Reacher Season 4 Had To Deal With One Major Problem Caused By Season 3 [Set Visit]

What is "Reacher" without the fights? Considering the titular ex-military policeman isn't much of a talker, the answer is: not much. Happily, star Alan Ritchson and the makers of Prime Video's hugely popular series continue to outdo themselves when it comes to the action in their show. But that commitment to one-upping their previous efforts made "Reacher" Season 4 a heck of a challenge for everyone involved.

Ritchson suffered a serious injury during the filming of the "Reacher" Season 3 finale, in which Jack Reacher takes on Olivier Richters' 7-foot 2-inch, 350-pound monster, Paul Van Hoven. The star has pushed himself since day one of the Prime Video series, with Ritchson winding up in hospital simply by trying to achieve Reacher's proper weight prior to Season 1. But there's no doubt the third season was the most action-packed and brutal yet, with Ritchson and Richters spending a full three weeks shooting their climactic showdown. The result was easily the best battle of the show so far, but it also presented Ritchson and the "Reacher" crew with a significant challenge.

/Film attended a set visit for the upcoming season, where Ritchson spoke about the difficulty of topping what he and the team achieved with Season 3. "I was so stressed out after we did well [with] Season 3," he said. "Now it's like, 'Well, how do we top that? It's impossible! We set the bar so high with such a fun experience. We'll never — like, how do we do that?'" Well, according to the actor, he's done it.

Since the very beginning, "Reacher" has been showcasing some of the best action on TV. Months of preparation went into "Reacher" Season 1's prison fight, and things haven't let up ever since. But going into Season 4, Alan Ritchson experienced significant apprehension. "I think Season 3 was pretty exceptional in its execution, as challenging as it was to make, for many reasons," he said. "It was just well-executed, and so much fun, and so in the wheelhouse of what Reacher is. And I was like, 'I'm just so paranoid about the success of this show. It's so unreal and terrifying.'"

The actor also explained how his own personal drive to continually improve added to his paranoia. "I'm someone who, I refuse to rest on my laurels," he continued. "I'm just like, 'How do we make it better? A better experience? How do we get better at doing it? How do we understand these characters better and make the world bigger and more interesting?" 

The answer to that question came from "Reacher" showrunner Nick Santora, who helped Ritchson envision a new approach. "Santora was like, 'We can't try to beat ourselves every time,'" recalled the actor. "'We just have to continue to be different. If we just surprise people with where Reacher can go and what he can get into, we'll always keep people guessing.'"

Ultimately, that simple philosophy seems to have worked — at least for Ritchson, who says he's "so pleased" with how Season 4 turned out, adding, "The execution of this season, the characters, the story, the actors, the crew, just everything has worked. It's been the best."

Rather than try to simply go bigger with the fights for "Reacher" Season 4, Alan Ritchson and company decided to force the titular badass into more complex challenges. Speaking of the Jack Reacher vs. Paulie fight from Season 3, Ritchson said, "The fun of that is you're totally outmatched [...] So then you think like, 'Well, what are we doing? Are we trying to just fill the void with quantity?' I don't want to just throw, like, 30 fights at the viewer and think that that's gonna make up for the fact that we're not fighting a giant." 


Instead, the new season sees Reacher face off against more subtly intimidating villains capable of getting under the hero's skin in a way that Paulie couldn't. As Ritchson put it, "The way that these characters are developed and the way that they're depicted on screen and their villainy comes to life — you quickly realize [...] [Reacher has] met his match in a very different way."

According to the star, Reacher will experience "a different kind of fear" in Season 4, to the extent that "there will probably be some people that are convinced he's not gonna make it." That's an inspired way to outdo the brutality of Season 3, as it's essentially veering away from the brutality to more sinister threats. As Ritchson put it, "Brute force strength is not the linchpin here.
It's a different skillset, but it's there and it's terrifying to watch." Reacher might not battle a 7-foot monster in Season 4, then, but he might just go up against something much worse. Now, Ritchson and the crew just need to figure out what they're going to do for "Reacher" season 5, which Prime Video has already green-lit.