TL;DR – Reacher has a nasty habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Disclosure – I paid for the Amazon Prime subscription that viewed this series.

Warning – Contains scenes which may cause distress.

Reacher Review Introduction

I was captivated by Reacher in its first two seasons. Season One was a breath of fresh air in a very stale genre, and Season Two escalated that to new heights. However, I came off Season Three with a real concern that the wind might be going out of this franchise. Well, today, we will dive into the first episode of the new season to see if it can buck off the languishing legacy of last season and forge new ground.

So, to set the scene, it is 2:18 am in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. Reacher (Alan Ritchson) is taking one of the last trains for the night when he notices a woman in clear distress, her hands hidden in a bag. Fearing the inevitable disaster, he tries to talk the lady down from the coming disaster. But when he lies to say he is a cop, hoping that will stop the escalation, it has the opposite result. Reacher feels like he failed the woman in her hour of need, but worse, every department in the federal government is now very interested in a suicide on an early morning train. Now, from here, we will be looking at the episode as a whole, so there will be [SPOILERS] ahead.

Set Up

Now, one of the things this episode has to do well is set up the central mystery that is going to be the core focus of the rest of the season. The opening episode has a very simple hook to hang everything on: What did Anna Merrick (Karen Kwong-Chip) have on her JumpDrive? It is the single seed that grows a mystery that you want to find out about. From all accounts, Anna was a nice person, but she clearly found something that made the calculation of ending her life feel like a good option. From this stems Reacher’s guilt, mysterious senators, tied cops, missing kids, interested feds, and men with blades. It has all the components that make me want to click that ‘watch next episode ’ button.     

Impact

The other thing that the episode has to do is set the tone, and in a show like Reacher, that involves a beatdown or two. One of the things that sets Reacher and its actor, Alan Ritchson, among many of their contemporaries is that fights do feel like a battle. Okay, not the first beatdown, but it is a challenge to take down trained, armed assailants, no matter how swole you are, and Alan Ritchson is a very swole man. He has the power to make killing someone in a library’s compact shelving feel possible, but an iron to the face is still an iron to the face.   

Recommendation

In the end, do we recommend Reacher: City of Brotherly Love? Yes, we do. It did everything that an opening episode of a television show like this needed to do. It showed the stakes, it presented a mystery, and then welcomed an explosion of muscle on the scene. Have you seen Reacher yet? Let us know what you thought in the comments below.

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Bluesky at @Tldrmovrev, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

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Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of Reacher
Directed by – Sam Hill
Written by – Nick Santora
Created by – Nick Santora
Based on – Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child
Production/Distribution Companies – Amazon MGM Studios, Skydance Television, Paramount Television Studios, Blackjack Films & Amazon Prime
Starring – Alan Ritchson, Sydelle Noel, Agnez Mo, Anggun, Christopher Rodriguez-Marquette, & Kevin Corrigan
With – Dean Armstrong, Jason Diaz
And – Karen Kwong-Chip, Kerby Darius, Michael Gaty, Armando Alera, & Joël Owens