REVIEW: ‘Reacher’ Season 4 Is All Gas

Reacher Season 4 is currently one of Prime Video’s longest-running original series. The Alan Ritchson-fronted and produced series has become Prime Video’s proof-of-concept show. It’s led the charge for action series to be greenlit on the platform and, ultimately, if you made a Venn diagram of the people who watch Prime’s direct-to-streaming action movies and Reacher fans, well, it’d be a circle. And there you will find me, right in the middle. 

If you’re unfamiliar with Reacher, from showrunner Nick Santora, the easiest way to sum it up is that it follows Jack Reacher (Ritchson), a former MP who left the government after realizing it was too corrupt to fix. Now, he travels the United States with nothing but the shirt on his back (and sometimes not that) and a toothbrush in his pocket, kicking up dirt on conspiracies and bringing vengeance when the justice system would rather ignore what’s happening altogether.  

An action series that thrives on a foundation of the brute force that defined 90s Hollywood action, it is based on Lee Child’s series of books focused on the series’ titular character. Each season is a new town, a new mysterious conspiracy, and new sets to blaze through with some of television’s best action sequences. 

Reacher Season 4 takes Jack Reacher to Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., as he’s pulled into yet another conspiracy, this time taking root in the US government’s illegal military operations overseas (who would have thought!?). Based on the 13th book in Lee Child’s series, “Gone Tomorrow,” Reacher’s world is turned upside down when he encounters a distraught woman on a subway. 

Reacher Season 4 puts Jack Reacher in a more vulnerable spot. 

Knowing what to look for in times of crisis, Reacher intervenes and tries to talk the woman off the ledge. She’s shaken up, her eyes are red, and she’s holding something in her purse; it all looks bad. Reacher attempts to calm her, but it’s no use, and the worst happens: she kills herself right in front of him.

Shaken up by the chance encounter and ultimately accused of causing the situation, Reacher is pulled into the mystery to honor the woman and make sure that whatever caused her to lose her life is held accountable. The woman on the train was named Anna Merrick, and she worked for the US Government. As Reacher dedicates himself to finding answers, he is drawn into a complex and deadly game that pits him against enemies from the highest echelons of power in Washington, DC. 

Reacher finds himself in a cat-and-mouse game, but he’s not quite sure who is who. As each reveal muddies the water, Reacher has to trust the people he’s met in the process and push back against the unnamed but seemingly clandestine organization that wants the answers about Anna that they finds. As the paper trail leads them back to powerful government officials, the stakes get higher. 

With new bad guys turning up seemingly every time he turns around and not always working together, Reacher Season 4 ups the series’ investment in detective work, conspiracy, and all the ways that the US government can’t really be trusted. And we once again see why we love Reacher; he’s “good at not letting people get away with things.”

While Reacher Season 4 sees next to no returning faces, it does add Chris Marquette, Sydelle Noel, AGNEZ MO, Anggun, Kevin Weisman, Marc Blucas, Kevin Corrigan, and Kathleen Robertson to the cast. For their part, the season continues to show Reacher’s focus on doing right by its ensemble cast, even if they’re characters we won’t be seeing in the next season, as a new case is underway.

Without returning characters apart from Jack Reacher, the series nails its format.

Whether it’s Tamara Green (Sydelle Noel) or Jacob Merrick (Christopher Rodriguez Marquette), each of the “side-kicks,” for lack of a better term, does extremely well this season. While each has a unique personality, they are taken on a journey over the course of the 8-episode season that leaves them different from how they started.

That said, it’s Rodriguez Marquette’s role as Jacob, the brother of the woman on the train, that offers the most growth and character stakes. From idealistic New Jersey cop to a man who realizes that the system isn’t built to save, his transformation over the course of the season is the most detailed. Grief propels the character forward into sequences, but a good sense for physical comedy helps keep him grounded in the lighter elements of the series. 

Additionally, the introduction of AGNEZ MO as Lila Hoth gives the series a female action force we haven’t seen yet. In fact, as the series develops her character and that of Amisha (Anggun), Reacher is pushed into a situation he isn’t all too familiar with. What do you do when the people you’re trying to protect are capable? But more importantly, what do you do when the people you’re dedicated to helping aren’t telling you everything?

That’s how the core conflict in the series develops. With each lie giving way to another mysterious layer in the narrative of the season. Still, Reacher Season 4’s larger conspiracy arc is the seasoning for a series that is always propelled by its protagonist, and this time he has to deal with the ramifications and guilt of not being able to save someone, and more broadly, contributing to her fear. 

Reacher Season 4 accomplishes something rare: none of its ensemble cast is wasted.

He may travel with nothing but a toothbrush, but he also carries guilt. We saw a bit of this in Reacher Season 3: the weight our titular character places on himself to take care of those around him. Here, though, it’s that his empathy doesn’t just extend to people he knows, but to anyone he meets. Reacher’s kindness carries the character forward and drives him to extreme measures to make amends for his wrongs. 

Each season of the series opens with a big moment, but in Reacher Season 4, the choice to open with a somber one shifts the season’s expected tone. Throughout its run, the series has gotten increasingly better at blending comedy, action, and intrigue, and that is on full display this season. But as the action intensifies, the showrunners also ensure that Reacher remains emotional. 

Sure, the series is an ode to 90s action in many ways. But in others, Reacher’s stoic nature isn’t ever just one note. The depth that Ritchson brings to Jack Reacher comes from his awareness of his size and its effect on his line delivery. There are moments in Reacher Season 4 where Ritchson’s ability to have a genuine emotional moment comes from how well he is at, well, shrinking himself at times to let the emotion pull through. 

