While it once again delivers a solid mystery as a backdrop for further exploring its titular character, the second season of Reacher ultimately feels like a step down from its predecessor thanks to a misused supporting cast, lacklustre payoffs and a dwindling sense of identity. It’s not a bad season of television by any stretch of the imagination, but with a noticeable decline in the general quality of the writing and cinematography too, it seems that the previous instalment may have been little more than a case of lightning in a bottle.

I was rather fond of the first season of Reacher when it dropped at the start of 2022; the tale of an absolute beast of a man turning up in a town in the middle of nowhere only to stumble across a conspiracy that took the life of his brother was a solid premise, and it continued to keep me engaged thanks to a gripping mystery, great characters and a high production quality across its eight episode run. For more on that, you can read my Season 1 Review here, but it nevertheless felt like a given that Amazon would pick up the show for a second outing – this time based on the eleventh book from Lee Child’s series of novels, Bad Luck and Trouble. Being more than satisfied with the premiere season, I was fully on-board for another adventure with the titular titan, but coming out of the latest eight episode run I have to say I’m left feeling pretty let down.

Spoilers ahead!

When a member of his old military unit is found dead after being dropped from a helicopter, the eponymous Jack Reacher (Alan Ritchson) is whisked away from his nomadic lifestyle by his trusted friend Frances Neagley (Maria Sten), another member of the Special Investigators returning from the previous season. When it comes to light that Reacher’s old team is being targeted deliberately, he sets about reassembling the 110th and hunting down the killers. It does feel a little similar in its premise to Season One, only swapping out Reacher’s brother for his old friends, but it nevertheless gives our protagonist and his allies an indisputable personal connection to the mystery that serves as their motivation throughout the plot. Still, Reacher once again delivers a solid conspiracy for our characters to solve as they uncover the truth behind a military company called New Age Technologies and their plans to sell dangerous new missile technology to a terrorist weapons broker. There’s plenty of twists and turns to keep you hooked into the mystery, including a building suspicion that the team have been betrayed by one of their own, and the writers even find a clever way to bring back Malcolm Goodwin’s Detective Finlay from Season One for a little bit of heart-warming fan service that manages not to feel shoehorned in. The lack of a consistent setting does mean you lose a little bit of investment in the plot, which is probably why I didn’t feel so invested this time around, but with regards to its story, Reacher‘s second outing only slightly lags behind its predecessor in terms of quality.

Unfortunately the same can’t be said across the board – the general competence of the writing can definitely feel a bit more lax as compared to the first season, with a lot of lucky saves and unnecessary convolution in the plot that diminishes the overall quality of the scripts. This is evident nowhere more clearly than in the finale, which asides from feeling very similar to Season One’s last episode with the whole “Reacher and Neagley raiding a warehouse full of bad guys to rescue his friends” thing, is frankly just a mess thanks to a cavalcade of inept writing choices throughout. The production quality also feels like it’s taken a bit of a dive – action setpieces feel less impressive in general, but some moments (like Reacher booting a car so hard it dents the hood) can feel a little… comic-book-y, when previously Reacher’s brute strength at least felt a little grounded, especially with the quality of the fight choreography. Still, it doesn’t compare to the downright horrendous helicopter fight scene at the end, marking the first time Reacher fully broke my suspension of disbelief with one of the dumbest final showdowns I’ve ever seen. Add in the drab, washed out colouration and pretty uninspired cinematography in general, and it seems to herald a decline in production values throughout this season, which is a shame seeing as the visuals were one of my biggest points of praise for Season One. Again, this was by no means a poor season of television, but failing to surpass the bar set by its predecessor in a number of key areas, let alone achieve a consistent level of quality, certainly isn’t ideal for a show’s future prospects.

Nevertheless, I was eager to see if Reacher‘s second season would deliver where it matters the most – Season One set a high bar with its character writing thanks to a great supporting cast from its deuteragonists to many of the minor characters as well, even when its villains left a little to be desired. Most of all, it gifted us with one of television’s best action heroes of all time with Alan Ritchson’s Jack Reacher; a no-nonsense bootstrapper who struck a perfect balance between brains and brawn. Season Two shows Reacher in a new light as a leader, and leans into his military history, which is only supplemented by flashbacks that retell the origin of the 110th Special Investigators. As well as being reunited with Neagley, who has a much larger role in the story this time around, Reacher is also joined by two other members of his old unit: David O’Donnell (Shaun Sipos), and Karla Dixon (Serinda Swan). The whole team have fairly good on-screen chemistry, and each character comes complete with their own various quirks and what have you, but the show fails to make use of the unique skills that they bring to the table to better differentiate Reacher’s allies – outside putting them to use virtually once each, every member of the team just feels like a slightly less able version of Reacher, which doesn’t make for very interesting viewing at all. Dixon also serves as Reacher’s romantic interest this season, but the matter isn’t handled very well at all, nor does it really have much significance to the characters or their on-screen dynamic; leaving her trailing far behind Willa Fitzgerald’s Roscoe from the prior season.

Surprisingly, the highlight of Season Two comes in the form of Guy Russo (Dominic Lombardozzi), a hard-headed but good-hearted NYPD detective trying to solve the murders of Reacher’s unit within the confines of the law, which often puts the two men at loggerheads. Unfortunately, as much as his death might’ve been the show’s most emotional moment yet, he’s left feeling criminally underused for most of the season, which I imagine was a deliberate choice as to not go down the road of recreating the dynamic between Reacher and Finlay from Season One. In terms of villains, I by all means thought Reacher meant business when casting an actor of Robert Patrick’s calibre to play Season Two’s villain Shane Langston, but the sad reality is that he spends pretty much the entire eight episode run walking around a warehouse answering his phone or trying to throw people out of helicopters, with the one exception being the shootout with Reacher and his team he turns up for in Episode Six. If you were hoping for some better characterisation for the show’s villains after last season, you’ll be disappointed to know that Langston is somehow even less interesting than the Kliners, but don’t worry – he’s not even the worst part. Terrorist broker and professional killer “A.M.” quickly becomes a terrifying presence early on in the season, but as time goes by it becomes increasingly evident that he’s done literally nothing but murder bit-part characters, and his final confrontation with Reacher and his team is confoundingly anticlimactic; calling into question what the point of his character was at all.

By the end of it all, I don’t think there was a single thing that Reacher‘s second season did better than its first. My words might seem harsh, and don’t get me wrong – I still rather enjoyed Season Two for all its faults – but those better facets of the show that carried over can’t make up for all the ways that it’s fallen behind. As such, I wouldn’t go in with high expectations, but if you enjoyed the first season, you’re still in for a largely serviceable story that further expands on its characters and even retains a little bit of that original charm, so against my better judgement I’ll say it’s worth a go. In terms of Reacher‘s future, I think many of the issues at hand can be easily resolved with a bit more care and consideration, but unfortunately I’ll be going into any future seasons with far more tepid anticipation from this point onwards.

5/10