The Reacher Season 3 Finale's Most Dramatic Death Is Way Worse In The Book
This post contains spoilers for the "Reacher" season 3 finale.
The walking tree that is Alan Ritchson has deftly delivered another dose of heavy-handed justice in the third season of "Reacher," which fixed everything that was wrong with season 2. Season 3 had it all: Deception, intrigue, and Reacher finally facing a villain who seems more suited to take on Godzilla than our former military police investigator.
Standing at a ridiculous 7'2", Olivier Richters as Paul Masseralla will go down as one of the best characters on the show to date. The Dutch weightlifter did an excellent job of bringing the hulking henchman to life and making even Alan Ritchson look small. In what felt like a combative triathlon, Reacher fought Paulie over land, sea, and even spent an alarmingly long time hanging from mid-air in a barn. It was a stunning spectacle of both actors' physicality and a brilliantly choreographed fight to the death. However, how it all ended might have shocked some viewers.
We all knew that Reacher would somehow take Paulie down, but what might surprise fans of the Reacher books is that Quinn's imposing enforcer fell through very different means in the novels. In the show, it took nearly drowning and a malfunctioning machine gun to bring the giant down, but in the original book, Reacher applied perhaps even more brutal methods to win this battle of David XL versus Goliath — so much so that it might well have been too graphic to even film for the show.
Reacher's Paulie died by his own hand (sort of) in the books
In the 2003 book "Persuader" (the seventh one of the best books in the Jack Reacher series), Paulie is just as tough as the version we see on screen, but the Reacher in the book neutralizes his opponent with so much more ferocity that it's almost too painful to read.
Similar to the show, Reacher and Paulie engage in a brutal fight, with Reacher overpowering him like a guy dismantling a tower made of LEGO. He breaks both of Paulie's arms, stomps on his hand so forcefully that his shoe falls apart, and reduces Paulie's fist to a splintered mess. He sticks his thumbs in his eyes, breaks his nose, and essentially transforms the once-intimidating giant into a gurgling heap of blood and bone. Then, in a death reminiscent of Reacher's initial attempt to eliminate Quinn (Brian Tee), he walks Paulie down to the sea and unloads 12 bullets into his chest, finally putting an end to the man-monster once and for all.
There's no doubt that fans would have suspected the final send-off for Paulie was coming, considering how much the huge henchman had been wielding a noticeable hand cannon for most of the season. Unfortunately, Reacher never got to use it and had to settle for a machine gun instead. Oh well. No matter the weapon of choice, let's just be glad he brought his man down and lived to fight another day. Paulie certainly didn't.
All three seasons of "Reacher" are streaming on Prime Video.