He’ll Take The Elevator: Defector Reacher Creatures On ‘Reacher’ Season Four

The fourth season of Amazon’s Reacher, which was based on Lee Child’s book Gone Tomorrow and set largely in Philadelphia, came to a close earlier this week. Defector’s elite Reacher Creature team was convened to discuss this unusually brutal and mostly quite good season of the show; you can find our discussions of previous seasons here and here. The post contains a bunch of spoilers.

David: Reacher Creatures, how are we recovering from Reacher Season 4: Showdown At Hoagie Junction? I assume we are all leaving the hospital against medical advice after sustaining thousands of brutal wounds from a bladed weapon, tearing a wan cheesesteak in half on the subway to share with those in need, things of that nature?

Brandy: After having a not great time with Season 3, for various reasons, I was thrilled to discover my love of Reacher was able to make a similarly miraculous recovery.

Chris: Seasons 2 and 3 were letdowns in stupid but meaningful ways, so I was not expecting very much from Season 4. But it kicked butt, man! It might not have had all the magic of Margrave, but our boy was up and moving and his sidekicks were mostly fine, and there was less pew-pew and more punch-punch.

Justin: Our large lad is back in fighting form! More importantly, I feel like story-wise and character-wise they recalibrated this military investigator into a killing machine that was slightly more vulnerable, and put him into a story that was not completely dumb on its face. Give me some 1980s TV tropes and a whodunnit with a sturdy foundation and I’m set!

Brandy: The funny part is the stakes of this season were ridiculously high, danger-wise, but the interpersonal dynamics felt more manageably sized, which I think helped? I was relieved we only had to suffer through one Reacher sex scene.

Justin: OK, see I feel like the sex scene was rehabilitated thanks to the (inevitable) plot twist/heel turn? Like, why else would this woman look at this bleeding, hulk of a man and say: I must have him?

Chris: The stakes of this season turned out to be so much higher than any previous season! For one thing, at times it felt like Philadelphia was under martial law and every single set of eyes in the place was seeking our boy. But then it turned out that the bad guys wanted to go WMD mode, and now I’m slightly worried that Reacher has entered an Avengers-esque stakes thing where like any subsequent bad guys will have to be bent on cosmic annihilation to not feel small-time by comparison. Can Reacher defeat Thanos???

David: Nothing less than the lives of thousands of hoagiemouth commuters was at stake. They would have been like “oh no, a neurotoxin” in their accent.

Brandy: So, Chris, I was trying to remember exactly what happened in the book this is adapted from, which I remembered was set in New York. So right from the jump they were taking liberties. Also the book did not feature a chemical weapon! Rather, the photo in question, which everyone is chasing all season long, was of a prominent politician who had done black ops work in Afghanistan standing with his arm around Osama bin Laden (lol). But I was happy to get swept up in this new concept. They might have killed Kelsey and Kathryn! And I guess also Luis. 

David: With respect those people’s asses are not commuting.

Chris: Ha! Not Osama bin Laden!

Justin: I do like that they got to play around with genre a little bit? Like it wanted to be a little political thriller, but also small town cop justice? You’ve got the handsome political candidate (RIP to Buffy’s college boyfriend) and also a lone good cop/cop redemption arc? Sure, it turned into terrorism theater at the end, but honestly give me wave after wave of goons, and that’s a fun time.

Chris: By the end of the finale, I was pondering half-seriously whether this season of Reacher would fit in the horror genre. The action climax featured just an insane amount of gore.

David: It is a strange thing to say about a show that frequently involves an enormous man folding up minor baddies like a freshly laundered fitted sheet and then muttering some quip about it or saying “now I want pancakes,” but Reacher has always been Wife Programming in our household. It’s not necessarily her sort of thing, but it’s always at least a little bit funny, the action brutal but seldom especially bloody, and also there is not a lot of TV to watch in the late summer. But the finale, and especially the wild and brutal showdown with our two main villains and their weird knives, was entirely too gnarly for [wife name redacted]. And while we both enjoyed the season very much I am concerned that if it gets too heavy this might become a solo experience for me, and thus harder to justify. That is why fellow Reacher Creature Tom Ley fell off the beam this year. It’s one thing to curl up with someone you love to watch the big fella squash a guy to death in a public library and then chuck him down some sort of chute. But I don’t know that I could or would do it on my own.

