It’s the finale of Reacher Season 3, and that can mean only one thing. Not whether Reacher will win the day – he always does – or whether heat from federal officials will limit his movements – it never does – or even whether Reacher and Duffy will keep getting it on – in this series, as in the books on which it’s based, romance is typically a one-and-done prospect. No, what matters most, as Reacher and his allies make their final assault on Zachary Beck’s seaside estate, is the Main Event. The Confrontation on the Coast. The Franchise vs. The Behemoth.  

Beck is on their side now, of course, after being discarded by Quinn. So the plan is to infiltrate the house, safely extract Teresa Daniel and Richard Beck, stop the black market weapons deal, and then for Reacher to personally execute Quinn. Again. But Neagley asks what is literally the biggest question. 

What about the bridge troll? The XXL gate guard? “We gonna knock him off the Empire State Building with some biplanes?”

Wisely, here in the Season 3 finale, Reacher doesn’t wait around for the answer. Within seconds of the team’s arrival at the estate, Paulie is picking up Reacher by his head, one-handed. “No guns. We do this like men.”

The fight for which this entire season was the undercard, for which the imposing Olivier Richters was specifically cast against the stature of Alan Ritchson, begins by the coach house, as Beck sneaks Duffy, Villaneueva, and Neagley into the main house through a basement window. (Quinn’s fleet of onsite security must have overlooked this obvious ingress point, but we’ll let the preposterousness slide. With Reacher, we always do.) Reacher is thrown bodily through a garage door. He struggles over a shovel with Paulie. Fights with the tool’s severed blade as a forearm gauntlet. Attacks the soft targets on his large opponent: eye-gouges, airway crushes. Nothing works. And after a pile of fertilizer falls on the both of them, temporarily knocking Reacher senseless, Paulie picks him up like he’s a balsa wood stick figure and hoists him by his neck to the ceiling. Reacher is losing this bout.

Inside the house, as the party continues and Quinn butters up his weapons deal clients – remember, he’s itching to get this thing done, in order to repay the Russian mafia – Villanueva takes out a security guy via electrocution (the old head in toilet water, add electric razor bit), Duffy does a somersault to save Teresa from sexual assault, in the process shooting Quinn’s client in the dick – she warned him she would, and she did – and Neagley impersonates a caterer. “I came to rescue you,” says Villanueva’s old ass, winded and bloodied and in his shirtsleeves, and Richard has to chuckle a little at that.

On the lawn of the estate, after Reacher buries the tines of a rake in Paulie’s thigh, they tumble into the ocean, where the vicious undertow of the “Neptune Society” sucks at their combined 600 pounds of weight. The raging current is like a third opponent. Reacher surfaces briefly, but is pulled under by Paulie – only when he punches him in the thigh wound does Paulie loosen his grip. Eyes wide open and vacant, he sinks into the seawater murk as Reacher swims to shore…only for Paulie to emerge moments later, even more angry. “You gotta be kidding me.”

With their assault on the estate and Quinn’s operation inevitable, we had a theory Villanueva would buy it. All his talk with Duffy about forgoing his pension to support her off-the-books investigation just felt like setup for a “somebody has to die” resolution. But it’s Zachary Beck, not Villanueva, who takes a bullet to save the day. He uses the toy pistol, a gift from Richard, to distract Quinn long enough for his son to find cover, and Quinn shoots him over and over. “Told you I wouldn’t let them hurt you again” are Zachary’s last words to Richard as a frantic Quinn runs for the exits. The psychopathic arms dealer meant to escape with his cash and restart his criminal enterprise elsewhere. But the Russians are just rolling up the driveway.

As their battle migrated to the gate house, Reacher saw his opportunity. The machine gun Paulie had propped up in there, the one he grabs and tries to fire – what happened to “No guns, we do this like men”? – is the same one Reacher previously sabotaged. The gun’s plugged barrel explodes, Paulie’s neck and face are eviscerated, and Reacher once again stands alone. “You might be bigger and stronger,” he tells his giant dying adversary. “But I’m smarter.” 

‘Reacher’ Star Anthony Michael Hall Talks Season 3 Finale’s “Sad Twist”, Alan Ritchson’s ‘American Idol’ Audition, And That Insane Fight Scene That Took “Three Weeks” To Film

As Reacher arms himself with a shotgun from Quinn’s black market stock – it’s a nod to “Persuader,” the weapon’s brand-name and the title of the book that Reacher Season 3 adapts – it’s worth considering for a moment what a fourth season of Reacher might offer. Does Olivier Richters have an even larger brother? Will the series keep upsizing its already large-sized protagonist’s enemies until Reacher has to bring down, like, Ebon Moss-Bachrach as The Thing? Who’s to say. But Reacher Season 4 is officially a go, just like a new Frances Neagley-focused spinoff.

And with the conclusion of the Confrontation on the Coast, all that’s left is for Quinn to join Paulie in death. “You really don’t remember me, do you?” Reacher says. They placated the Russians by giving them Quinn’s cash. The federal agents on the scene made themselves temporarily scarce. (Again, preposterous, but who cares, this is Reacher.) And as Reacher faces Quinn, he says it doesn’t actually matter if he knows him. “Her name was Dominique.” And Reacher is pleased as he sees Quinn put all the pieces together. “Now you remember.” He puts him down.

“You hate the big guy, so you make sure they don’t get away with it.” That’s Neagley’s concise summation of Reacher’s reasoning, how he always finds himself in random situations where the only apparent solution is to kill numerous people and walk away with no accountability. And that’s exactly what happens this time. Duffy turns in her DEA badge. Villanueva retires and returns home to his wife. Reacher tosses Richard a set of keys, and repeats his encouragement for the kid to start his own life as a wanderer. And as for the big fella? He commandeers a Harley-Davidson and cruises into the sunset. The bruises Paulie left on his face will heal. In the meantime he’ll walk the earth, waiting for trouble to find him again.

Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.