Reacher Season 3's Brutal, Final Brawl 'Might Be TV's Best Fight Sequence Ever,' Says 'Dutch Giant' — Grade It!

The following contains spoilers for the Reacher Season 3 finale, now streaming on Prime Video.

Reacher pulled no punches in the Season 3 finale — and neither did his XXL adversary, Paulie.

The Prime Video hit's latest run, based on Lee Child's Persuader novel, ended with Reacher (played by Alan Ritchson), Neagley (Maria Sten) and DEA agents Susan Duffy (Sonya Cassidy) and Guillermo Villanueva (Roberto Montesinos) barely surviving an ambush at a junk yard. They then made tracks for the birthday bash at Beck's estate, where Julius McCabe aka Xavier Quinn (Brian Tee) aimed to seal a deal with the latest buyer of his smuggled guns.

While Neagley (using Villanueva's white shirt and Beck's tuxedo vest to pose as a cater waiter), Duffy and Villanueva headed inside — to respectively keep an eye on Quinn, rescue kidnapped/drugged CI Teresa, and protect Beck's son Richard — Reacher hung back to deal with Paulie (Olivier "The Dutch Giant" Richters).

What followed, between Reacher and Beck's supersized security guard, was a sprawling, multi-stage fight sequence that in all totaled nearly 10 minutes. It involved lots and lots of flying fists, crotch shots... a shovel and a garden rake, an avalanche of bagged lawn seed, the near-lynching of Reacher... a tumble off a cliff into the raging eddy below, and an underwater brawl... Paulie's seeming drowning, followed by his resurrection and a slow foot chase leading back to the guard house.

There, Reacher and Paulie fought for control of the belt-fed machine gun hanging from the ceiling. Paulie wound up getting the drop on his rival, aimed the barrel at Reacher and pulled the trigger — only to have the round blow up in his face, fatally. (Reacher, proving himself the "smarter" fighter, had deftly pulled a bullet from the belt and plugged the barrel.)

Reacher's besting of Paulie was exhausting to watch, so how was it for the actors involved?

"The battle was so great, I had to recover for several months," Richters shared with TVLine. "That's how amazing the fight was. It was epic."

The magnitude of the mano a mano melee was not lost on the actors in the moment, especially the instant that filming it wrapped.

"Alan and I hugged at the end — 'We did it, we pulled it off,'" Richters recalled. "It was the physically hardest thing we both ever did. And it might be the best fight sequence we've ever seen for a television show."

With Paulie dead, Reacher went to the barn to pinch a Persuader shotgun from Quinn's stash, and then joined the others inside the mansion. Susan had found Teresa and neutralized the redhead's would-be rapist/gun runner with a bullet to his frank-and-beans, while Villanueva nearly met his match in one of the gun-running goons.

Quinn had riddled Zachary Beck with bullets, taken Richard at gunpoint and was making a run for it when the Russian mobsters to whom he owed money arrived at Beck's doorstep.

Interrupting that face-off, Reacher demanded that the Russians leave Quinn for him to deal with. There was push-back, but a quick-thinking Neagley arrived with the duffel of cash that the gun runners brought, and offered it in trade for Quinn — lest she blow it up with a (fake) grenade (she grabbed from Beck's study). The Russians agreed, took the cash and left. Duffy, Villanueva and Neagley then found other things to tend to inside, purposely leaving Reacher to deal with Quinn privately.

Still a bit amnesic about his past, Quinn said that he was puzzled by Reacher's vendetta. "All you need to know it that her name was Dominique Kohl," Reacher said, naming his onetime 110th colleague whom Quinn had years ago tortured and killed. The instant that Quinn's eyes registered a flicker of recognition, Reacher put a round into his face.

In the aftermath the next day, Villanueva went home to his relieved wife (and an awaited retirement)... Duffy gave Reacher the "I don't do relationships" speech that is his trademark, before planting on the big lug a goodbye kiss... and Reacher nudged Richard to grab any cash that's in the house and embark on the life the lad has wanted to live. Richard did so and drove away, while Reacher grabbed a hog from Beck's barn and rode off into the New England horizon....

Want scoop on Neagley or Season 4 of Reacher? Shoot an email to InsideLine@tvline.com, and your question may be answered via Matt's Inside Line!