Jack Reacher Once Crossed Into The World Of Bones (Kind Of)

Any fan of Lee Child's Jack Reacher novels, or Prime Video's TV adaptation "Reacher," knows that Jack is a lone wolf. The itinerant former military police officer's entire MO is wandering the United States, ostensibly because he enjoys the nomadic lifestyle. During these wanderings he is frequently drawn into all manner of precarious situations where he must rely on his pre-eminent skills to right some awful injustice or bring down some criminal organization. As the archetypal American action hero, Reacher is pretty adept at winning the day and coming out on top, but that doesn't mean he doesn't need help from time to time.

Child's hero is frequently helped by former members of the 110th Special Investigators, Reacher's former military police unit. Most notably, his close ally Frances Neagley often provides a helping hand, joining Reacher on numerous escapades and often saving her former boss from otherwise deadly scenarios. In the Prime Video series, which stars Alan Ritchson as the titular hero, Maria Sten's Neagley has shown up in all three seasons thus far, proving to be one of Reacher's most reliable friends.

But what many fans might not know is that the book version of Jack Reacher has actually teamed up with some other heroic protagonists from other literary universes. The Prime Video series is yet to bring in characters from outside shows, but the literary Reacher has joined forces with figures from outside the universe created by Child. In one such instance he teamed up with none other than Temperance Brennan, who inspired the character of the same name played by Emily Deschanel in the Fox procedural "Bones."

Lee Child designed Jack Reacher as an unstoppable 250-pound force who can overcome anything with either brute strength or his keen mind. Real-life anthropologist and author Kathy Reichs, on the other hand, created Temperance Brennan as a more cerebral character, based on her own experiences in forensics. Fox's "Bones," which ran for 12 seasons between 2005 and 2017, is based on Dr. Reichs' novel series, which began with 1997's "Deja Dead" and comprises 24 books at this point. Emily Deschanel's Temperance "Bones" Brennan, protagonist of the Fox series, is based upon the protagonist of these novels, and her real-life counterpart even had a sneaky cameo in "Bones" season 2.

While Prime Video's "Reacher" is unlikely to ever crossover with the now-defunct "Bones," their literary equivalents very much did cross over. "Faking a Murderer" is a short story that first appeared in the anthology "MatchUp," which was edited by Child and saw 22 popular thriller writers pair up to write a series of short stories. Released in June 2017, this particular anthology involved matching female writers with their male counterparts for each story, and Child formed a duo with Reichs to write their team-up tale.

The story itself finds Temperance Brennan speaking at a Washington D.C. conference when she suddenly becomes a murder suspect, only for none other than Jack Reacher to catch wind of her situation and arrive in Washington to help the forensic anthropologist clear her name and track down the real killer.

"Faking a Murderer" wasn't the last time Jack Reacher would team up with another beloved literary protagonist. In 2020, Lee Child paired with Karin Slaughter, author of a popular book series focusing on Georgia Bureau of Investigation special agent Will Trent, to co-write "Cleaning the Gold," a novella that saw Jack Reacher and Will Trent work together for the first time.

Meanwhile, season 3 of "Reacher" has seen him ally with Sonya Cassidy's DEA agent Susan Duffy, arguably the best thing to happen to the show yet. While solo Reacher is typically the best Reacher, his alliance with Duffy and her fellow DEA agents has made for some of the best episodes of the series yet, and shows that Child's hero is malleable, as capable of keeping audiences transfixed solo as he is when working with a team. Season 2 saw him joined by his former Army colleagues from the 110th, and some argued that "Reacher" had jumped too far ahead in the book series too early by adapting a novel that put the character at the center of a group when audiences hadn't had enough time to appreciate his lone wolf methods. Personally, though, I liked seeing Reacher at the center of a group and found his interactions with the 110th members to be a welcome addition to the series. All of which is to say that if the Prime Video series were to start matching Reacher with other heroes, that wouldn't necessarily be the worst thing.

Will we ever see the Alan Ritchson's Reacher team up with Emily Deschanel's Temperance Brennan? That seems unlikely, but seeing how Bones and her intellectual abilities interact with Reacher's own impressive cognitive capacity would be interesting. With talk of a 13th season of "Bones" such a thing isn't entirely unthinkable. After all, "Reacher" showrunner Nick Santora has made sticking to the books a lynchpin of his stewardship. If he were to bring in Bones for an episode or two, he would still, technically, be sticking to the books.