The much-loved action crime series developed by Nick Santora based on the Jack Reacher book series by Lee Child has set Prime Video’s streaming numbers ablaze by emerging as the undeniable “Top Title of the Year” with its second season that premiered on December 15, 2023.
Since the release of the first three episodes starring Alan Ritchson as the title character which are being adapted for the streaming giant from the eleventh book in the Jack Reacher series, “Bad Luck and Trouble,” has marked its territory in the streaming charts by securing the No. 1 spot at Amazon. As a matter of fact, in the first three days on the streamer, those episodes garnered a 50% higher viewership than the whole Season 1 audience.
For context, Reacher was the most streamed television series for the week of February 7–13, 2022, according to the Nielsen streaming rankings, making it the first Amazon production to achieve the feat by racking up 1.84 billion minutes viewed across all eight episodes in the United States. Due to this, the new reports have confirmed that Reacher, with its newest chapter in the expanding franchise, is now the No. 1 title of the year for Prime Video in terms of total viewers across all series and films globally.
In addition to this incredible milestone, the streamer has already seen its biggest premiere weekend for any series since Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power in September.
With the season premiering its eight episodes on a weekly basis rather than all at once as the first season did, it is shaping up well for the rest of the season to increase its reception more than ever. Nielsen figures for Season 2 will become available starting right in that window, so exact numbers for how this premiere weekend held up against Season 1 will have to wait about a month. The season’s final episode, “Fly Boy” is scheduled to premiere next month on Friday, January 19, 2024.
REACHER is #1 in 2023 on @PrimeVideo across all movies and TV shows worldwide. pic.twitter.com/yd6Wyh04IE
— Amazon Studios (@AmazonStudios) December 20, 2023
Currently, the series is exclusively available to stream on Prime Video in more than 240 countries and territories worldwide, and it holds spectacular reviews!
For its second season, it has a 100% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 22 critic reviews with an average rating of 8.3/10. The website’s critical consensus states, “Brawny as Alan Ritchson’s biceps, Reacher swaggers confidently into its sophomore season as rock ’em sock ’em pulp with a sly wink.” Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 80 out of 100 based on 12 critics, indicating “generally favorable reviews.”
The official synopsis of Reacher Season 2 reads as follows:
“Reacher’s Season Two begins when veteran military police investigator Jack Reacher (Alan Ritchson) receives a coded message that the members of his former U.S. Army units, the 110th MP Special Investigations, are being mysteriously and brutally murdered one by one. Pulled from his drifter lifestyle, Reacher reunites with three of his former teammates turned chosen family to investigate, including Frances Neagley (Maria Sten); Karla Dixon (Serinda Swan), a forensic accountant for whom Reacher has long had a soft spot; and fast-talking, switchblade-wielding family man David O’Donnell (Shaun Sipos).
Together, they begin to connect the dots in a mystery where the stakes get higher at every turn, and that brings about questions of who has betrayed them—and who will die next. Using his inimitable blend of smarts and size, Reacher will stop at nothing to uncover the truth and protect the members of his unit. If there’s one thing Reacher and his team know for certain, it’s that you do not mess with the Special Investigators. This season, get ready for Reacher and the 110th to hit back hard.”
Reacher is produced by Amazon Studios, Skydance Television, and Paramount Television Studios. Based on the novels by Lee Child, who serves as an executive producer, the series is written for television by Emmy-nominated writer Nick Santora, who also executive produces and serves as showrunner. In addition to Santora and Child, the series is executive produced by Don Granger, Scott Sullivan, and Adam Higgs, with David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, and Matt Thunell for Skydance.
Concluding on an even more upbeat note, the show has already received an early Season 3 renewal from Amazon Prime Video, which was announced ahead of the release of Season 2.
The news was confirmed by Alan Ritchson, who plays the title character, during a panel at CCXP in São Paulo, Brazil. During the event, he also debuted an extended for the second season which highlights, “Reacher is pulled from his vagabond life by a coded message informing him that a member of the 110th – his elite group of Army Special Investigators – has been murdered. He and some of his former military cohorts reunite to investigate and soon realize the case is bigger than they ever could have imagined.”
Watch the entire announcement clip below:
