‘Reacher’ Season 1 Finale Recap: “Pie”

Finlay was the one who originally brought in Picard, back when this whole mess started a week-and-a-half ago, because he could trust the FBI agent to watch over and protect Hubble’s wife and daughters. “I thought you were my friend,” Finlay says now, as the season finale of Reacher begins with Picard’s gun trained at his head. “I was,” Picard snorts. “That’s why I told you not to take the job down here. Old partner offered up a cash gig. Protect a counterfeiting ring. But then you made me a babysitter. I was hoping you’d just get run off course. But no. You and this fuckin’ ape couldn’t let things go.”

Of course Reacher could never let things go once he’d learned that Joe was murdered, and now it’s KJ’s turn to reveal the truth. “I killed your brother,” he seethes, psychotic eyes aglow. KJ also murdered Jobling and Sheriff Morrison, and orchestrated the slayings of the EPA agent in Memphis and Officer Stevenson and his wife right here in Margrave. Maybe worst of all, it was KJ who fileted his own father, employing that ghastly butterfly cut learned from the Venezuelans. Reacher just swallows mildly in the face of this depravity, while KJ admits with a sick grin that his father wanted to put him in an institution. “He tried that once when I was kid, but it didn’t take.”

KJ and Teale need to tie up one more loose end, and that’s Hubble. He’s in the wind, and they send Reacher to find him with Picard on guard. They hold Roscoe and Charlie Hubble and her children hostage as Reacher turns the big Bentley toward Augusta, reasoning that the currency manager would want to be far enough away from Margrave to hide, but not too far away from his wife and kids. He also sneaks a fork into the Flying Spear’s tire. When it goes flat is when he’ll strike.

While Finlay is tortured by Officer Baker at the Margrave station house, and Roscoe and the Hubbles are chained up at Kliner’s counterfeit processing factory, Reacher’s flat tire plan goes into action. He reaches for a pistol stashed near the spare, snaps off a shot, and eventually goads Picard into breaking their roadside standoff. He shoots him, heads for Augusta, locates Hubble’s motel where he’d checked in as a Beatle (“People use the names of things they like”), and the two men high tail it back to Margrave. While en route, Hubble explains that it was he who first contacted Reacher’s brother at the Treasury Department. He was set to expose Kliner’s entire counterfeitin operation from within when KJ murdered Joe.

Reacher knows that they’re all loose ends. Himself, Finlay, Hubble, Rosce, Hubble’s family: KJ and Teale will murder them wholesale to keep the funny money flowing. And so their best tactic is a frontal assault. Reacher rams a truck through Margrave PD’s front door, crushing Baker and freeing Finlay. Negley arrives as they arm themselves with pistols and rifles out of the station’s weapons locker, and Hubble drives them out to Kliner’s factory in the Bentley. The presence of armed guards on the perimeter indicates that KJ expects Reacher to go in with guns blazing, and that’s exactly what happens. Neagley snuffs out the security. Reacher pours diversionary fuel through a loading bay. And Finlay lights it with a dead man’s cigarette. “Are we gonna die?” he asks Reacher. “Let’s find out.”

As you’d imagine, they don’t. Kliner’s pallets full of fake C-notes go up in flames. Neagley finds high ground and picks off gunmen while Reacher frees Roscoe, Charlie and the kids, and Hubble gets his family free of the burning building. And from there it breaks down to respective vendettas. Finlay squares off against a bleeding Picard, jamming fingers into his bullet wound before backing his former friend into a metal stamping machine. Splat. Then Roscoe is attacked by Mayor Teale. There’s a struggle, and he draws on her. That’s unwise. Boom. And Reacher lets KJ blather on crazily for a few minutes as he circles him into position. Kliner’s son gets his when Reacher dunks him in a chemical vat before tossing him bodily into the encroaching flames. The loose ends, safe outside, watch the whole thing burn.

There will be inquiries into what went down in Margrave, Georgia. Questions from the state police, questions from the feds – questions Reacher has no interest in answering. He’s a born drifter, a proud hobo, and he has as much interest in sticking around as he does in answering a bunch of questions. “Maybe you should run for mayor,” he tells Roscoe, and they kiss one last time. Finlay isn’t sticking around, either – he tells Reacher he’s quitting police work and heading back to Boston. And before he walks out of Margrave for good, Reacher visits the site of Joe’s death. On her deathbed, his mother had given him his grandfather’s war medal, awarded “for bravery in the face of danger.” Reacher buries it where his brother died trying nobly to solve the world’s latest problem.

‘Reacher’ Features:

• Amazon renewed Reacher almost immediately after its debut, and the series recently topped Nielsen’s weekly streaming chart to the tune of 1.589 million minutes viewed. But while there’s no question that Alan Ritchson was the right choice to play Reacher, if a second season adheres to the source material, his wanderings will take him to…well, wherever they take him to, it won’t feature any of the ancillary characters and actors that made season one so enjoyable. Maybe they can give Roscoe her own Reacher universe spin-off?
• That said, there is one supporting character who remains available. It was smart for Reacher to introduce Frances Neagley into Reacher’s world — in the books, the former Master Sergeant from his MP days doesn’t appear until Without Fail, the sixth outing in the series — and like Ritchson, Maria Sten embodies the character with can’t-miss confidence. Wherever Reacher wanders in season two, and whatever trouble finds him there, it’s a good bet Neagley will have his six.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges