Alan Ritchson as ReacherSince its debut in 2022, Reacher has become one of Prime Video’s biggest hits. A hugely successful first season meant that Season 2 struggled to completely live up to its high expectations, but viewership soared to make the second season the most watched show of 2023, despite it arriving just before the end of the year. Now, with Season 3 imminent, fans have been given a teasing hint at some of the brutal fights that Alan Ritchson will face as Jack Reacher when he comes up against the mountainous Paulie, played by “The Dutch Giant,” Olivier Richters.

It is hard to argue that Ritchson is a big guy, and between the first and second seasons of Reacher, he beefed up to an insane level. However, in Season 3, he will face his biggest challenge – literally – when he is inexplicably outsized by the bodyguard of the antagonistic Zachary Beck (played by Anthony Michael Hall). Ahead of this highly-anticipated showdown, Richters spoke to Empire about how things are going to go down.

“The effort they put into Reacher versus Paulie is astonishing. We might be a little bit immortal in the fight because it continues for so long. I’m not going to say we’re going to win an Oscar for the fight scene, but it’s going to be spectacular. I said to [Alan] as a joke, but it’s kind of true that he’s really Reacher in real life. He has so many lines to learn, he has to perform, he has to eat continuously, he has to show up for the fight training after filming all day. It’s inhuman what he does. It’s a level I can only dream of.”

‘Reacher’ Is Doing Lee Child’s Novels Right


Even if Reacher did not quite hit perfect scores for Season 2, it cannot be argued that the series is tapping into something that was absent from the two movies starring Tom Cruise – an accurate interpretation of the character. While Cruise’s Jack Reacher movies have recently been enjoying a resurgence on free streaming platforms such as Tubi and Freevee.

While those films earned their own following, viewers of Prime Video’s series were thrilled to finally see a depiction that captured the imposing height, strength, and brawler style of Jack Reacher. Season 1, adapting Child’s Killing Floor, introduced the ex-military policeman as a quiet drifter who quickly finds himself caught up in a small-town conspiracy. Ritchson brought the physicality and raw presence essential to capturing Reacher’s no-nonsense attitude and bone-crunching fighting skills.

Season 2 of the series, based on the novel Bad Luck and Trouble, saw a completely different cast join Ritchson in a new stand-alone story that did not really require viewers to have seen the first season to get involved. This plan can potentially make Season 3 even bigger, as once again the crossover between stories is minimal, meaning that anyone can jump on board and revisit previous seasons when they have time.

Although the success of Reacher rests on more than just well-choreographed fights, the tease of Reacher going toe-to-toe with one of his biggest adversaries to date in a brutal fist-fight will certainly have many fans tuning in when the first three episodes of Reacher Season 3 hit Prime Video on February 20, 2025.