Reacher Season 4: Book Spoilers That Hint At What Might Happen

Alan Ritchson returns as the titular man-mountain in "Reacher" Season 4 for another fast-paced story of fists and fury based on the books by Lee Child. The Prime Video series doesn't follow its source material beat for beat, updating names and tweaking subplots for its fourth TV outing, which is based on the 13th book in the series, "Gone Tomorrow."

The action kicks off when the nomad hero finds his way to Philadelphia and spots Anna Merrick (Karen Kwong-Chip) on the subway, exhibiting what he recognizes as signs of a potential suicide bomber. When he confronts her, the encounter ends in her death by suicide. Troubled by the possibility that he contributed to the federal government employee's death, Reacher dives headfirst into her life to figure out why she chose to end it. The series has plenty more road ahead, too, as "Reacher" has been renewed for Season 5.

The premiere episode immediately puts him on a collision course with Amisha (Anggun) and Lila Hoth (Agnez Mo), two Indonesian women looking for a USB drive that Merrick supposedly had on her when she died. While their motive remains mysterious at first, readers of the book may have a good idea of how they're really connected to Merrick's death.

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In the show, Amisha Hoth is presented as a political dissident who fled Indonesia following various atrocities. Lila initially claims that Amisha is her mother and tells Reacher that she's looking for congressman John Sampson (Marc Blucas) because he is her father and could be the bone marrow match she needs to live. Reacher eventually discovers that story is a lie, with Lila admitting that Amisha isn't her mother and that she's actually an investigative journalist pursuing a story about Sampson. That's a major departure from the book, where Lila and her "mother," Svetlana, claim to be seeking the person responsible for leaving Lila's father to die at the hands of Mujahedeen fighters.

The novel eventually reveals another major deception: Svetlana is secretly running an Al Qaeda cell, with Lila as her protégé. The pair are also adept at torturing people and handy with a blade, but more on that shortly. They're hunting for a controversial photo of the congressman standing with Osama bin Laden. Given the adaptation's shift to Indonesia, that exact backstory may not make it into the series, but the book still hints that Sampson could have a similarly murky past.

More importantly, the novel suggests that Amisha and Lila may eventually be revealed as far more dangerous than they've appeared so far. If that twist carries over to the series, it would be a huge contrast to who Reacher has battled so far. He hasn't faced villains driven by an extremist ideology in the first three seasons, which have instead centered on criminal conspiracies and arms-trafficking operations.

So what drives Anna Merrick to take her own life in the opening few minutes of the show? The book offers one possible clue. In "Gone Tomorrow," the Hoths force federal employee Susan Mark to track down the aforementioned photo of the congressman, which is hidden on Pentagon systems. They kidnap her football-player son to blackmail her into doing what they want. Although Mark complies with their demands, she misses her deadline to deliver a memory card. In retaliation, the Hoths torture and kill her son and send her a video of what they did to him.

The footage pushes Mark toward revenge, but Reacher intervenes before she can act on it, and the encounter ultimately ends in her death by suicide. It's a very bleak way of starting the book and the series, but it immediately gives Reacher a reason to investigate because he feels guilty about the situation.

Unfortunately, Jacob Merrick (Chris Marquette) reveals in the show that he hasn't heard from his nephew, which could mean the young man has already met the same fate as his counterpart in the book. If Season 4 follows that part of "Gone Tomorrow," Reacher may get justice for the Merrick family.

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In "Gone Tomorrow," Reacher is forced into a knife fight with the Hoths. Svetlana and Lila force him to strip to his underwear when Reacher ambushes them at their apartment hideout, revealing that he doesn't have any guns on him. However, they don't spot the knife he has taped to his back. From there, it becomes a fight to the death, and Reacher barely makes it out alive.

Reacher, Svetlana and Lila slash at each other until he eventually kills the older woman with his knife. He then uses a chair against Lila before throttling her to death. Reacher sustains plenty of knife wounds during the fight and has to use duct tape to stop himself from bleeding out before the authorities can get to him. Obviously, since he's Reacher, he survives the brawl to fight another day.

The knife fight also ties into the Hoths' use of blades to torture and murder their victims in the novel. Given the brutal fights Prime Video has brought to the screen so far, Season 4 could adapt the Hoths' knife fight relatively faithfully. But the series has already tweaked several elements of "Gone Tomorrow," so the confrontation could still play out differently when the finale comes around.