other characters overlook. That combination of physical intimidation and intellectual superiority is what makes him so much fun to watch.
Season 4 is particularly satisfying because it doesn't feel like the show is simply repeating itself. Reacher encounters trouble, investigates the mystery, uncovers something much bigger and eventually beats the living daylights out of people who deserve it, but the conspiracy gives the season a larger sense of scale. The formula is the same, but Reacher constantly adjusts his strategy as he does in each season in a different setting.
With Season 5 already in production and the franchise continuing to expand, Prime Video clearly has no intention of letting its biggest action juggernaut slow down. It will adapt Lee Child's 20th novel, Make Me, which finds Reacher in an ominous Oklahoma town, forcing him to team up with a former FBI agent to unravel another dangerous conspiracy.
Fans are in for a special treat as Neagley drops on September 16, the same day Reacher Season 4 airs its finale, with all eight episodes. Maria Sten returns as Frances Neagley, Reacher's former military colleague turned private investigator, with Ritchson also set to appear as Reacher. When Reacher wraps, we aren't really saying goodbye, we're just handing the baton to Neagley.
Reacher has found an especially comfortable rhythm. It still gives us the massive fight scenes, the conspiracies, the tough guys who make the unfortunate mistake of underestimating Reacher and the deadpan humor that keeps everything from becoming too heavy. But there's also a stronger sense of momentum this season.
Season 4 proves once again that Reacher doesn't need to reinvent itself to remain one of Prime Video's most entertaining hits. It simply needs to give us a compelling mystery, a cast worth investing in, some seriously choreographed fights and Alan Ritchson doing what he does best. Reacher isn't trying to be the most complicated drama on television. It doesn't need to be. It's a muscular, fast moving action thriller about a highly intelligent drifter who has an almost supernatural ability to find trouble and an even greater ability to make sure trouble regrets finding him. And honestly, sometimes that's exactly what television needs.
The first three episodes of Reacher 4 are streaming now on Prime Video
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