Woah! What happens to Reacher and Tamara after that ending, and how does it link to the book?

The latest episode of Reacher season four ends with Reacher and Detective Tamara Green facing what looks like a very final situation, so what actually happens to them?

After spending most of the episode running from the authorities, fighting mercenaries and trying to work out what the mysterious 25-year-old photograph actually means, Reacher and Tamara finally find themselves trapped in the back of a van. And things look terrible.

What happens to Reacher and Tamara?

Earlier in the episode, Reacher and Tamara travel to Plutus Chemical after discovering that the mysterious man in the photograph is Leo Ahlquist, the CEO of the company.

They confront Leo, who appears to be destroying evidence. He tells them that Nolan Cahill had contacted him a few days earlier about the data leak.

Reacher wants answers about the company’s servers and their connection to the photograph. But the problem is that Leo’s supposed lawyer, Vance, is actually the leader of a group of mercenaries. And the mercenaries are “quite expensive”.

Vance and his men then attack. Reacher and Tamara manage to take down several of them, but eventually two mercenaries manage to overpower Reacher using several stun guns.

By the end of the episode, Reacher and Tamara wake up handcuffed in the back of a van. They realise they are being taken somewhere to be executed, and they apparently have less than 30 minutes before they are killed.

The episode leaves Reacher in a genuinely dangerous position.

What does Reacher say before the execution?

As they wait in the back of the van, Reacher gives Tamara some advice about how to face death. He tells her, “I once told a friend: We live, and then we die. As long as we do both properly, we don’t have much to regret.”

Reacher actually quoted himself. Ryan Britt explained in Men’s Journal that the line is a variation of something written by Lee Child in the third Reacher novel, Tripwire, published in 1999.

In that book, Reacher attends the funeral of his former commanding officer, Leon Garber. He is thinking about Garber’s daughter, Jodie, whom he has known since she was a teenager.

The relevant passage describes Reacher’s thoughts about life and death. The book says, “There was nothing she had neglected to tell him, nothing he had neglected to tell her. People live and then they die, and as long as they do both things properly, there’s nothing much to regret.”

But in Tripwire, Reacher does not actually say those words to Jodie. They are presented as his thoughts. The TV series has therefore turned that idea into something Reacher says out loud, while also changing the wording slightly.

Is Reacher really going to die?

The episode certainly wants you to think he might. The final scene leaves Reacher and Tamara handcuffed in a van, being taken to their apparent execution. The doors open, guns are drawn, and the episode cuts away before we find out what happens next.

We don’t know who is standing outside the van or whether Reacher and Tamara survive. But it is highly unlikely that the showrunners will kill off the main character the show is named after.

Reacher has survived some extremely dangerous situations before, so it’s safe to assume that he will be just fine.

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