Who exactly is Francis Xavier Quinn, the big bad of the third season of Prime Video’s Reacher? Seen only in glimpses in the three-part premiere, the villain of this year’s story was only a threat. But we learn a lot more about the depth of his evil and how Reacher nearly stopped him in this fourth episode, one that’s almost entirely flashbacks. The tragic tale of Dominique Kohl plays out in this chapter, one that takes a structure of the first two seasons and kind of shifts it. For two years, the writers of Reacher alternated present-day material with flashbacks to fill in the character that gives their show a title, revealing details about his childhood in the freshman season and his history with the Special Investigators in the sophomore one. While the second season didn’t really have a strong villain (sorry, Robert Patrick fans), this outing has gone to great lengths to make it clear that the malevolent force that Reacher (and probably Duffy) will have to defeat this year is going to be a memorable one.
Mariah Robinson plays Dominique Kohl, who is introduced after being assigned to assist Reacher on a difficult case. It’s worth noting that this clearly takes place before the flashback activity of season two because Reacher’s superior references how he could use a group of MPs to help him and our muscular hero jokes that they could be called the Special Investigators. So this is not only a Reacher that pre-dates the one we know now but even the adult flashbacks we’ve seen in the past. Alan Ritchson makes subtle choices to distinguish this, playing him just a bit less bitter and hardened, which allows the final scenes and Kohl’s fate to have greater impact. We know that Reacher has become the no-nonsense killing machine that he is today because of some of the cruelty he’s witnessed in the world. And this episode is about that cruelty.
To be fair, the structure is a bit imperfect. The episode regularly and unnecessarily cuts back to officers Duffy and Villanueva doing commentary on the story Reacher is telling, and they feel like speedbumps in the storytelling, usually just repeating or underlining things that the plotting was already doing. Then again, so much TV is being crafted for people to watch while they look at their phones, so we should probably just get used to repetition.
So what is the story of Dominique Kohl? Played by Mariah Robinson, she impressed Reacher immediately in one of the few ways that Gen-X Hulk can be impressed: attention to detail. She noticed that her assignment must have been a surprise or else Reacher would have put out a chair for her in his office. She also reads the case file in the exact manner that Reacher does and likes her coffee black. (Careful, the big guy might fall in love.)
Reacher and Kohl work a case about state secrets being sold that leads them into the world of the mercenary Quinn. Their initial target reveals that he’s basically like a pawn for the Jigsaw Killer, someone being forced into action by the violent acts of Quinn. The villain kidnapped his daughter, an echo of how Quinn also took and cut off the ear of Richard Beck to get to his father. The theme of daddy issues also feels reflected in the conversation between Reacher and Kohl about the lessons learned from their dead dads.
The flashbacks get a little dry as Reacher and Kohl get closer to Quinn in a poorly-staged fight in a parking lot that feels designed to get a little action into an episode light in that department. But it barrels to its heartbreaking conclusion shortly thereafter when Reacher makes a crucial decision and decides to let Kohl get the arrest on her own so she can get the full credit. It’s indicative of a younger Reacher in that he underestimates his enemy in a manner that it doesn’t feel like he would today. When he gets a text from Kohl that uses the word “sir,” which he told her not to use, he knows she’s in trouble.
The end of the flashback chunk of “Dominique” is brutal. Reacher gets to Quinn’s location first (of course) and enters a barn to find Kohl’s dead body hanging from the rafters. We see blood dripping from her feet and her arms tied over her head, but a show that has gotten pretty graphic in the past lets Ritchson’s eyes do much of the work. He sees what Quinn did to Kohl in detail. We don’t need to.
He gets the jump on Quinn, whose first real scene paints him immediately as the anti-Reacher, a coward willing to sell himself to the highest bidder. He basically offers to turn informant for Reacher, giving him the men on the military payroll who are keeping him in business. He even claims that Kohl was working with him. He’s a liar with no moral code. Reacher has none of it, walking him to a nearby cliff where he shoots him in the head, his body plunging to the surf below. The fact that he chose to use Quinn’s gun, one with a weaker firepower, will haunt Reacher because his target clearly survived the attempted murder.
The show jumps back to the present day for a few important details to carry us into the rest of the season. First, Duffy reveals that she’s haunted by the lies she told Teresa to get her undercover. She has to make it right. Second, the house staff reveal to Reacher that they’re setting up for a party, which will likely take place in the next episode. The installment kind of dwindles out as Reacher teaches Richard how to fight, Villanueva points out that their new buddy crosses lines like attempted murder that could get them in trouble, and Beck reveals that they’ve tracked down Angel’s laptop, putting his muscle in the scent of Duffy and Villanueva. Uh oh. And the fourth chapter ends in a cliffhanger as three bad guys seem very close to finding Reacher’s new version of Dominique Kohl. Will this one meet the same fate?
Stray observations
- • Reacher takes the time to lower and cover Kohl before the other officers arrive. It’s a nice character beat that makes his priorities clear.
- • Ritchson has always been good in big scenes but he’s getting even better at the smaller moments. The look in his eyes says more than any line could when he’s asked, “Are you okay?” He’s not.
- • There are a couple of great Reacherisms in the flashbacks that define the way he conducts himself today too, including “Don’ t worry about what went wrong—focus on putting it right” and something he clearly took from his superior in the old days: “Do it once—do it right.”
- • In one of the awkward cutbacks from the flashbacks, Duffy says that Kohl wasn’t a “soup sandwich,” and I had to rewind it six times to make sure I heard it right. Do people really say that? Apparently they do in the Army.
- • Screaming Trees! The episode ends with one of the best grunge anthems of all time in “Nearly Lost You.” R.I.P. Mark Lanegan, whose solo work rules too, by the way. What’s the reference? Reacher did lose Kohl. Does this mean he will save Duffy after “nearly” losing her? Probably.
