‘Reacher’ Season 3, Episode 6 Recap – Reacher’s Cover Being Blown Is a Good Thing

In many ways, Episode 6 of Reacher Season 3 is a payoff to the excellent fourth episode. That was where you really felt the menace of Xavier Quinn, the season’s Big Bad who has largely been developed through absence and implication. That gave us a sense of the personal stakes for Reacher himself, why he’s so determined to right this long-ago wrong from his past. “Smoke on the Water” shows us what he’s going to have to go through to do it, which includes a hulking nemesis who dwarfs even him, a tricky hostage situation with a confidential informant who has now been confirmed to be alive, and a personal battle with easily the most sick and sinister villain that the Prime Video series has drummed up across three seasons.

I wasn’t keen on certain aspects of the previous episode, but I must concede it ended on a tantalizing cliffhanger that allowed “Smoke on the Water” to build real tension right from the jump. Reacher coming face to face with Quinn relies on the idea that Quinn might remember him from the past; he doesn’t seem to, but it still isn’t entirely clear. There’s a good chance something might well jog his memory in the near future, and that’s if he isn’t just playing a long game already.

But either way, Quinn makes an interesting counterpoint to Paulie. The latter’s a threat to Reacher in purely physical terms. Quinn is established to be ruthless, sadistic, and smart, which presents different challenges. He immediately makes Reacher’s undercover mission ten times harder. Zachary Beck’s recent failures – including hiring an ATF agent to clean his house – have made him extra paranoid, especially since he’s on the cusp of a major weapons sale. Reacher Season 3, Episode 6 confirms a few interesting details in this regard.

Quinn is selling to the Russian mob and has almost his entire inventory wrapped up in the deal. As explained by Beck a little later, when Quinn needed seed money for his operation, he couldn’t go to a traditional bank. Instead, he went to the Russians. If he can’t provide the requested shipment, which is currently delayed in transit, his neck is on the line. In the same way that Beck was revealed to be a low link in the chain, Quinn is answerable to his Russian overlords.

Teresa is also alive. She wouldn’t be under normal circumstances, but Quinn has kept her around as a sweetener in the deal since the buyer has a thing for redheads. This gives Reacher and Duffy a tight window to potentially save her before the deal goes through, but it’s more pressing than ever now that Quinn is directly involved, because he immediately orders his men to tighten up security, digging into Beck’s operation and finding out who has been asking any questions related to it.

This ropes Neagley back into the plot since Reacher had her run a few names connected to Quinn. Two armed goons show up at her office; she kills one and interrogates the other while he bleeds out, getting a sense of why she was targeted, which she then reports to Reacher. This sets some alarm bells ringing since Reacher also called the 110^th Special Investigators looking for Susan Turner. The guy who answered the phone doesn’t fare as well as Neagley.

Brian Tee in Reacher Season 3 | Image via Prime Video

This also exposes Reacher’s connection to the 110^th, which blows his cover. He’s forced to flee Beck’s compound with Quinn’s men in hot pursuit, excusing a great action sequence where he covers his face in mud and takes down all of his pursuers Rambo-style in the woods. But Reacher being rumbled is probably the best thing to happen to Season 3. It’s an excuse for the gloves to come off in the remaining episodes, with Beck, Paulie, and Quinn all still to be dealt with, Teresa still to be located, and a rapidly brewing romance with Duffy to capitalize on. That gets some development in “Smoke on the Water” – Duffy plants a kiss on him and then berates him for it, much to Reacher’s visible and very funny confusion – but clearly hasn’t reached a climax – no pun intended – just yet.

Speaking of Duffy, later in the episode she and Reacher track Teresa to Harley’s boat, where they discover she has been held the whole time. Harley catches them in the act and reveals she has recently been moved and pays the price for his complicity by being hobbled and left to burn up on the exploding vessel. It’s a richly deserved fate for one of the slimiest villains, and presumably the first of a few wins coming the heroes’ way.

The only potential problem for Reacher now, morally speaking, is Richard. In Reacher Season 3, Episode 6, Richard happens to walk in on one of Reacher’s clandestine meetings with Duffy, where Richard recognizes Villanueva as the cop Reacher supposedly shot during his fake kidnapping. Reacher has no choice but to tell Richard everything and hope he keeps his secret, which, to be fair, he does. But with Quinn now holding Richard and his father for his own sick gratification, forcing Richard to play Russian Roulette and telling Beck that he wants a “matching set” as the camera pans to Richard’s missing ear, Reacher’s going to have to get him out of there. All that fatherly bonding can’t be for naught.

But in the meantime, it seems like we’re going to Los Angeles. “Smoke on the Water” ends with Reacher rather cryptically claiming that they already have an inside man in Quinn’s operation, someone who just hasn’t realized it yet, and they’re going to need to head to L.A. to pursue that lead. It’ll likely mean a change of scenery for the penultimate episode, which will probably be welcome, but with all the setup that has taken place here, there’s a strong possibility that the body count is about to skyrocket either way.