‘Reacher’ Season 4, Episode 3 Recap – What the Kids These Days Call A Smokeshow

What constitutes a breather when you’re in the midst of a CIA conspiracy? Reacher isn’t inclined to rest much anyway, and Season 4 has barely paused for breath at all, with the premiere being breakneck and the follow-up being similarly chaotic. So, it isn’t a massive surprise when a brief visit to Russell’s place at the start of Episode 3 lasts for about two minutes before it devolves into yet another action sequence, this one a kind of siege deal as more goons — though not the besuited CIA goons, who are mowed down by these goons — storm Russell’s condemned, ramshackle loft. 

How did we get here? Well, a brief refresher. At the tail end of the previous episode, Reacher had recognised Sampson’s chief of staff, Nolan Cahill, as the missing witness from the night Anna Merrick took her own life. Based on Sampson’s forthrightness, he’s also started to wonder about Lila’s story and why she deliberately implied something that clearly wasn’t true. But he doesn’t get time to find out straight away, since Russell, sulking about the gang stealing his van, has put some choice posts on 4chan about the thumb drive, leading the CIA and this new group to his location. You know what they say about loose lips. 

With the help of some wasp spray and Reacher’s military tactics and general psychopathy, the invading goons don’t last long — even the sole survivor expires before he can reveal any information under torture, but he does have a note in his pocket containing two addresses, the loft and, Reacher presumes, Lila’s current location. He gives her a call to tip her off, and then Tamara comes in useful by helping to acquire a new, clean vehicle so they can start moving around unmolested. She also finds a new home for the dead sex worker’s cat. 

With all this sorted, Lila calls Reacher’s burner and lets him know she and her family are safe. They arrange to meet at a bowling alley, but Reacher wants to go it alone so as not to scare her out of talking about Cahill, so Tamara takes Jacob and Russell to see Docherty instead to get a lead on Anna’s car. Reacher’s pretty straight-up with Lila about her deception, and she gives him the “real” story. She’s a journalist trying to expose the secrets at the heart of the U.S. government — Reacher should introduce her to Russell — and Amisha isn’t her mother, which explains the detail about her looking much too young. Amisha and her husband were in Indonesia when the citizenry became concerned about the growing influence of the military under a tyrannical despot named General Putra. They protested, which got them arrested and, in the case of Amisha’s husband, killed. Putra and his soldiers were trained by Sampson’s Delta Force unit. Lila thinks that the public deserves to know, which is fair enough. I think it’s profoundly obvious that Lila is a bad guy, but Reacher hasn’t come to this conclusion yet, perhaps because she is, as Jacob earlier described, “what the kids these days call a smokeshow”. 

This conversation ends in yet another ambush by unidentified goons, who manage to get the drop on Lila before Reacher even notices what’s happening, which is uncharacteristic. What is pretty on-brand, though, is the fact he takes his first opportunity to batter all of them while Lila and her “family” escape. This might be overstating things slightly, but there’s a very obvious Jackie Chan-style improvisational vibe to this action sequence, with Reacher making use of all kinds of items around the bowling alley. He’s also saved at the eleventh hour by Lila, leaving the two of them alone for the time being. 

Meanwhile in Reacher Season 4, Episode 3, Tamara, Russell, and Jacob find Anna’s car trashed. The trunk is full of stuff from a trip she took the previous winter, which means the warm coat wasn’t part of the plan originally, and only became so by chance. There is an ID badge in the vehicle, though, even though one was supposedly found in her belongings. The Pentagon doesn’t tend to give out spares, so this is a major lead, one that Jacob, who’s badly spiralling at this point, intends to pursue without any consideration for chain of custody, red tape, or his own wellbeing.

Russell has been down this road before. He was discredited and had his career ruined for digging too deep, so he can see the future for Jacob when it comes to federal evidence tampering. But he helps either way by analyzing Anna’s ID tag and discovering she had Level 8 security clearance, which, it’s implied, is significantly higher than a clerk should have. But it also exposes the trio to more scrutiny than they’d like from Docherty, who isn’t as inclined as Tamara to risk his career over a conspiracy that doesn’t involve him. He’ll probably become a problem down the line, but for now, the group is led to the address attached to the ID badge, which turns out to be a secure government facility of some as-yet-nebulous purpose.  

Reacher’s faring fairly well in comparison. He does that usual thing of answering his hotel room door without a shirt on so Lila can see him topless, and she helps him clean up his wounds while talking in a husky voice about her bracelet, which was apparently given to her by her journalist mother before she died in action back in Indonesia. Lila’s entire demeanour is full of red flags, but Reacher doesn’t notice. Turns out the whole smokeshow thing was at the forefront of his mind after all. 

The morning after — or during the night, more accurately — Reacher leaves to go and see Sampson again to get to the bottom of Lila’s latest claims. Sampson admits to having met Putra, but strongly denies having committed, aided, or endorsed any of his various war crimes. The details of the mission remain top secret. He’s also adamant that Cahill wasn’t on the subway the night Anna died, but that’s easier to disprove, since Reacher was there and saw him personally. They all confront him together, but rather than say anything of value, he just apologises to Sampson and throws himself off the roof to his death. Whatever’s going on here, it’s serious enough that now two people were willing to take their own lives rather than talk about it.