This article has spoilers for Reacher Season 3, Episode 8, “Unfinished Business”
The challenges of doing a season finale are different for every show, depending on early renewal, story, and, unfortunately, the show’s cancellation. Reacher is unique in that each season is a self-contained story taken from the book series by Lee Child. There are some crossover characters, but each season takes place in a new place with different characters and storylines. This creates some unique challenges, which we see in “Unfinished Business,” which is a satisfying, if not predictable, ending to Season 3.
We pick up exactly where the last episode, “L.A. Story,” ended, with the supposed money/weapons trade being a trap. As expected, it doesn’t take long for all hell to break loose. Ultimately, there are many dead bodies, good and bad guys, and the remaining good guys hatch their final plan. Reacher (Alan Ritchson), Neagley (Maria Sten), Duffy (Sonya Cassidy), Villanueva (Roberto Montesinos), and Zachary Beck (Anthony Michael Hall) take the two trucks that were supposed to return to Quinn (Brian Tee) at Beck’s house to transport the weapons to rescue Beck’s son Richard (Johnny Berchtold) and Teresa (Storm Steenson) and deal with Quinn.
This episode has three things it needs to take care of: the rescue mission, the fate of Quinn, and, of course, a Paulie (Olivier Richters)/Reacher showdown. Who would remain standing at the end was anyone’s guess, but all of these storylines were handled with mixed results. Suspending your disbelief at some of the execution here and how it all played out would help, but suffice it to say things were action-packed, and that helped push the pace and narrative through some of the weaker moments.
Let’s talk about the Paulie/Reacher showdown first. After they get the two trucks past Paulie at the watch post outside the main gates, things go sideways, and Reacher is forced to take Paulie on sooner rather than later. What transpires next is a widely over-the-top, hilarious, ridiculous fight that goes on and on, moving locations around the outside of the Beck house, intercut with scenes of the rest of the gang carrying out the three-point plan as it was laid out. For the most part, it was fun, and Reacher ultimately kills Paulie, but it did push even believable TV show boundaries a bit far with just how long it went on.
Conversely, the rescue mission in the house was pretty tightly laid out. Quinn offered up Teresa to the buyers, trying to make nice, only to try and double-cross them in the end. The hunt for Teresa was fun, and Duffy had a good scene with some bad guys, while Villanueva had a great fight scene in a bathroom on the way to rescue Richard. These scenes moved well and were fun and action-packed. As the duo rescues would never go smoothly, these two scenes added something to intercut the ridiculousness/fun between Paulie and Reacher.
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Zachary Beck gets to play hero, saving his son from Quinn, only to die in the attempt by the many, many bullets Quinn puts in him. Quinn grabs the money and tries to escape, but the Russians turn up and look for the cash. Reacher and Neagley negotiate with the Russians, handing over the cash for Quinn, and once the Russians leave, Reacher gets to confront Quinn one last time. The nice twist before Quinn died was his memory coming back (convenient, I know), but this way, he knew who Reacher was and why he was doing what he was before pulling the trigger. The good guys won, the bad guys died, Richard drove off with a ton of cash to start a new life, and Reacher stole a motorcycle (rolled it right by the feds, who were at this point all over the Beck house) and drove off into the sunset.
“Unfinished Business” was pure adrenaline with a fast-paced, violent story that was almost cartoonish. It’s everything you’d want in a season finale of Reacher. The show knows its audience and, for the most part, did a great job moving the story along this season while improving the look and fight scenes.
It wasn’t a perfect season, and while it’s been renewed for a fourth, one wonders how long they want to keep it going. For now, we wait for another Reacher adventure.
I love the books, the tv show, and the first movie. I thought the fight between Reacher and Paulie went on for far too long. I was just shouting at the screen, ‘Get on with it. We know who’s going to win.’ And the dreadful trope where we think Paulie’s dead but he really isn’t. To disagree with probably everyone else I was disappointed in the finale.