Still, Reacher Season 4 builds on Reacher’s immense empathy for other people in a way that makes his focus on bringing justice to a woman he never met before she took her own life endearing. Jack Reacher, for all of his smartass one-liners and ability to break heads, is driven by a sense of duty that each subsequent season of the series has refined.

Reacher Season 4 doubles down on Jack Reacher’s empathy as much as his strength. 

Last season was personal for Reacher. It was about righting a wrong he couldn’t walk away from when the young woman he mentored was murdered. Now, in Reacher Season 4, the series seems to be closing in on the character’s most important trait: He just cares about people. His sense of justice isn’t just there for people he knows or when the stakes are extremely high for the country’s safety. It is always there. Empathy defines this action star through and through. 

Reacher Season 4 is all gas, no filler. With mercenaries, feds, the CIA, and a little bit of foreign interference, Reacher is on the run from more people than he has been the entire series. And ultimately, the season carries Alan Ritchson even higher in the action canon.

It would have been easy to rest on their laurels and quench the thirst of every viewer to see if Reacher could find someone even bigger than the last guy he fought. Big man fights larger man is a fight concept you can cash a check on, but this season pushes itself to do more. 

For this season, the series leans hard into mystery, surprises, and more brutal choreography. When the action isn’t the centerpiece, the detective work is. Navigating a sensitive situation and guided by his emotions, Reacher Season 4 gives audiences a look at Reacher’s sense of personal duty to right his own wrongs (even if they aren’t ultimately his fault). And yes, Reacher has emotion, even if Ritchson’s deadpan delivery style is meant to obfuscate it. But his earnest nature also sets him up for manipulation you don’t see coming, and neither does he. 

That said, this is still a series defined by its action, and in Reacher Season 4, the fights are more brutal, the hits feel harder, and our titular hero is really tested. With multiple organizations crashing in on him and his charges, Reacher finds himself in fight after fight, each pushing audiences into new locations that embrace environmental combat to build robust action sequences that don’t rely solely on a set piece but highlight the characters doing the fighting.

Reacher Season 4 ups the ante on action-packed.

Where the set and the actors come together, that’s when the series strikes gold with its action design. This is most easily seen at the start of the season when Reacher dispatches an assassin in the basement of the library. While John Wick has one of my own favorite sequences of a man being killed with a book, Reacher takes the cake for a man being killed with books, plural. 

Reacher Season 4 is the biggest the series has ever been in terms of the physicality it demands of its actors and stunt crew. With high-flying acts, crashes, barely evading being hit by a train,  jumping off of roofs, and so much more that would spoil the surprise, it all just keeps getting bigger.

But bigger doesn’t mean just spectacle or loads more CGI to make larger explosions. The dedication to practical effects on screen is when the series shines brightest, with moments defined by stunt work alone reminding every action-lover why they keep showing up for Ritchson’s projects.

As much as Reacher Season 4 is a showcase of the kind of action that is possible when you have a character with brute force as middle name, it also takes a leap into more finessed fight choreography that switches guns for knives, and giants for sparrows. And it’s glorious, especially as women take the spotlight.

Reacher’s approach to action isn’t one-note; it’s one of the most dynamic in Hollywood.

What’s more, by focusing on a different kind of villain and circumstance than we’ve seen before, the show’s fight team puts Ritchson into situations we haven’t seen in his action filmography. Popularized through movies like The Raid and the larger Indonesian action scene defined by stunt choreographer, actor, and trained fighter Yaya Ruhian, the size differential in a fight doesn’t just stun by going bigger; sometimes the smallest opponent is more vicious. And that’s where Reacher Season 4 heads for its finale. 

Reacher, as a series, has a reputation to live up to in its final episode. The climactic action sequences at the end of each season define each. That being said, what we saw at the end of the third season- Reacher fighting a 7’4″ goon who refuses to go down, while he simultaneously and hilariously survives all manner of physical injury that would have killed anyone not named Jack Reacher- is hard to top. But Reacher Season 4 gets really, really close. 

Audiences are used to Reacher being mostly unchallenged unless his enemy has a size advantage or a weapon. I mean, this is a man we have seen deploy a car’s airbags by kicking a car. But when faced with two opponents half his size (and that’s being generous) with a speed advantage, years of training, and a killer instinct, Reacher’s fate isn’t guaranteed.

I mean, sure it is, but with fight choreography that continually puts him at a disadvantage, the final climactic fight sequence is electric. Here, the choreography demonstrates the impact of Ritchson’s size in the role while also highlighting how his physicality shines when facing opponents who force him to think about how to counter situations he isn’t used to. 

Reacher just keeps getting better.

That is ultimately the beauty of the Reacher series. It is constantly looking for new ways to capture pockets of action that it hasn’t done before, and that kind of creativity is what makes Reacher Season 4’s slightly convoluted plot all the more fun to watch. While situations have been slightly predictable since they’ve become more directly tied to facilitating action set pieces or combat moments for the series, they all work. 

More importantly, each episode of Reacher Season 4 feels like a snowball building on itself the more we see of the story until it finally hits you. This is thanks to the season’s stellar pacing, which uses its action as a narrative device, with the violence growing larger, more desperate, and more dangerous with each new sequence. And that is Reacher’s strength as a series: building on itself, consistently one-upping itself with each subsequent season of the Prime Video actioner.

Now, Reacher Season 4 has given us some of the best action one-liners outside the 90s and fight sequences that stand out from the series’ already long list of memorable moments. Alan Ritchson has already made an action name for himself, but with the fourth season of Reacher, he continues to prove that his broad shoulders aren’t just for show; they’re also the perfect foundation to build a franchise on. 

Reacher Season 4 is streaming now on Prime Video. 

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