It’s 2 AM in the city, and Jack Reacher (Alan Ritchson) faces his beefiest opponent yet. It’s just him out here, of course — Reacher left most concepts of backup in the dust, once he retired from the US Army and began his open-ended, large-sized national walkabout. And for those same reasons, as he confronts his newest challenge, you won’t find people like a moonlighting DEA agent or reformed rug importer/gun runner in his corner. Reacher Season 3 was a closed loop, just like every season of Prime Video‘s Reacher, just like every title from the original Lee Child book series. On these downtown streets, in the middle of the night, as Season 4 begins, Reacher stands alone. The Philly cheesesteak our large adult son orders from a food truck should be the one calling for backup.

Naturally, he also just left a blues club. Besides knocking heads, Reacher probably loves the blues and baseball the most. And on Philadelphia’s Broad Street subway line, he enjoys the last of his sandwich while he details his fellow passengers. Exhausted third-shifters, a guy clowning a slice of pizza, a random corporate type in a three-quarter-zip — pretty standard for the small hours. Except for one woman, all the way at the other end of the car, who whimpers and mumbles as she clutches a large bag to the puffer coat she wears out of season.

Suicide bomber. That’s what the former military investigator’s training and instincts are telling him. Reacher approaches the woman carefully. “I need to see your hands.” He’s working from a behavioral checklist developed for situations just like this. And when one of her hands reveals a revolver, Reacher considers it a win. Better than a terrorist bomb. “I’m involved now,” he tells the woman as she grows more agitated. “Whatever you’re in, I’m in it now, too.” And while we know this implicitly about Reacher, she does not. “No one can help me now.” She shoots herself in the head.

This shocking start to Reacher Season 4 arrives fresh off the page from Gone Tomorrow, the thirteenth book in Child’s series. As the only witness who spoke to Anna Merrick (Karen Kwong-Chip), the woman who committed suicide, Reacher is brought to a police station and questioned by two detectives, Tamara Green (Sydelle Noel) and Shaun Docherty (Kevin Corrigan). But their inquiries are mostly about what has become TV tradition, the tallying of Reacher’s personal code of absurdities. No ID but for his passport. No home address. No phone. No real possessions at all. He came from nowhere in particular, and is headed toward nowhere definite. Docherty gets off a fresh version of a line we’ve heard before. “OK, Sherlock-has-no-home…”

To Green, who Reacher respects because his sense is she’s a good cop stuck on a thankless nightshift with a worthless partner, he says he just wants to help Anna Merrick, even in death. When she was desperate, no one would. But the case takes a twist when a trio of nameless federal agents arrive. Anna worked for the government, and these guys want to know if she gave Reacher anything before she died, such as a flash drive. Our trusty size XL pal treats these junior-level feds and their pestering questions like playthings, and hilariously just leaves.

It’s always one battle after another with this guy. Outside the cop shop, Reacher encounters two thugs in Temu-brand clubwear, who also demand the mysterious flash drive no one handed him. “Who’s your boss?” he asks, but they can’t answer because Reacher clangs their skulls off lightpoles and honor boxes. From witness to a subway suicide, to detained in a police station, to federal questioning, to extemporaneous street fighting, to ordering eggs and coffee: it’s all in a few hours’ work for Reacher. The nearby diner is where he finds Jacob Merrick (Christopher Rodriquez-Marquette), a smalltown New Jersey policeman. Anna was Jake’s sister, and he’s devastated over her death. How will Jake ever tell his college football player nephew?

Reacher’s in it now. Anna Merrick shot herself under duress, and he’s gonna chase down why. “Your sister was involved in something big enough that the federal government’s worried, and people are trying to work me over on the street because of it,” Reacher tells Jake. “So big she saw no way out, so she killed herself over it.”

And since Reacher’s good at not letting people get away with things — usually because he murders them, but we’re not at that stage yet  — he forces the thugs who jumped him to give up their boss. In a park, Reacher meets with Lila Hoth (Agnez Mo), accompanied by Amisha (Anggun), who she introduces as her mother. Lila says the mysterious flash drive everybody wants contains sensitive information about John Sampson (Marc Blucas), a former Delta Force army officer who is now a North Carolina congressman with presidential aspirations. Did Sampson father a secret lovechild — Lila — while on a Top Secret mission to Indonesia in the 1990s?

Reacher’s next stop is the Philadelphia Public Library, which for some reason is supposed to include records related to a politician’s past military career. The real reason he’s there is to set up another fight, this one with an unnamed attacker demanding the missing flash drive. Reacher uses the Dewey Decimal System to squeeze him between the movable archive stacks in a death blow reminiscent of Boban in the New York library vs. John Wick.

So it’s a whole-ass new Season 4 adventure for our solitary asskicker. He doesn’t have a lot of answers just yet, but he has managed to make a lot of people mad at him, which is another one of his skills. And the latest group of attackers might have seen him coming. These guys are probably from the government, too, but with higher-grade taste in suits, and more preparation for the fight. They shoot Reacher with the kind of tranquilizer darts used by zoos to take down large animals. Our guy’s alone again, this time in a cell.

Pocket Items for Reacher Season 4 Episode 1 (“City of Brotherly Love”): 

• The music in Reacher can be a little random, but we’ll note he hears “Chicken Stuff” by Hop Wilson, legend of Texas steel guitar, upon leaving a blues club in downtown Philadelphia. “Shake that Thing” by Wynonnie Harris is playing in the diner and Curtis Mayfield’s “Pusherman” soundtracks Reacher’s meeting in the park with Lila.

• “Don’t be shitty to my Gritty.” Detective Tamara Green reps the discourse-rich Flyers mascot.

• Reacher also details his cheesesteak order to Green. Onions, peppers, extra cheese. But what kind of cheese? Provolone? Cheez-Whiz? Cooper Sharp?! America demands answers from its hungriest man. 

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.