‘Reacher’ Season 4: Five Reasons You Need To Watch the Biggest Man in Streaming Action Hit Philadelphia

This story contains minor spoilers for Reacher season 4.A desperate woman, in the middle of a crisis, finds herself on the subway in Philadelphia. It’s late, and her train car is sparsely populated, so she might think her dangerous plan will go unnoticed. She doesn’t know that one of her fellow passengers has been trained by one of the world’s largest military organizations to be aware of his surroundings at all times. He approaches, offering help. She’s not sure she can trust him. Maybe you aren’t either, if you’ve never watched Prime Video’s Reacher—but that’s a mistake you can and should rectify now. Here are five reasons why.You don’t have to have watched the first three seasons to get involvedAuthor Lee Child (a pen name used by Jim Grant) has, to date, written 30 works of fiction about Jack Reacher. The books and stories jump around in time, so that the reader sometimes encounters Reacher when he’s still a major in the U.S. Army Military Police, but most of them find him after his service, when he’s traveling around the country with no fixed address. So far, the Prime Video series—adapted for TV by Nick Santora—join Reacher (Alan Ritchson) when he’s shown up somewhere new, sometimes for a quirky reason: for instance, in Season 1, based on Child’s first novel Killing Floor, Reacher gets off a bus in Margrave, Georgia, because a famed blues musician was buried there; in the fourth season (based on Gone Tomorrow, the literary Reacher’s 13th outing), Reacher’s come to Philadelphia to watch a baseball phenom pitch before the player blows out his arm.Since each season is self-contained, you can choose your own adventure based on whichever criteria you prefer. If you want to prepare for Neagley, the spinoff series coming to Prime Video next month, you can enter with Seasons 2 and 3 of Reacher, in which the titular character (Reacher's trusted investigator, played by Maria Sten) is first introduced. But if you’re a Philadelphia homer or just want to be part of the discourse right now, Season 4 is a great place to start, especially because…Season 4 includes some local color!I won’t lie: the show is mostly filmed in Toronto and its environs, so if you recognize any Philadelphia landmarks, they’re likely to be in B-roll shots flying over the city, composited into the deep background of a parking lot, or on the level of the very temporary-looking sign alleging a water ice stand in a neighborhood park. Even when Reacher orders a cheesesteak in the cold open of the Season 4 premiere, I’m pretty sure he’s in Sankofa Square, across the street from downtown Toronto’s Eaton Centre shopping mall.However, the show’s production budget did permit some location shooting, so look out for some classic Reacher action in places like The Rail Park and Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens. Both are shot so lovingly, and used so creatively, that I paused playback to look them up. To whichever local official approved the permits: it was worth it! Just don’t ask any follow-up questions about whether I’ve planned my trip to the city yet!Reacher’s suspicion of cops is part of the story basically immediatelyAnd his suspicion of the U.S. government arrives not long afterward.Without spoiling the inciting event of the season, Reacher gets picked up for questioning right away. Det. Shaun Docherty (Kevin Corrigan) and his partner Tamara Green (Sydelle Noel) tell him their interrogation won’t take long if Reacher is “honest and co-operative.” In response, Reacher stares, emotionless. “You had a passport on you, but no driver’s license,” says Docherty. Reacher stares some more. Docherty: “No answer for that?” Reacher: “It wasn’t a question.” A couple more exchanges get them to Reacher’s address; he says the building they’re in is where he currently resides. “So you’re homeless,” says Docherty. “Now I see why you’re a detective!” Reacher replies.Jessica Kourkounis/Courtesy of AmazonAs the story goes on, Reacher starts to understand how many federal law enforcement agents have an interest in the woman he saw on the train when they take their turns trying to find out what he knows. When the first set of black-suited operatives won’t tell Reacher their names or whom they work for, he assigns them nicknames based on cereal mascots; for the next squad, Reacher borrows from nursery rhymes.Vigilantes, real and fictional, tend to be motivated by a desire to out-police the police. In Reacher’s case, it’s not because he reveres them so much that he wants to help; it’s because he doesn’t respect their passion for the case he’s gotten involved in, nor can he count on their basic competence such that their intervention won’t make things worse. Not to mention that Reacher seems to understand his body and intellect carry their inherent obligations as he moves through the world. By that I mean…Reacher’s gonna kill some guys, and rarely in the ways you’d predictReacher’s sense of justice is as overdeveloped as any of his muscle groups—and we’re about to get to those—which is part of why he gets drawn into supporting the righteous yet seemingly doomed side of fights in his various travels. He’s also extremely intelligent and strategic, which is how he consistently dominates even in physical battles involving multiple armed attackers. If you don’t mind spoilers, you can give yourself a taste with this compilation of his most savage fights.If this doesn’t entice you to check out Season 4, let me just say that one violent set piece starts with Reacher dropping out a window and straight down the side of a building to the ledge one floor down, armed with nothing but the takeout chopsticks clamped in his mouth, because that’s all he needs. When another starts with Reacher descending to a library basement whose storage includes hand-cranked compact shelving…well, you can probably predict what happens to the bad guy that follows him down there, but it’s still wildly satisfying.Reacher is so bigIf Lee Child’s Reacher has one attribute that even a casual fan knows, it’s that he’s large: 6-foot-5 and 250 lbs. of muscle, with hands variously said to resemble frozen chickens or the dinner plates you might set them on; it’s why some book fans were disappointed that the first actor to portray the character on screen, in a pair of feature films, was the famously not-huge Tom Cruise.That episode plots require various generally smaller people to throw themselves at Ritchson’s Reacher in the hopes of subduing him really never stops being funny. This season, one group of opponents arrives at their first meeting with gorilla tranquilizers, and it’s still an open question who’s going to come out of the skirmish conscious. Also funny: that anyone is ever able to replace one or all pieces of Reacher’s solitary change of clothes when he gets soaked in someone’s blood; just once, I’d love to see a sodden Reacher walking into a thrift store just as the town’s biggest resident is coming out, having donated a bag of t-shirts and cargo pants.Reacher is typically mission-focused, but at least once per season, there’s a lull in the action just long enough for him to disrobe near his latest pretty lady friend and let things take a horny turn. This may be the lady’s only chance to have a gifted tactician focus his skills on her satisfaction. This may be the viewer’s only chance to see abs the size of Progresso soup cans. Never doubt Reacher is going to deliver: there’s just so much of him to go around.