Diksha Sundriyal
In its fifth episode, the third season of Prime Video’s ‘Reacher’ takes its protagonist into the heart of danger. If the stakes of his situation hadn’t shown themselves so far, they do once Reacher realizes how easy it is for him to die in this case. Several factors work against him at the same time, but with the backing of Duffy and Villanueva, he manages to get some problems out of his way. By the end of the episode, however, a couple of bodies drop before he is thrust into a situation where he is finally set to find what he is looking for. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Reacher, Duffy, and Villanueva Face One Life-Threatening Situation After Another
The previous episode of ‘Reacher’ ended with Duffy and Villanueva walking into a factory, not realizing that their movements have been tracked and people have been sent to kill them. Reacher tries to reach them on the phone, but the calls are blocked due to the factory lining. He immediately calls Steve Eliot, who calls the duo at the factory number. Duffy picks up in the nick of time before the shooting begins. Reacher, too, arrives just in time to kill the goons sent by Beck, but he is also aware of the fact that if all of them die, he will be suspected of foul play, considering that all his previous gunfights have ended the same way.
As Duffy and Villanueva run out of the factory, one of Beck’s goons, Harley, is left alive but also held back by Reacher, who runs the car into a ditch, leaving them unable to chase after his friends. Still, the encounter is enough to prove to Harley that the people he just shot at were federal agents, and that raises some flags for Beck and his operations. Later, Reacher assists Harley in getting rid of the dead bodies of the men killed at the factory. He discovers that there is a spot where the water current is so fast that when they dump the bodies, they vanish into thin air. Reacher makes a mental note of the thing, and considering how things go, it’s clear that he will certainly need the spot again.
Reacher is Forced to Improvise When John Cooper Runs Away
At the beginning of the season, when Reacher orchestrated a fake kidnapping of Richard Beck, the boy’s driver, John Cooper, was held captive by the federal agents. They thought they could get information out of him, but he presented himself as a low-level agent in Beck’s operation, focused only on keeping his son safe. Because they can neither kill him nor let him go, he is tied up on a chair in the same place where they set camp and discuss all their plans and actions. They don’t pay much attention to him, which is how he starts to devise a plan for his escape. Over time, he develops goodwill with Steven Eliot, who feeds him food and water and even gives him a cigarette when he asks for one.
Eliot’s kindness turns into a huge mistake when Cooper asks for a cigarette, and Eliot lights it, not knowing that the other man has alcohol in his mouth. As soon as the young fed switches on the lighter, he throws the alcohol at him. Before Eliot can understand what has happened, Cooper frees himself of the binds he had been working on over the past few days. They come easily, following which he beats Eliot to death. His escape happens about ten minutes before Duffy shows up at the safe house to find her coworker dead. But there is another man she has to worry about.
Because their captive was privy to all of their secrets, it is natural to assume that he would go right to Beck and blow Reacher’s cover. By the time Reacher gets a call from Duffy, enough time has passed, based on which Reacher deduces that the man hasn’t called Beck because there is a good chance that he doesn’t remember the phone number. This means he will have to come to Beck in person. So, Reacher lays out a plan. He and Villanueva flip a car in the middle of the road, which forces Cooper to stop his car and inspect the wreckage, which gives Reacher the chance to shoot him in the head and save himself.
Reacher’s Self-Preservation Costs the Maid Her Life
Before Reacher was sent undercover to dismantle Beck’s operation, another person was sent to spy on the criminal. Her name was Teresa, and Duffy forced her into the operation. At the time, they thought that the DEA was the only interested party in Beck because they believed his operation focused on the selling of drugs. However, they are proven wrong when it turns out that it is actually the sale of weapons, and with knowledge comes the fact that the DEA is not the only government agency looking into Beck. This also means that Reacher was not the only one working undercover at the time. Had he known this, perhaps he’d have chosen a different route to handle things.
To find time to flip the car and stop Cooper, Reacher is forced to make it look like someone is trying to breach Beck’s residence. The power is cut off, and Reacher suggests that might be the doing of the same people who kidnapped Richard several years ago. This gives Reacher the opportunity to leave the residence with the excuse of securing the grounds. However, the sudden power cut raises alarms to the highest levels. The fact that the feds have been looking into them alerts Quinn, and he tells Beck to have every room in his residence searched to find out if they have a mole between them.
Reacher comes close to being found out because of Duffy’s badge, which she’s dropped, and he keeps following the shootout at the factory. Beck’s men don’t find that, but they do find a phone through which one of the people inside the building had been talking to the feds. At first, Reacher thinks that his cover has been blown, but he is shocked to discover that the mole in question is actually Annette, the French maid. It turns out that she was working with ATF. What’s more shocking is that when she was found, Paulie hit her so hard that she died on the spot.
Reacher Meets the Power of Paulie
Realizing that Annette was caught because of him, Reacher feels immense guilt for his actions. Had she been held captive, he would have found a way to rescue her, but then Paulie killed her. What makes Reacher’s blood boil is the way he makes a joke out of her death. When chided that he should have left her alive for questioning, he doesn’t seem to care and continues to joke about how easy it was for him to kill the maid. An angry Reacher tries to put Paulie in his place by punching him. Had it been a regular person, they would have instantly fallen on Reacher’s punch, but Paulie is about twice his size and doesn’t even feel the punch.
Worse, he hits back, slapping Reacher hard in his face, and shockingly, Reacher falls flat on his face on the ground. He is shocked as well as humiliated by this, and it takes him a minute to come out of the impact of the punch. This is the first time, perhaps, that Reacher has been hit so hard, which shows him just how easy it would be for Paulie to kill him. This scene also sets up the excitement for the fight that is bound to happen between Reacher and Paulie, where the scales are immensely tipped in the latter’s favor. But that’s not the immediate concern for the protagonist.
Following the events at the factory and the revelation of an ATF agent in their midst, Quinn sets up a meeting with Beck to settle the matter. This means that Reacher will have to join Beck, which comes with a great risk. Considering that the last time they met, Reacher almost killed Quinn, the man knows that there is a good chance he won’t come out of the meeting alive. He tells Duffy as much, stating that he will kill Quinn before he dies. Still, there is also a chance that Quinn’s amnesia, as a result of the bullet in his head, might be real, and he won’t remember who the man in front of him is. In any case, Reacher prepares for the worst as he and Beck walk into the meeting.
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