‘Reacher’ Season 3 review: Alan Ritchson delivers a gigantic pay off

In Reacher Season 3, the fight between Alan Ritchson’s Reacher and Olivier Richters’ Paulie is worth the wait in this adaptation of Lee Child’s ‘Persuader’

The fight we were all waiting for — the one between Jack Reacher (Alan Ritchson) and the much bigger henchman, Paulie (Olivier Richters) takes place in the dynamite season finale. And the wait is worth it as the two giants slug it out inside, outside, in water and on land with crunching bones and dizzying head butts.

Reacher Season 3, based on Lee Child’s hugely popular series detailing the adventures of an iterant former MP who goes about the countryside like a knight errant righting wrongs, is based on Child’s seventh book, ‘Persuader’.

The show begins like most of the books and the previous two seasons, with Reacher drifting into town, this time in Maine, but with a difference. He goes into a record shop to sell some vinyl. Reacher sees a student, Richard Beck (Johnny Berchtold), being kidnapped and in helping him, accidentally shoots a cop.

Needing somewhere to lay low, Richard tells Reacher, his father, Zachary (Anthony Michael Hall), a dealer in oriental rugs, will help. As Reacher and Richard go to the palatial family home by the sea, Reacher meets Paulie, Zachary’s bodyguard, who is bigger than Reacher and has some horrid history to boot.

We later learn that Reacher is working undercover with Susan Duffy (Sonya Cassidy) from the DEA. The cop, Reacher apparently killed, is Susan’s colleague, Villanueva (Roberto Montesinos). Reacher wants to infiltrate Beck’s operation after he sees his nemesis, Francis Xavier Quinn (Brian Tee), whom he thought he had dispatched during his Army days with a bullet to the head, with Beck.

Quinn was a corrupt U.S. military intelligence officer who tortured and killed Dominique Kohl (Mariah Robinson), who was assisting Reacher in his investigation into Quinn. Susan is interested in Beck as Teresa (Storm Steenson), her informant in Beck’s operation, goes missing. She wants to bring Teresa back and Reacher wants to avenge Kohl.

The episodes hurtle by in a flurry of action, cracked heads, twists and turns, great music and humour (the way everyone chants Bizarre Bazaar like a mantra is quite hilarious). Fan favourite, Frances Neagley (Maria Sten), who served with Reacher in the 110th and is now earning big bucks in corporate security, makes a welcome appearance. Quinn’s evilness is somewhat overshadowed by Paulie, even though through the eight episodes Reacher seems to underline how dreadful Quinn is.