TAGGED AS: Action, streaming, TV
Your dad’s favorite TV show is back, and Reacher: Season 3 is worth the wait according to the first reviews of its return. Based on the novel Persuader (the seventh book in Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series), the show’s third season continues to bring the action and the multifaceted appeal of Alan Ritchson in the title role. Whether it’s better than previous seasons, let alone its best yet, however, is up for debate, as Reacher’s premise might be starting to feel tired.
Here’s what critics are saying about Reacher Season 3:
Courtesy of Alan Ritchson’s stoic lead performance as the noble behemoth, it remains satisfyingly mean, macho, and — literally and figuratively — muscular.
— Nick Schager, The Daily Beast
Alan Ritchson and the team behind this series have managed to once again deliver an entire season of laughs, surprises, and thrills.
— Aaron Peterson, The Hollywood Outsider
When it comes to television that exists to activate the pleasure sensors of the brain, you simply cannot find a better option than Reacher.
— Jacob Hall, Slashfilm
The third season of Reacher remains relentlessly entertaining.
— M.N. Miller, FandomWire
Even in its third season, Reacher maintains the same tension and adrenaline-fuelled action that defined the first two.
— Abhishek Srivastava, The Times of India
Reacher Season 3 is another thoroughly entertaining chapter in the saga of its titular vigilante vagrant.
— Luke Reilly, IGN Movies
Even though this new season of Reacher feels more like a traditional action-crime show, it’s still one of the better ones of its ilk.
— Nate Richard, Collider
It’s well-done entertainment through and through.
— Dominic Baez, Seattle Times
If you are a fan of Reacher, settle in, because this round is even more brutal and fist-pumping than either of the two before it. In fact, Season 3 is the best season of Reacher yet!
— Aaron Peterson, The Hollywood Outsider
Reacher Season 3 is the best one yet. After a disappointing sophomore effort, the Prime Video series gets its groove back.
— Rafael Motamayor, The Wrap
The new season isn’t just a bounce back: It’s a high watermark for the series so far.
— Jacob Hall, Slashfilm
Season 3 may be Reacher‘s best one yet because the challenges he faces aren’t ones he can punch his way out of.
— Joshua M. Patton, CBR
If Season 3 is anything, it’s Reacher at his most ruthless.
— Luke Reilly, IGN Movies
This is a much darker version of Reacher than we have seen in the first two seasons… The series is not as engaging as last year’s best guilty pleasure or the first season’s superior adaptation.
— M.N. Miller, FandomWire
Reacher Season 3 scales back in scope, taking a more back-to-basics approach… [It] doesn’t have the same big heart that made the first two so special.
— Nate Richard, Collider
Reacher has known from frame one that star Ritchson is the kind of screen presence you build an entire show around, and Season 3 doubles down.
— Jacob Hall, Slashfilm
Ritchson remains… relentlessly entertaining. He continues to possess pitch-perfect comic delivery with an edge that creator Nick Santora knows is essential to the series’ success.
— M.N. Miller, FandomWire
In what is surely the signature role of his career, Ritchson remains everything you could want for the embodiment of Child’s hero, bringing just the right amount of mordant humour — along with the requisite muscles.
— Amon Warmann, Empire Magazine
Ritchson’s droll hulk is charismatic enough to offset the material’s paint-by-numbers plotting.
— Nick Schager, The Daily Beast
The real secret weapon of the season is Sonya Cassidy as Duffy, a DEA agent… [whose] no-nonsense attitude and room-filling Boston accent provide the perfect counterbalance to Ritchson’s laconic energy.
— Jacob Hall, Slashfilm
[Cassidy] is fantastic. The British actress absolutely disappears behind a thick, Boston accent as the no-nonsense DEA agent and she shines with some of the season’s toughest (and often funniest) lines. On top of that, Cassidy’s onscreen brawling is excellent.
— Luke Reilly, IGN Movies
Cassidy is good as Reacher’s woman partner this season and has a welcomingly distinct vibe from Willa Fitzgerald in Season 1 and Serinda Swan in Season 2.
— Tim Stevens, The Spool
Olivier Richters, known as the Dutch Giant, is a refreshing change, towering over the beloved titular character, adding some much-needed suspense.
— M.N. Miller, FandomWire
The real scene-stealer this season is Johnny Berchtold as Richard Beck, Zachary’s son. His subdued performance perfectly captures the constant fear of living under the shadow of his father’s dangerous world, adding an emotional depth that stands out amidst the action.
— Abhishek Srivastava, The Times of India
There’s the always welcome return of Reacher’s brilliant friend/sidekick Frances Neagley, played by the fantastic Maria Sten. In a show full of competent individuals, Neagley stands out time and again.
— Dominic Baez, Seattle Times
The supporting cast doesn’t feel nearly as memorable as previous ensemble characters.
— Nate Richard, Collider
Season 3 introduces the best villain of the show to date, the Bane to Reacher’s Batman, Paulie Masserella (Olivier Richters, The Dutch Giant). This guy is not just a bigger Reacher, he towers over him and makes him look feeble by comparison, while also being a big old sadist who relishes in cruelty and violence.
— Rafael Motamayor, The Wrap
Paulie is bigger, badder, and more unpredictable than Reacher. He also is one foe that Reacher has no idea how to take down, a mystery struggling to be solved. The relationship between these two is a highpoint for this season, and Richters is a dominant menace to Ritchson’s Jack Reacher. This matchup was absolutely worth the wait.
