Posted in: Amazon Studios, TV | Tagged: Neagley, Reacher

Reacher: This Season 3 Ep. 6 Scene Set the Tone for Neagley Spinoff

There is one scene in this week's episode of Reacher Season 3 that is practically a backdoor pilot for the upcoming Neagley spinoff series.

We know that Reacher is a big hit for Prime Video and, unsurprisingly for longtime fans of the books, will get a spinoff series starring Maria Sten as Jack Reacher's ride-or-die Francis Neagley, rumoured to be simply called Neagley. There was one scene in this week's episode, the sixth in season three, that feels like a backdoor pilot to the Neagley spinoff.

Let's set the scene. This season of Reacher is adapted from Persuader, the seventh Jack Reacher novel from 2003, where Reacher goes undercover to help an ATF agent but also on a personal mission of revenge against a man he thought he had previously killed during his Military Police days. In the sixth episode, the paranoid kingpin Quin (Brian Tee) sends hitmen after everyone Reacher had asked to look into him, which leads to Neagley. The whole scene is almost a self-contained short film with Neagley working alone at her high-end private security agency late at night. She gets up from her desk to make a cup of coffee in the kitchen area but leaves her gun by her desk. She spots two hitmen walk into the office, reflected in the large office windows.

The microwave with her coffee pings which alerts them to her location, so she hits the first one that comes to the kitchen area and hides herself behind the desks in the office area. As they search for her, she gets on a colleague's computer and programs the photocopier to start beeping. As the men go to the copier room on the far side of the office, she dashes back to her office and grabs her gun in time to shoot the men when they come running. One dies immediately, so she reloads and hunts for the other, who has scrambled to the kitchen area. She finds him gutshot, begging for an ambulance. That's where the real fun begins and the real meat of the scene comes into focus. Neagley calmly starts eating a bowl of cereal while interrogating the guy about who sent him. When he gives her the answer she wants, she responds to his desperate cry for an ambulance in the most gratifyingly nasty way possible. It's a perfect self-contained short scene that tells you everything you need about her and why Reacher considers her his female counterpart and his ride-or-die.

It's not hard to think that scene was designed to get viewers excited about seeing a Neagley spinoff. It elevates Maria Sten's performance as Neagley to another level of incredibly cool. She's not a victim – far from it. She's totally calm as she outthinks the bad guys and nonchalantly picks them off. Neagley doesn't even appear in the original novel. The writers of Reacher took liberties to expand the story to include Neagley to keep her around, as well as introduce several subplots to fill out a season's worth of episodes. But the standout moment for this episode is Neagley's scene as a teaser for her spinoff series.

Reacher is streaming on Prime. Neagley is currently in production.

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!