Reacher Season 3 Just Teased One of Reacher’s Biggest Fights

This article contains spoilers through season 3 episode 3 of Reacher and mild spoilers for Lee Child’s novel Persuader.

Reacher has returned for a third season, taking the lone wolf hero on yet another thrilling adventure ripped from the pages of Lee Child’s novels. This time, the Prime Video series is adapting Persuader, a novel that follows Reacher as he infiltrates a crime family’s operation hoping to find a dangerous man from his past. As readers of this novel know, part of Reacher’s journey sees him go up against a man even larger than his own formidable size, and just as the book does, the series has already given us a taste of what this fight might look like.

From the moment that Reacher (Alan Ritchson) and Paulie (Olivier Richters) meet at the Beck’s, they appear to be at odds. Paulie seems intent on proving that he’s the bigger man (literally), and Reacher isn’t afraid to goad him a little. In the second episode of the season, “Truckin,’” Reacher and Paulie end up in the mansion’s home gym together. Paulie challenges him to a bench pressing contest, but Reacher convinces him that a true test of strength lies in Bavarian arm wrestling.

Reacher tells him to sit on a bench, hold out his arm in traditional arm wrestling fashion, and then put his hand in a fist, facing himself. Then Reacher stands in front of him and tries to pull his arm down. Despite giving it his all, Reacher has a hard time keeping their arms even let alone gaining any headway against Paulie’s strength. However, Reacher lets his hand go at just the right time, the momentum causing Paulie to punch himself in the face. Reacher of course insists that his hand slipped, but Paulie isn’t having it. Paulie stands and looks ready to kick Reacher’s ass, when Duke (Donald Sales) comes in just in time to get him to stand down.

This scene is not only fun to watch – who doesn’t want to see two absolute units square off against each other – it also gives us a taste of the actual fight to come. Whereas Paulie may have Reacher beat as far as size goes, Reacher knows how to fight smarter, not harder, and this scene proves that. When the big fight comes later on in the season, the winner isn’t necessarily going to be determined by muscle size, it’s more likely to be determined by who can hold out the longest. And if we know anything about Reacher by now, it’s that he’s a master of patience and playing the long game.

But that doesn’t mean that the fight will be easy. Just because Reacher has a chance of outsmarting Paulie doesn’t mean that he won’t still be fighting for his life. There’s a reason that fans have been excited about this fight since Persuader was announced as this season’s adaptation. We’re used to seeing Reacher pummel bad guys with relative ease. This is the first time in the show that we’re going to see him go up against someone physically bigger than he is, so you know it’s going to be one hell of a fight to watch.

With both an intellectual foil in Francis Xavier Quinn (Brian Tee) and a physical foil in Paulie, Reacher certainly has his work cut out for him this season. Fans of the book may have an idea of what’s in store for our favorite wandering hero, but all we’ll say is that everyone watching is in for a wild ride.

The first three episodes of Reacher season 3 are available to stream on Prime Video now. New episodes premiere Thursdays, culminating with the finale on March 27.

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