Season 4 of Reacher brings most action-packed episodes yet

Of all the times for him to be hosting a group of international journalists on the set of Reacher, the Prime Video action smash that turned him into a global star, it’s the day where he repeatedly misses his mark as he tries to boot a prop gun across a fiery sound stage.

“You had to sit there and watch me kick a gun 30 times,” Alan Ritchson says, shaking his head. “It was like a Price is Right game.”

For the first time since the show began shooting in Toronto in 2021, the production team behind Reacher, which follows a former military investigator-turned-vigilante, is hosting a daylong set visit.

The scene in question finds Jack Reacher battling two thugs in a flame-lit hallway. The fisticuffs began in a building in downtown Hamilton and continues on a sound stage near Toronto’s waterfront.

“I wish we had you here at the beginning of the season when I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed,” Ritchson quips.

Returning Aug. 12 for its fourth season, Ritchson says Reacher’s latest batch of episodes will be among the series’ most action-packed ones yet.

“I’d bet my life by whatever metric you have that this will be better than anything we’ve done,” Ritchson explains after finally nailing his gun-kicking sequence.

But Ritchson admits that the success of the show, which is based on Lee Child’s bestselling books, has made him nervous.

Ritchson was initially wary of playing the hero. Reacher’s solitary nature was antithetical to who he is in his real life as a husband and father of three.

Although Tom Cruise played the character in two feature films, Reacher’s adventures have proved especially well suited to television.

Fans certainly agree. After Season 2 became Prime Video’s most-watched series following its première in December 2023, Season 3 notched more than 54 million viewers globally in its first 19 days last year.

“I’m so paranoid of the success of this show,” Ritchson says. “But I refuse to rest on my laurels.”

‘He’s met his match in a very different way’

Season 4 adapts the 13th book in Child’s ongoing series, Gone Tomorrow, and finds Reacher unravelling a deep government conspiracy after he encounters a suicidal passenger on a subway train.

“This is the first time we’re seeing him confounded by a case that he wants so badly to understand,” Ritchson says.

He also crosses paths with one of the book’s most sadistic villains, Lila Hoth (played by Indonesian singer and songwriter Agnez Mo), who leads a terror group that disembowels its victims.

In one scene from the novel, Reacher and Hoth engage in a bruising knife fight.

“The way that these characters are developed and the way that their villainy comes to life, you quickly realize, he’s met his match in a very different way,” Ritchson says. “He’s outmatched by these women who are absolutely lethal and there’s a different kind of fear that the audience will be able to experience and there’s a different kind of peril that Reacher has to face. There will be some people convinced that he’s not going to make it and that’s cool … We go through a lot of blood this season.”

“As a real fan of Reacher, I watched the series since Day One, it’s a pinch-me moment to be here,” Mo says of joining the series as the antagonist. “There is more of everything … The fighting scenes are even more pronounced.”

To hammer home this factoid, Ritchson shares that in the first three weeks of filming he shot more fights than the first three seasons combined.

“There’s a fight that happens in a bowling alley. It is probably one of the most epic fights I’ve shot in my career,” he explains, praising the “flowy” camera movements and choreography that he likens to an Indiana Jones movie.

“This seven-minute fight became the (most fun) thing in the world both to shoot and watch, because there was so much going on. It’s so much more than just punching,” he teases.

With each new season “there’s been a challenge to escalate every interaction with these villains,” he continues. “Who they are, why they’re there, where they’re coming from? And then, on top of that, Reacher is fighting someone half the size of (Season 3 villain) Paulie (who was played by Olivier Richters).”

Brute force strength wasn’t something that figured into the creation of Hoth. “We were asking ourselves, ‘How can we make this a more formidable opponent?’” Ritchson says.

In addition to Ritchson and Mo, the Season 4 cast also includes Sydelle Noel, Chris Marquette, Anggun, Kevin Weisman, Marc Blucas, Kevin Corrigan, and Kathleen Robertson.

Child published his first Reacher novel, Killing Floor, in 1997. Since then, the character has exploded in popularity.

Ritchson has already started work on Season 5, which will adapt Make Me.

The Blue Mountain State alum isn’t surprised that Reacher continues to endure (Child’s younger brother Andrew now writes the books).

“I think Reacher has this deeply innate sense of justice and righteousness. When we see so much of ourselves in Reacher, I think that’s what we see,” Ritchson says. “There’s this deep desire as human beings to see the wrongs righted, like … now. Why does this show work? Look around. When is justice going to be served at all, these days. So it’s cathartic to escape to this fantasy where … you know he’s going to figure it out eventually.”

And five years into playing him, Ritchson has settled into playing the role. The actor lives part-time in the city and will happily rattle off his favourite local restaurants (Akira Back in Toronto’s Bisha Hotel and Byblos in the entertainment district are two he visits regularly).

“I’m always asking, ‘How do we make it better? How do we get better at doing it? How do we understand these characters better? How do we make the world bigger?’” he says. “I was so stressed out after Season 3 because we set the bar so high with such a fun experience. How do we top that?”

But series creator Nick Santora gave him a piece of advice early on that he has remembered: Reacher just has to continue to be different with each new season.

“If we continue to surprise people with where Reacher can go and what he can get into, we’ll always keep people guessing about what’s going to happen next time,” Ritchson says.

Season 4 of Reacher premières on Prime Video on Aug. 12.