With just a couple of episodes remaining in Reacher Season 4 on Prime Video, the body count keeps climbing over that cursed flash drive. Last time we saw him, Jack Reacher was in serious trouble, trapped inside the abandoned restaurant Lila and Amisha had converted into a makeshift slaughterhouse. For a moment, it looked as if the big guy might actually have to surrender the prize, especially with Amisha pressing her karambit against Jacob’s neck. But Season 4 has found a way to make the show’s formula even more elastic. Yes, the series still knows exactly how to deliver a classic Reacher beatdown. But it has also discovered a new trick for escalating its increasingly absurd, custom-built fight scenes: when Reacher is cornered by one enemy, simply throw in several more. They do not even need names. In Episode 6, right as Reacher appears ready to hand Lila the flash drive, another squad of anonymous armed thugs bursts through the place. Smoke grenades fill the room, turning the latest round of Reacher chaos into a murky, bone-crunching free-for-all.
There is something oddly admirable about a show this committed, week after week, to its own ridiculous rhythm. No one can see through the smoky haze, but bullets are flying, the Indonesian assassins are cutting people up, and Reacher is launching bodies through decaying drywall like it is just another Tuesday. By the end, the nameless gunmen are stacked among the defeated, Lila has slipped away with the flash drive after snatching it in the confusion, and the only named casualty is Russell Plum. He catches a bullet in the lung, though the conspiracy-minded blogger is not finished yet. Before heading to the emergency room with Jacob, Russell manages to give Reacher and Tamara the name of the chemist from the disputed file photo. They have lost the drive, but they have picked up a crucial lead.
“We look like shit, and you’re covered in blood. That stands out, even in Philly.” After escaping the scene of their latest violent mess, Green drags Reacher into an alley so they can clean up with a hose and hunt down whatever discarded clothes they can find. For Reacher, that means a promotional T-shirt big enough to double as a tent, advertising King Tough with the slogan “get cracked in Philadelphia.” Tamara ends up in a Lehigh Valley Phantoms shirt, a nod to her beloved Flyers’ minor-league affiliate. Taking in the sight of her massive, shirtless partner, she makes it clear that “Conan” is not her type. Still, she has questions — particularly about Reacher sleeping with the enemy. After all, there is only one way Lila could have known about the scar she mentioned, the rough, prominent line stitched across his stomach. It is a familiar piece of Reacher lore, famously tied to shrapnel from a terrorist bomber. “Lila sexed you up to get you to do what she wants,” Tamara says. That is not exactly the full story, though. Reacher and Lila very much sexed each other up.
Besides, technically speaking, all of that happened before Lila was exposed as the karambit killer. And Reacher, for his part, has never exactly been a stranger to killing. Hidden away in the luggage hold of a tourist bus where he and Tamara have stowed themselves, he shrugs off the idea of consequences. Accountability for his choices? Please. That belongs to a different kind of show. The bus carries them about 90 minutes outside Philadelphia, toward the headquarters of a pharmaceutical company founded by Leo Ahlquist (Shawn Doyle), the chemist from the past.
Now that the flash drive is in their possession, Lila and Amisha’s operation comes into sharper focus. They are not improvising; they have infrastructure. There are additional gunmen on standby, rows of beakers, burners and laboratory equipment, plus overworked tech specialists who clearly do not appreciate being micromanaged by impatient assassins casually spinning blades nearby. The computer team is using artificial intelligence to enhance the background of the photo stored on the flash drive, while Lila and Amisha have already arranged buyers for whatever formula or process they are trying to reconstruct. The only problem is that everything is moving too slowly for their taste. Then a visitor arrives. “Thank you for your act of selflessness,” they tell him. The man can only be Tomas Waberi (Talijah Levene), the enigmatic traveler from Djibouti. However he fits into the larger plot, it is safe to assume his role is tied to their fanatical, murderous worldview. “I’ll walk through hell with you,” Lila tells Amisha, her eyes flashing with the same cold brightness as a blade.
And how about this for some boutique fight sequence silliness? Reacher and Green discover Leo Ahlquist in his company’s server room, where he’s desperately feeding hard drives into an industrial crusher. Destroying evidence. And with its hungry maw of churning metal teeth, the machine might as well be Chekov’s gun. “I knew you or someone like you would show up!” Ahlquist says. He was warned by Cahill, Sampson’s chief of staff who tried to raw dog gravity. What they did back in Indonesia during the ’90s would be found out one day, and that day is today. Ahlquist is frantic. Right up until his latest group of mercenaries enter the room.
So all season long, the nameless mercs who crashed Reacher’s stomping parties were hired by Ahlquist to cover his involvement. “At great expense,” he adds, which tees up Reacher’s comeback. “Shame I killed so many.” It also tees up the latest throwdown. Tamara Green beats one guy with a server blade while Reacher does indeed plunge an attacker’s hand into the server crusher. It’s as satisfying as the look on Alan Ritchson’s face when Reacher does it. But it does not end this battle. The Big Cheesesteak gets tased for his efforts, and Tamara is subdued. They wake up cuffed, in the back of a van, with a tarp spread beneath them. This is the end of the line. The latest tight spot. They are about to be killed. But this is also Reacher, so maybe — probably — not.
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Pocket Items for Reacher Season 4 Episode 6 (“Plum Out of Luck”):
- Jacob called his “unc” for help. Bad idea. Marty Derosa (Nick Searcy), his father’s old partner from Episode 5, sells him out. Derosa shows up in Philly, but turns Jacob over to Docherty. We still don’t know what side he’s on!
- “You put your arm around Paul Bunyan, and called him your old friend in front of the media.” Elspeth Sampson worries about the ever-widening Reacher-sized hole being blown in her husband’s political campaign.
- NHL centers and wingers are well-represented among the childhood pet names of Detective Tamara “Don’t be shitty to my Gritty” Green. The lifelong Philadelphia Flyers fan remembers some guys — Eric Lindros, Bobby Clarke, Tim Kerr, Dave Shultz — as she’s trying to deflect her brain from tourist bus claustrophobia.
- “I once told a friend, we live and then we die — as long as we do both properly, we don’t have much to regret.” This is Reacher to Tamara as they anticipate being murdered by Ahlquist’s goons. But it’s also Reacher referencing Frances Neagley (Maria Sten), his old Army homie, de facto bff and longtime spiritual backstop. We can’t wait for Neagley to be the star of her own throwdown.
Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.