Chris: Tom Ley revealed that he lacks A Code and so unfortunately Reacher had to do a Mortal Kombat-style fatality to him in the Defector office. I feel like Reacher is a quintessential what the hell are you watching show, but even within that there were moments of violence in this season that felt shocking even to a seasoned Reacher Creature. 

David: There was a lot of collateral damage this season, too, and we got to see all of these innocents gurgle and bleed out. And then the finale was basically The Raid levels of action for much of the episode, with some preposterously outsized kills as punchlines. There are always going to be taste-level issues with Reacher; they are part of the fun and I think also part of the point. But while I don’t oppose an elevator decapitation on principle, I think it’s somehow poor form to do it to an otherwise unremarkable goon. Total Recall knew to save that shit for Michael Ironside.

Justin: I don’t think I needed to know the answer to the question “how much blood does a man like Jack Reacher contain in his body,” but the finale definitely wanted me to find out. They really wanted to ride that line between “pure, uncut adrenaline” of ’90s pulp action excellence, and “peeking through my fingers” grindhouse. Nailguns, elevators, buckets of viscera. And yet, I had no choice but to pump my fist over how absolutely, beautifully dumb it was, even as my partner, sitting next to me working on her laptop, said, “This is unhinged.”

Chris: There were four kills in this season that I feel like I would’ve had to apologize for if I’d had my wife watching it with me: Elevator Guy, unsuspecting drug tester, Lila, and the evil beard guy who spent the better part of an episode explaining what is going on and why. Beard guy’s death just seemed very mean and uncool, but those other three were jaw-droppingly gruesome as visual spectacles.

David: One of the things I admire about the show is that every Reacher season so far has existed within or adjacent to a different genre. The genre that this one is closest to, which as Justin says is more or less that sort of dippy ‘80s-’90s race-against-time political thriller, is one I personally like much more than Paramilitary Action. But while it leaned on the tropes very heavily in that Reacher way, this season also has the goods in the most basic sense. The action, for instance, is so good—so creative in stupid ways/stupid in creative ways, and also so amusingly tasteless—that there are times when the show basically scans as a high quality Normal Action Product. The action is decently easy to see, and you can see enough of it that it’s harrowing in the way you want, and I give Sam Hill and Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead director Gary Fleder (!) a lot of credit for that. It’s nothing special, but it is a fun sort of thing to watch and much harder to find than it once was. Was it too normal for you, in that way?

Justin: That’s why I think the show found itself again. The fight choreography was much more granular and clean? They took their time giving our large lad different variety of goons, including some who actually seemed to challenge him, which was refreshing. Like the library fight in the early episodes, I remember thinking: “OK, they understand that our boy isn’t gonna die, but maybe some peril would be nice.”

Brandy: Yeah it hit some real classic Tom Clancy highlights, including the requisite scene where someone is racing against the clock to print or download a file. Obviously Reacher is the size of two Jacks Ryan but I did like having him play political operator. That being said, I think the politician dying a hero was a bit hack. 

Justin: Dying at the math of: Two Jack Ryans = One Jack Reacher. It was funny that Reacher was so clever and cunning on military strategy and formations, but also so powerfully dumb that he was being outmaneuvered by what was essentially an internet scam in the first third of the story.

David: I agree to a certain extent on the politician point, although Marc Blucas has been a good soldier in a number of Hallmark movies I’ve watched—often quite literally playing A Good Soldier in those movies—and so it was nice to see him turn in a productive shift at The Reacher Factory. And honestly it might have been roughly as trite to have him be a bad guy? I was trying to parse the direction of that character according to The Reacher Rules, which dictate that a troop will on balance be good, and the general action movie conventions, which is that if something bad is happening some SOFT POLITICIAN IN A SUIT is responsible for it.

Chris: For a while there I was convinced that Kathleen Robertson’s character, the icy wife with the severe hairdo, was going to be the True Villain. I was genuinely thrown when it turned out to be Reacher’s sex friend and erstwhile ally. And when that one evil CIA guy turned up at the end to get vengeance or whatever, I was like “Wait, who is this again? Who does he work for?” Lots of villains this time. 

