Reacher’s Prime Video journey is just getting started, but the character could have met his maker in Lee Child’s novels and that could be something that the series can call on when the time comes to close the book on Alan Ritchson’s time as the muscly mercenary.
In an interview shared in 2024 on Bruce Whitfield.com, Child explained that he seriously considered killing off his creation in 2019, in a novel he would have called “Die Lonely.” As the title suggested, the story would have concluded with a pretty grim demise for Jack Reacher, something Child decided would not go down well with fans that had come to love the character. He said:
“It was going to be called Die Lonely, and the final scene was going to be Reacher bleeding to death on a filthy motel bathroom floor. When I started, I made myself a promise that if I ever sensed that I was going to run out of gas, I would stop because that was the only honest thing to do.
“People really liked this guy, and I felt that (killing him) would have been gratuitously cruel to the reader. So, I developed a metaphorical version of that where Reacher solves the problem, heads off to the bus station but half way there he thinks: ‘You know what, I kinda like it here, maybe I’ll adopt a dog and rent a house…’ and that would have been the metaphorical death of Reacher, but the readers wanted more and that felt like a big responsibility.”
Lee Child Continued Reacher’s Story, but Death Could Still Find the Character
While Child stopped writing Reacher books by himself after the 24th novel, Blue Moon, he found a way to continue delivering new stories to Reacher fans by enlisting his brother to co-write with him. The 29th novel, In Too Deep, was written completely by Andrew Child (although Lee Child’s name still appears on the cover), and it seems that will be the way of things going forward. The latest Reacher novel, Exit Strategy, is released this month.
This has allowed fans of Reacher novels to continue to expect more new stories to come, but there is always a chance that when the Prime Video series reaches an inevitable point in time that things need to end, could someone be bold and return to Child’s abandoned plans to kill off Reacher?
If that does happen, it seems likely to be a long way off, as Reacher is currently one of Prime Video’s guaranteed hit series whenever a new season drops. While reviews for Season 2 took a bit of a dive, the viewership blew away Season 1’s in days. Season 3 came back strong, and Amazon took little time in confirming another round of action would be coming in 2026. Season 4 is currently filming, based on the book Gone Tomorrow, and has been promised to be the “bloodiest and physically intense season yet.”
- Release Date
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February 3, 2022
- Network
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Prime Video
- Showrunner
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Nick Santora
- Directors
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Omar Madha, Carol Banker, Julian Holmes, Lin Oeding, M.J. Bassett, Norberto Barba, Stephen Surjik, Thomas Vincent
- Writers
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Cait Duffy
