Jack Reacher fans, rejoice. While your favorite bruiser is tearing his way through Margrave, Georgia in an adaptation of Lee Child’s Killing Floor on behalf of one of the best Amazon Prime Video shows, Reacher got outstanding news that a second season already has been confirmed. The show’s leading man, Alan Ritchson, reacted to the news that he’d get to fill Reacher’s massive shoes with the amount of glee you would expect. And given the fact that Child has a virtual library of Jack Reacher stories which each could sustain a full season of the show, we started thinking ahead to the book that should inspire Reacher season two.
We also asked Alan Ritchson which book he’d like to adapt for Reacher season two. And he told CinemaBlend:
I would want to go to Die Trying. I would just keep going in order. As I read, I read them all sequentially, although they bounce back and forth in time, as far as the story is concerned. Each book got better than the last. I loved Die Trying, and I’d love to see that one made some day.
Alan Ritchson is correct. Die Trying is the second book in Lee Child’s long-running series of bestselling Jack Reacher novels, and while each book works as its own standalone story, they do contribute to a larger narrative around Reacher and the places he visits to investigate wrongdoings. Eventually, Child got to a point where a few books tied together to tell a longer, three-book story. And the author worked his way into the new TV series. But with Die Trying, the narrative is contained enough to work as the foundation for Reacher season two.
The action for Die Trying would shift to Chicago, where Reacher (Alan Ritchson) would partner with an FBI agent whose family ties reach all the way to the White House, and is now the target of a band of militia hoping to secede from the United States. If, for whatever reason, Reacher season two wanted to take advantage of Alan Ritchson’s age, there are books that Lee Child wrote later in his career that act as prequel stories and exist around the same time as Killing Floor. So showrunner Nick Santora could turn the attention of the writers’ room to The Enemy, Night School, or The Affair, all of which occur before the events of Killing Floor. Whatever the decision, it still makes more sense than the Tom Cruise movies, which started with One Shot, the ninth book in Child’s series. That never made sense.
The Amazon Prime Video series Reacher is streaming in its entirety now, so make sure your Amazon Prime subscription is up to date, and dive right in. It’s my hope that the announcement of Reacher season two allows the production team to ramp up filming, so that we don’t have to wait more than a year to see Alan Ritchson back in action.
