In the 2nd season of the Amazon series Reacher, the showrunners deviated from the book source material and broke a rule about Reacher. As the creator of the series revealed in an interview, they had previously contacted the authors of the novels behind Reacher to ask if the change fit within the concept of the character.
Warning! There are minor spoilers for the 2nd season of Reacher. If you haven’t seen it yet and don’t want to spoil anything, you should not continue reading.
In the 2nd season, there is a reunion with an important supporting character from season 1. This does not actually occur in the book source on which the Amazon series is based.
As series creator Nick Santora told TVLine in an interview on January 19, 2024, he specifically clarified the change with the author of the books, Lee Child, to ensure that it fits within the character concept of the protagonist.
Here you see a German trailer for the 2nd season of the Amazon series Reacher:
Reunion with Finlay as a deviation from the original
Nick Santora emphasized that he was well aware that Jack Reacher is a loner and does not ask others for help:
“The rules state that Reacher does not travel with a crew. The 110 is his crew. That is his family. Those are his military colleagues, but he wanders the world alone. So we know that we cannot have Reacher with a group of people traveling from town to town. That is not in the book.”
However, the production team wanted to move the plot out of New York and provide some variety by relocating the series to Boston. So they considered which character would be in Boston.
That’s when Oscar Finlay came to mind, an important supporting character from season 1 of Reacher, with whom they had established that he would head back to Boston.
Therefore, Nick Santora contacted the book author Lee Child to clarify the deviation from the source material:
“I reached out to Lee Child because he is ‘the godfather,’ he created this world. I asked: ‘If Reacher were in the same city as someone he had an adventure with, someone like Finlay, and he needed help to stop bad people from doing bad things, would he reach out?'”
Lee Child agreed. However, he also made it clear that Reacher would not say: “Come join my band of merry men.”
Instead, the character would only subtly and briefly ask for help.
As our colleagues from Moviepilot reported, there was a significant point of criticism regarding the 2nd season of Reacher: The fact that Jack Reacher was traveling with a team and as the main character, he felt a bit overshadowed.
However, author Lee Child has already promised that the character will return to being a loner in the 3rd season, and the story will focus more on Jack Reacher, who is traveling alone.
More about Jack Reacher on MeinMMO can be found here: The star of Reacher only had his breakthrough at 39: Takes testosterone, wants to stay a muscle titan for 15 years
