Reacher’s Season 2 Finale Delivers an Explosive Happy Ending

The Season 2 finale of Reacher is everything fans hope it will be, but what’s most interesting is what the ending might mean for Season 3.

The following contains spoilers for Reacher, Season 2, Episode 8, “Fly Boy,” now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

The Season 2 finale of Reacher delivers what audiences expected, from elaborate action sequences to almost impossible feats of strength. Series star Alan Ritchson has a long history with superheroes, playing Aquaman in Smallville and Hawk in Titans.

Of those two characters, Jack Reacher is more like the latter. While he doesn’t have the flamboyant fashion sense of Hawk, his character would fit right in with Batman, the Punisher, or any of the darker costumed vigilantes.

Rather than the costumed fare of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and DC’s various shared live-action continuities, Reacher is inspired by action movies. Action movie characters from the 1980s onwards have always been comic book characters, just without the source material.

The key difference between the superheroes of his past and the ex-US Army Criminal Investigation Division officer Ritchson currently plays falls squarely in morality. He and his fellow members of the now-defunct 110th Special Investigators unit don’t need a superhero code.

As military police officers, it didn’t really matter if the suspects ended up in cuffs or in a cold storage drawer somewhere. This is how it ends for the villains in Reacher Season 2. Most of them end up dead, even those who could’ve been captured.

Extrajudicial executions are just part of the Reacher formula, though. While his morality wouldn’t fly with Superman or Spider-Man, all the right people end up dead. In fact, the most surprising development is all of his friends make it out alive, too.

Well, not Detective Guy Russo, killed in “New York’s Finest” trying to protect a child from hitmen. It doesn’t get more true-blue heroic than that. Over half the members of the 110th are dead, so the victory still feels bittersweet for the characters.

But for the audience, it’s less so because the characters they spent the most time with all survived. And they’re all rich now, too. Presuming a nine-way split of the money, each person gets more than $7 million. That’s a lot of toothbrushes and bus tickets. Though, knowing Reacher, he probably barely kept any of the cash.

“Fly Boy” is a great episode for Robert Patrick, whose appearances as Stephen Langston were mostly limited to the other side of phone calls. Despite Ritchson’s formidable stature, Patrick’s performance shows why he’s still a giant.

Langston is equal parts hateful and pathetic. He’s no moustache-twirling baddie, either. He’s just a corrupt guy trying to retire on blood money whose plan got out of hand.

This works better than making him some ideologue or giving him some more complex motivation. That all this pain and death came from simple greed makes his ultimate comeuppance even more satisfying. Unlike Reacher, he has no sense of loyalty, honor, or even fair play.

Ferdinand Kingsley’s A.M. comes face-to-face with the Special Investigators for the first time, too. Unlike Langston, A.M. presents no challenge at all. They summarily execute him after he makes a baffling attempt to justify being an international arms dealer.

All the asides showing him brutally murdering people along the way weren’t about setting him up as a formidable adversary. Rather, these scenes were included to underscore that he deserved his fate. Again, he could’ve been taken into custody when Reacher’s Homeland Security friends arrived.

There are two moments from the Reacher Season 2 finale that push the limits of viewers’ suspension of disbelief. One still works in spite of this, while the other could undercut the climax of the fight for some. Thrillers like this show rely on twists and turns to keep the audience in suspense.

It seemed like the storytellers were going to defy expectations when it came to the private, ex-military security team Noam Jenkins’s Senator Lavoy sent to help take down Langston and New Age.

Given their military bona fides, it’s disappointing that after fighting side-by-side with a group of fellow veterans, they were so quick to try to kill them in cold blood. The Homeland Security task force showing up “just in the nick of time” was a classic action-movie convention.

After spending most of the season unsettled by the deaths of his comrades and reuniting with his surviving team, Reacher is back on his game. While it got hairy in the middle of the operation, Reacher had every angle covered. It is a triumphant moment, but one that pushes the limits of contrivance.

The other moment from the finale that people might scoff at comes on the helicopter. Serinda Swan’s Karla Dixon is strapped to a gurney, which rolls out of the helicopter. Reacher catches it with one hand and holds on while being pummeled by Langston’s final goon.

Dixon escapes, climbs back onto the helicopter, and the day saves the day. Considering Reacher’s previous displays of strength and factoring in adrenaline, it’s not inconceivable that he’d be able to pull something like that off.

Still, that moment is the strongest evidence yet that Jack Reacher is, in fact, a superhero, which is why it works so well. Seeing Reacher do the impossible with only his wits and brute strength is a big part of the character’s appeal.

Another superheroic sequence comes earlier in the episode before Reacher’s plan really even begins. Handcuffed and surrounded by five of Langston’s men, some of them armed with rifles, Reacher goes to work.

The big question for the forthcoming Reacher Season 3 is how this victory changes the dynamic of the series and the character himself. Reacher’s final line in Season 2 acknowledges that the Special Investigators are all the family he has left.

Just prior to boarding the bus, Maria Sten’s Frances Neagley addresses this, saying she’d like to spend time with Reacher that doesn’t involve bullets and murder investigations.

While Reacher’s lone wolf approach to life works in Lee Child’s books, television is different, as evidenced by Malcolm Goodwin’s Oscar Finlay showing up for a gratuitous cameo in “A Night at the Symphony.” The new status quo for Reacher means characters may return in future seasons for more than a glorified cameo.

The relationship between Reacher and Dixon that began in “What Happens in Atlantic City,” also comes to its inevitable conclusion. Dixon tells him their intimate encounters were unfinished business rather than the start of something bigger.

Ritchson plays that moment perfectly. It’s difficult to tell if Reacher is relieved or disappointed. Another question is whether Dixon really means this or if she’s simply letting Reacher off the hook.

Depending on how many seasons Reacher runs, it’s possible his meandering journey will take him to her to settle down. In the books, Jack Reacher can wander America and kick ass forever, but television might not offer the same luxuries.

It was an interesting choice to adapt the 11th book in the series, Bad Luck and Trouble, for the show’s second season. Like the murder of Joe Reacher in Season 1, it makes the case Reacher investigates deeply personal.

Only, with the 110th back together, Reacher isn’t the smartest person in the room all the time. The murder of his troops, the relationship with Dixon, and reuniting with the team developed Reacher’s character in significant ways. He’s still the same guy he always was, but the façade he built around himself came down a little. For better or worse, it makes him more human.