SUMMARY

 Reacher season 3 will be based on Lee Child’s “Persuader,” featuring the main character going undercover for the DEA, providing a new form of story for the show.
 The third season will depart from the relative safety of Reacher’s Special Investigators unit, raising the stakes and intensifying the risk of being discovered.
 The use of “Persuader” as source material allows for a soft reset, enabling the show to tell a standalone story within the existing world of Reacher while exploring a potentially darker tone.

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Reacher season 2 as well as information on Lee Child’s Reacher books that may spoil elements of Reacher season 3.The book that will form the basis of Reacher season 3 has been chosen, and its story will set the coming installment apart from the previous two.

Lee Child’s original Reacher books are intended to be read in any order, and while the show is making some effort to adhere to this formula, it also hasn’t been afraid to blend the first two seasons. Reacher season 3 will be based on a book so different from the first two that the story will unfold much differently.

Lee Child started the Reacher book series in the 1990s and has been adding to it ever since. As a result, there is no shortage of source material on which to base an on-screen adaptation.

Two of the books were used prior to the Amazon TV show’s existence to create Tom Cruise’s Jack Reacher movies, but Ritchson’s version of the character marked a reboot of the timeline. So far, Amazon have adapted Killing Floor and made changes to Lee Child’s Bad Luck and Trouble. The source material for Reacher season 3 will reinvent the show.

Reacher Going Undercover Is Great For Season 3’s Story

Persuader will be a new form of story for Reacher

Reacher season 3 is based on Lee Child’s Persuader. The story differs greatly from the previous two book choices as it features the main character moving in criminal circles.

While undercover for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Reacher takes steps to dismantle a major illegal enterprise. While Reacher has collaborated with official bodies before, such as the Margrave police force in Reacher season 1, the DEA is another beast entirely.

An undercover Reacher with no immediate backup has the potential to show the character backed into a corner. Although the show has already proven that Reacher is more than capable of taking care of himself, there hasn’t really been a moment where there weren’t allies either lurking nearby or arriving shortly.

In Reacher season 3, many of his actions will need to be preventative to avoid being caught. In the previous two seasons, Reacher’s solutions have often involved violent countermeasures, which won’t necessarily work when he’s behind enemy lines.

The Reacher TV show doesn’t follow the same order as Lee Child’s books. While Reacher season 1 was based on the first book, season 2 used book 11. Persuader is the seventh book in the series.

Reacher Needed A Different Approach After A Mixed Season 2

Reacher season 2 had its ups and downs

Reacher season 1 allowed the show to get off to a flying start. The second season had many great moments, but some parts didn’t quite hit the mark. While the action sequences in Reacher season 2 were visually stunning, the risk of failure always seemed quite low.

This was due to the skill of the members of the 110th Special Investigators Unit and their presence throughout the story. The chemistry between Reacher and his unit was brilliant, but their abilities lowered the stakes.

Persuader‘s narrative allows Reacher season 3 to leave the relative safety of the Special Investigators behind. Instead, it will be up to Reacher alone to keep himself alive while also succeeding in the task assigned to him by the DEA.

Because of this overhaul in story structure, the risk of Reacher being found out by those around him elicits a much greater cause for concern.

Using Persuader as the source material also allows Reacher to go through a soft reset. While the ending of Reacher season 1 didn’t particularly influence the events of season 2, there were still some very strong ties between the two stories.

Isolating Reacher in a new scenario allows the show to more accurately emulate Child’s approach of telling a standalone story that still exists within the world of previous installments.

How Reacher Season 2 Set Up Season 3’s Undercover Story

Reacher became much darker in season 2

Although Reacher isn’t a villain, he isn’t exactly a traditional hero either. He has a strong moral compass, but at the same time has already been shown to be prone to extreme violence.

The show has already had Reacher carry out acts that he doesn’t in the source material. For example, he and the Special Investigators riddle AM with bullets, who was unarmed at the time. There’s also the matter of the New Age engineer near the end of Reacher season 2.

In the books, the engineer is being forced to work for Langston, whereas his TV show counterpart claims he doesn’t know what they were going to do with the Little Wing chips.

Book Reacher lets the engineer live, whereas Amazon Reacher falsely allows his escape with the chopper pilot before ordering Neagley to shoot down their helicopter with an RPG.

Differences such as these show just how brutal Reacher can be in the TV show, which sets up a tone that’ll be potentially much darker in Reacher season 3. In order to blend in, Reacher will have to act like a bad guy.

Although Alan Ritchson’s character was doing what he believed to be the “right thing,” the choices he made in season 2 prove he’s more than capable of assimilating with the villains in the next installment of Reacher.