Brandy: I also expected the wife to be a villain, so I guess points to Reacher for giving only one woman the surprise villain arc this season. 

David: That’s just how Kathleen Robertson looks! She has had that energy since Beverly Hills 90210, and with all due respect personally I would love to have her fix me with a withering glare and then betray me in some terrible way. But I agree that it was gratifying that they resisted convention there a little bit. Also I will share my favorite Marc Blucas factoid here, which is that he started alongside Tim Duncan at Wake Forest and the two are still good friends.

Chris: What!

David: Randolph Childress was on that team as well but I don’t know if the two are still close like that. Sadly the conversation about whether Wake Forest’s Dave Odom Era exists in the Reacherverse must be tabled for the time being.

Brandy: I am also allotting one Ally Point for making the most annoying character in this season a man. Namely, the brother who keeps making the same stupid mistake every episode. Get it together, dude! Do what Reacher tells you!

Justin: I was completely in the tank for the Deputy Dog/Barney Fife character. It was honestly a little refreshing in the Reacherverse to find someone who was genuine, but also completely bumbling. We don’t need everyone to be a former assassin or member of a SEAL team! That said, they just had no other beats for that character other than “aw gosh, my sister and nephew are gone and I maybe, sorta, want bloody vengeance.”

Chris: What did we think of the blogger guy? Would we hire him at Defector? 

Brandy: I would accept one pitch and complain a lot about the shape of the first draft.

David: That sounds right to me. I am glad that, for all the terrible things we saw in this season of Reacher, we did not have to hear the big fella learn what Substack was.

Brandy: OK, speaking of the blogger, how did Reacher get him that kitten back so fast?

David: He stayed focused on the mission! That’s how you do it! 

Chris: You just know it involved a huge pile of mangled bodies at the chop shop. Do not stand between Reacher and his mission.

David: The poor chop shop guy seemed to be getting attached to the cat, too. But I guess you have to give the audience what they want, which is Big Ass Alan Ritchson holding a very small cat and then giving it to the very small blogger man who took two to the chest as part of his ad hoc squad. 

Chris: The scene where the blogger guy had to get to the phone was hilarious. I was thinking they must be hard up for plot developments if they can spend 11 minutes on this marginal guy inching across a hospital room. But he was a pretty fun side character with some useful chaotic energy and goofy/timely comedic release-valve lines and moments.

David: One of the Reacher bits I like most is him collecting strays (or just convincing a few local cops he’s legit) and I did like the squad this year. I think Sydelle Noel, as Detective Tamara, was pretty easily the best supporting Reacher buddy since the first season, and added a lot of value in a part that really otherwise didn’t have much dimension. I guess she was in GLOW, which I didn’t watch, but I hadn’t really seen her in anything before.

Brandy: A real highlight for me was her grizzled partner. That’s a guy I’m always happy to see, and they gave him the line “online, she goes by Smellen Degenerate” which I will remember fondly.

David: The God Kevin Corrigan, the requisite character actor ringer in every Reacher cast. I loved him. I liked how rude he was to Reacher and how dyspeptic and pained-looking he was throughout.

Justin: The way I levitated in the first few eps with all of the “that guy!” coming through for a Reacher season.  

David: One thing we talked about a bit during the season that I want to address here: was Reacher too dumb this year? Like the guy, not Reacher the show. I know part of the idea is that he is the favorite in every fight and the smartest guy in every room, but he both gets his ass beat pretty bad this year (which is good, I think) and also is not necessarily right as often as he usually is. Which I think is also good, but perhaps a betrayal of Lee Child’s vision for the guy. How were you on Reacher’s Alpha Levels this season?

Chris: It seemed like they didn’t work as hard to set up moments where Reacher (and only Reacher) can assemble rock-solid hypotheses out of a bunch of tiny random clues, which was so much fun back in sunny Margrave. This season probably could’ve traded one or two of the sequences where he and Tamara were running from the cops, only for the cops to come screeching around a corner ahead of them, and then they had to turn sideways and run some more, for a couple of those moments where Reacher blows everyone’s mind with his deductive reasoning. But whatever, I mean, the season worked so well, who am I to complain?

