Reacher Season 3 Adds ‘80s Brat Pack Member and Lodge 49 Star as First New Characters

Reacher fans are already anticipating the third season of the action series, even if season two left some feeling a little unimpressed when compared to its predecessor. Despite a dip in positive reviews, Reacher is still a viewership juggernaut for Prime Video, and the new season has been adding more newcomers to the cast to join Alan Ritchson’s titular drifter.

Compared to the two movies based on Lee Child’s novels, which starred Tom Cruise in the lead role, Reacher has been far and away the more superior adaptation. Ritchson himself perfectly embodies Jack Reacher in a way that Cruise just couldn’t. Season one set the stage for the series, with Reacher’s investigation into a deep-rooted conspiracy in the fictional town of Margrave, Georgia, delivering on pretty much every level. Season two brought in a mostly new cast in support of Ritchson, as Reacher reunited with his former military police unit to solve the murder of a teammate in a new story that did not act as a continuation of Reacher’s story, but as simply another tale to be told.

The upcoming season three, based on Child’s 2003 novel “Persuader,” is once again expected to see a mostly new roster of stars joining the show, and the latest of those are Anthony Michael Hall as Zachary Beck, a businessman and single father whose carpet business raises suspicions of being more than it appears, and Sonya Cassidy, who will portray Susan Duffy, a sharp-witted DEA agent from Boston, who also acts as a love interest for Reacher.

Can Reacher Season 3 Right the Wrongs of Season 2?

As Reacher season three prepares to get production moving, the addition of Hall and Cassidy signals another changing of the guard when it comes to the supporting cast of the series. The approach to Reacher is one that allows anyone to drop in on the show for a season without needing to really know what happened previously – a no-commitment approach that is almost a mirror of the show’s titular hero.

However, that lack of character development can lead to some viewers feeling unfulfilled, especially when the quality of the writing in the second season was called into question by both audiences and critics. Star Ritchson seems quite happy to be part of a show that doesn’t spend a lot of time showing a lot of character development, and instead takes the same approach as shows like The Simpsons, where the season ends and characters are just the same as when it started. Speaking previously to Stream Wars in response to complaints over Reacher’s lack of character arc, Ritchson countered:

“You know, people want to know how he’s grown or changed… How addicted are we to character arcs? Why can’t we have more Tom Hanks’s, you know? Like that dude’s never had a character arc in the world. He’s not changing just because he’s off the island with the volleyball now, like, he’s the same dude. He’s still trying to deliver packages on time. That’s Reacher. And maybe we should just enjoy the fact that he hasn’t grown at all. Maybe he hasn’t grown. He doesn’t have any new responsibilities or a contract that he has to uphold and honor, he has a toothbrush. Maybe he brushes his teeth more, maybe he’s got better hygiene.”

1:56

Related

Reacher Season 3 Plot Revealed, Will Find Jack Reacher Going Undercover for the DEA

The novel that Reacher season three will be based on has finally been revealed, suggesting a lone-wolf adventure for Alan Ritchson’s action hero.

It seems unlikely that season three of Reacher will be looking to mess with the format that saw season two become the biggest debut of 2023 for Prime Video, so we can expect more of the same old, same old, when Reacher returns to take on his next case.