Prime Video has replaced a bunch of Reacher season...

We’re a week away from the return of the world’s biggest meat mountain as Reacher Season 3 gets set to debut on February 20. The jewel in Prime Video’s crown, starring the majestic Alan Ritchson, sees the adaptation of the Lee Child novel Persuader, and some new images were released ahead of the premiere. One image of note is that of Maria Sten‘s Frances Neagley, who returns for a supporting role in the third season, ahead of her move to her own spin-off series, provisionally titled Neagley, which will follow her on her adventures away from Reacher’s gigantic shadow.

Back in October, at the Prime Video Presents: Trailblazers event in London, it was announced that a spin-off starring Sten as Frances Neagley has been greenlit, and would be created for television by co-showrunners and executive producers Nick Santora (Reacher, Prison Break, FUBAR) and Nicholas Wootton (Law & Order, Prison Break). The series will follow Neagley in her job as a private investigator in Chicago, and she must then use the skills that she gained from working with Reacher and the 110 Special Investigators when a close friend from her past has been killed in suspicious circumstances.

“Lee Child created an immensely rich character with Neagley, and Maria Sten brought her to life in such a vivid, authentic way in Reacher,” said Santora and Wootton at the time. “Amazon, Skydance Television, and CBS Studios have been tremendous partners from the start, and we are excited to explore Neagley’s story further and dive into what makes her so unique.”

Why Did Neagley Become So Pivotal in ‘Reacher’?

Neagley’s role in the series has been massively expanded from that of the novels, where there is a tacit acknowledgment that Reacher is a lone wolf and a very internalized figure, but Lee Child told Empire last year that the decision to include Neagley in the series in an expanded role was a result of the writers realizing that Reacher’s internal monologue, which works in a book, would not be effective on screen. He explained:

“Neagley was a strategic decision. The one thing you cannot do on screen that you can in a book is have the inside of somebody’s head. Reacher thinks a lot, and there are pages and pages of Reacher puzzling things out. You can’t write an eight-minute scene with Alan Ritchson sitting there, thinking. So we needed a secondary character to bolster the exposition.”