Justin: See, I thought this was a boon for this season! I liked there being some misdirection and some classic detective novel tropes of setting up a cast of unreliable characters. I think having Reacher out of his depth a little was really helpful.

David: I did kind of miss the scenes of him guessing a fallen comrade’s email password based on a conversation they had years ago about Ryan Doumit’s appalling catcher defense or whatever. “Try ‘Russell Martin.’ He always admired a solid defensive backstop.” But these are very minor complaints. I think the season was on balance very successful at delivering both Reacher-stuff and more normal style satisfactions.

Brandy: We all agreed that the problem with Season 2 and especially Season 3 was Reacher was starting to get too big, and I mean that both literally and in a more thematic sense, so this storyline having him battle forces that are so much larger than him I think was a needed reset? One key part of his character was that he left the military in part because he did not like being part of this enormous machine, some parts of which he could not see, so you get a sense of that here.

David: I agree with both him being the right size and with this season’s story putting him in a place where his Reacher-ness made the most sense and was the most convincing. Ritchson remains large and extremely venous, which is his right, but he didn’t have that Refrigerator On A Dolly physicality he did last year. And also this season delivered another thing that no season since the first really did, which was a sense of place. I groused that last season, which was set in Maine, was some of the most transparently British Columbia Shit I’ve ever seen in my life, but this one, while still pretty suspiciously Canadian in some ways, really did have a decent amount of exterior stuff shot in Philadelphia, including a chase through The Magic Gardens, and I think it helped a lot. I am obviously not in this for a realistic depiction of anything, but it does add something to me to see all this goofy and preposterously unrealistic stuff unfolding in an actual place.

Justin: I agree on the Philly of it all, but my god did this season have way too much commuting to D.C. Chris, walk us through the logistics of beltway traffic.

Chris: An important thing that I learned about Philadelphia from this season: If basically anything unexpected or inconvenient happens in Philly, the first thing you have to do is you have to drive to D.C. You’ll be there in a couple hours.

David: Yeah I don’t have the scars that Chris does in this regard but “just pop down to D.C.” is so obviously not the experience I have ever had trying to get into that city that it gave me cold chills. “Simply get on a Fung Wah bus and arrive seven hours later and extremely carsick” scans a lot more credible.

Chris: It played as a fun joke in the finale when they were driving their asses once again to D.C. and then Reacher leaned forward and said “Turn around.” If that’d been in a theater everyone would’ve applauded. 

Brandy: So, we all loved this season, but did anyone love it enough to try watching Neagley? 

David: We have had the conversation in our household, and that conversation is ongoing at this time. But at this point I’m not sure it’s looking good.  

Chris: Sorry to Neagley, but that will simply never happen.

Justin: I was barely able to watch a season of Reacher. Literally I had to stop the finale after Reacher was in the middle of the street because my youngest daughter woke up, only to return to it later. Apologies Neagley, I am not a good ally.

David: I think we’ve covered much of the important stuff here, so I suggest we conclude by picking our favorite Reacher Moment of the season. Something the big fella said or did that made you think That’s So Reacher. No wrong answers here.

Brandy: His very Reacher-y way of taking that elevator up a few floors in the finale. I was kicking up my feet on the couch.

Justin: I think it was the bowling alley fight for me? I was watching that ep while taking care of my 17-month old, and something about the needle drop and the fact he was swinging on dudes with a bowling ball. Both of us were cackling. Pure Reacher.

Chris: I liked Reacher smushing himself into a garbage chute during one of his many narrow escapes. Honorable mentions go to Reacher using a huge metal door as a bullet shield and then a gruesome attack weapon, and to Reacher learning the names of the three B-Team bozos and accepting their gratitude for “everything he’s done for the nation” or whatever. That’s Reacher as hell.

David: “And thank you for sucking ass at your jobs, which I do not respect in the least.” These are all wonderful moments, the elevator one especially had us hooting very strongly. Also there was some nice fan service—or, anyway, some nice Me And Chris Service—in scenes of Reacher holding or eating sandwiches that looked small in his hands. It’s the little things. Which I guess brings me back to the kitten. Reacher should hold more animals. If Amazon had any studio execs know their jobs at all they’d be putting him in a situation to cradle more household pets.

Chris: Reacher Season 5 will take place entirely in a pet store.