— Aaron Peterson, The Hollywood Outsider
Quinn is the series’ grossest villain to date. While ostensibly motivated by greed, he has a clear love of sadism. That delight in cruelty separates him from the likes of Robert Patrick’s Season 2 mercenary or any member of Season 1’s Kliner crime family. He feels almost Bondian with a larger-than-life swagger.
— Tim Stevens, The Spool
Fans of John Hughes’s ‘80s teen movies will enjoy Anthony Michael Hall’s villainous turn.
— Michael Hogan, Daily Telegraph
Anthony Michael Hall, as businessman Zachary Beck, could have been more menacing, but Brian Tee as Quinn and Olivier Richters as Paulie make up for it with their intimidating screen presence and convincingly ruthless portrayals.
— Abhishek Srivastava, The Times of India
I’m more lukewarm on the key villains this time around, particularly Anthony Michael Hall’s Beck… I really don’t care about him, and I doubt you will either after one particularly unconscionable act.
— Luke Reilly, IGN Movies
This season delivers a gripping mix of suspense, mystery, and action, keeping the plot engaging throughout.
— Abhishek Srivastava, The Times of India
The third season of the popular series hits all the narrative beats you’d expect in a Reacher season.
— Dominic Baez, Seattle Times
With a distinct plot compared to the first two seasons… the series is again improving on what came before it for a solid addition to the franchise.
— Alex Maidy, JoBlo’s Movie Network
Reacher Season 3’s story is fastidiously overcomplicated.
— Tim Stevens, The Spool
Fans of the books and of this show are in for a great season that may be the best Reacher adaptation yet.
— Alex Maidy, JoBlo’s Movie Network
Fans of the novel Reacher Season 3 adapts will know the structure, but the show takes plenty of liberty with the details. Thus, there will still be surprises along the way, even for the real Reacher-heads out there.
— Tim Stevens, The Spool
Devotees of Persuader might have some qualms about how a few minor changes early on begin to stack up in the back half of the season.
— Warren Cantrell, The Playlist
Reacher season 3 diverges a lot more from the novel upon which it’s based than the previous seasons, and not all the changes feel like an improvement – particularly when the consequences of these added events are handwaved off.
— Luke Reilly, IGN Movies
Reacher flexes its action muscles stronger than ever.
— Nate Richard, Collider
This might be the bloodiest season of Reacher, starting out small and quiet before going out in a blaze of glory.
— Rafael Motamayor, The Wrap
The action this season is strong overall, and it features a steady supply of sudden but satisfying kills – many of which are the best in the series so far.
— Luke Reilly, IGN Movies
We came for Ritchson’s brand of bone-crunching, knuckle-busting, lip-splitting action — a show that intends to drag you across concrete with the taste of asphalt in your mouth and bits of glass in your forehead. By that standard, the third season exceeds expectations and then some.
— M.N. Miller, FandomWire
Reacher has no problem with graphic violence, and the Prime series has never been afraid to lean into his bloody style of vengeance. Season 3 is no different: Bones break, blood flows, bullets fly and bodies drop — mostly the villains’, but sometimes the good guys’, too.
— Dominic Baez, Seattle Times
As an action show, Reacher taps back into the more contained, visceral, personal violence that made season 1 feel so brutally alive…the show wisely builds its action around the simple pleasure of watching someone as beefy as Alan Ritchson rip and tear his way through an entire cast of baddies.
— Jacob Hall, Slashfilm
Santora and company fail to devise a signature ass-kicking sight to match last season’s bit in which Reacher kicks a car’s front bumper so hard that it triggers the vehicle’s air bag, thus knocking out the driver.
— Nick Schager, The Daily Beast
In Season 3, Reacher enters a whole new world, and it’s one where he doesn’t fit in… It brings a fresh new dynamic and set of challenges to the capable and unrelenting hero.
— Joshua M. Patton, CBR
This latest season of Reacher proves that familiarity doesn’t have to breed contempt. Twists aside, there’s never really any doubt how all of this will end up — and yet, you can’t stop watching.
— Dominic Baez, Seattle Times
You could argue that following this formula, Reacher has resulted in a rather one-note delivery since his debut on our screens in 2022. But, so what? It’s a note Ritchson has struck with pitch-perfect quality and shows no signs of wavering.
— Nick Staniforth, Total Film
This third volume offers more of the same simple thrills, even if too much of this season coasts on the fundamentals, suffering from some unimaginative direction not doing enough to elevate it.
— Amon Warmann, Empire Magazine
At this stage in the series, its storytelling is too predictable… The show’s refusal to drastically mix things up leads to sporadic stagnation this season.
— Nick Schager, The Daily Beast
It runs the risk of being more of a run-of-the-mill action show.
— Nate Richard, Collider
Reacher is ideal dadcore television.
— Nick Schager, The Daily Beast
I’ve heard Reacher described as a “dad show”… but that ignores the amount of craft and skill necessary to create pure entertainment, and how much talent is required to allow us to get totally and entirely lost in something built to deliver a pure good time.
— Jacob Hall, Slashfilm
It is hard to imagine a more tightly constructed, tense, exhilarating or funny mission for the titular character to take on in the already commissioned Season 4.
— Rafael Motamayor, The Wrap
The next time around, Reacher would benefit from a mission that takes him further out of his comfort zone.
— Nick Schager, The Daily Beast
It might be beneficial for the next season to spice things up a little more, especially as the cracks are starting to show in the series’ latest batch of episodes.
— Nate Richard, Collider
Since there are at least two dozen other books in the series that haven’t been adapted yet, I’m curious, and excited, to see what comes next for our wandering hero. I’m just hoping he gets a new toothbrush before then.
— Dominic Baez, Seattle Times
Reacher: Season 3 premieres on Prime Video on February 20, 2025.
