Reacher Season 4's First Episode Could Mean Big Changes From The Book
by Joe Roberts · /FilmThis post contains spoilers for "Reacher" Season 4, Episode 1, "City of Brotherly Love."
After having faced off against Olivier Richters' giant of a henchman in Season 3 and somehow living to tell the tale, Alan Ritchson's Jack Reacher is back. That epic fight doesn't seem to have slowed Reacher down, though. In the Season 4 premiere, he's already beaten up several goons and got himself immersed in yet another debacle involving the suicide of a government worker. Likewise, the writers haven't slowed down. In fact, they've just breezed through about a third of the book on which Season 4 is based, and we're wondering where things are going from here.
"Reacher" Season 4 is based on the Lee Child book with the most bonkers reveal in the whole series, "Gone Tomorrow." In just one episode, however, the writers have made major changes to the book, moving the action from New York City to Philadelphia and blazing their way through a significant chunk of the story.
In the very first installment of Season 4, entitled "City of Brotherly Love," we've already seen Reacher try and fail to prevent the death of Susan Merrick, face questioning from local police and federal agents, form an alliance with Merrick's brother Jacob (Christopher Marquette), beat up a couple of goons, meet with Lila and Amisha Hoth (Agnez Mo and Anggun), and rescue Lila from an assault on her hotel room. That covers a significant chunk of Lee Child's original story and even embellishes the narrative with extra elements, such as when Reacher crushes a guy between two mobile shelves in a library. All of which raises the question of what the writers have in store for the next seven episodes and how much creative liberty they've taken to extend the story.
Reacher Season 4 is already more than a third of the way through its source material
There's a reason we never saw fan-favorites Oscar Finlay or Roscoe Conklin return to "Reacher" after Season 1. As showrunner Nick Santora put it to Collider, "We're not gonna force anything and we're not gonna do anything that messes up the lore of Reacher." But "Reacher" Season 4 seems to suggest we're about to deviate significantly from Jack Reacher lore.
2009's "Gone Tomorrow" sees the itinerant hero drawn into a complex web of intrigue after witnessing a suicide on the New York subway. He finds himself hunted by federal agents and hired goons, all of whom want him to hand over a flash drive he doesn't actually have. Reacher eventually meets Lila and Svetlana Hoth, two Russian women who are also interested in the drive. But Lila and Svetlana don't appear in "Gone Tomorrow" until Chapter 30 of 84.
"Reacher" Season 4 introduces their on-screen equivalents, Lila and Amisha Hoth, halfway through its premiere episode. That would be less surprising if the rest of the episode hadn't otherwise followed the events of the book. But by the time we meet the pair, we've already seen pretty much everything from the first 30 chapters of the novel play out. In fact, "City of Brotherly Love" introduces us to almost every single major character from the book within about 20 minutes, absolutely careening through the plot and placing us more than a third of the way through the original story by the episode's conclusion. By about Episode 3 or 4, we'll surely be in uncharted territory. But that's kind of exciting, as it means the writers might be getting more comfortable taking their own creative liberties.
Reacher Season 4 feels like a departure for the series
The "Reacher" writing team have several rules guiding their adaptations of Lee Child's books. But fidelity to the author's stories is one of the most important, and that has thus far proven successful. That said, the show hasn't followed the books to the tee. Season 1 introduced Reacher's former 110th Special Investigations Unit colleague Francis Neagley (Maria Sten), despite being based on a book ("Killing Floor") in which Neagley doesn't appear. But Season 4 is the first time it feels as though the writers are burning through source material so quickly.
That isn't necessarily a bad thing. During a Season 4 set visit attended by /Film, Alan Ritchson recalled reading the scripts and being surprised by how quickly certain events from the book occurred. But he teased an exciting solution: "It just keeps getting crazier."
Meanwhile, Lee Child has said he's open to original stories on Prime Video's "Reacher," and it looks as though the writers might be using Season 4 as a test drive in that respect. Of course, we'll have to see how things play out in forthcoming episodes. It seems unlikely that things slow down enough to give Season 4 a chance to sync back up with the pace of the novel. Instead, the writers might try to expand on Child's original story as the season unfolds and push things into "crazier" territory, as Ritchson put it. That's exciting and daunting. If it proves successful, it means the show is good enough that it could expand beyond the novels in future. On the other hand, Child's stories are wildly popular for a reason, and straying too far might prove fatal. For now, we'll have to wait and see where this is all going.