10 Times Jack Reacher’s intelligence overshadowed his brutal strength

Reacher, the action crime TV series premiered its Season 3 on February 20, 2025 on Amazon Prime Video. Based on Lee Child’s novel series, the show revolves around Jack Reacher, played by Alan Ritchson, a former US military policeman who finds himself entangled with dangerous criminals.

Ritchson’s Jack Reacher is known for his strength, abilities, and his combat skills. In addition to showing his viewers the intense fighting sequences, Reacher also showcases Jack’s intelligence and wit while solving crimes.

In this article, we list 10 such moments where Jack Reacher’s intelligence overshadowed his strength.

1) Jack Reacher concludes that a team of three men killed his brother

Alan Ritchson in Reacher | image via Amazon MGM Studios

In the premiere episode of Reacher Season 1, Reacher, without even knowing about or seeing the dead body, concludes that a team of three men was involved in the murder, just by going through the autopsy details.

He further describes that the man who shot the bullets knew about firearms and it wasn’t his first time. The second man is described to be an unhinged psychopath who beat up the body postmortem and then a third man who hid the body.

2) Reacher quips at Finlay after he is stressed out for arresting the wrong man

In season 1, after Alan Ritchson's Reacher is cleared of his murder charges, he doesn’t shy away from throwing witty remarks at Finlay. He perfectly deduces how Finlay must be feeling based on his reactions and surroundings.

Reacher tells Finlay that he might be stressed after arresting the wrong person, as he noticed how the glass of water on his table moved when he deduced the involvement of three killers. Furthermore, he also pointed out that the cigarettes he has been smoking are leaving their scent on his tweed jacket, showing how stressed he might be and could also be nicotine withdrawals.

3) Reacher tells Finlay that the people he fought with in the parking lot were South American military

Finlay asks Reacher, how he knew who those people were. In one of Reacher’s badass moments, he replies that if they weren’t from the military, he would have finished the fight in 10 seconds.

Finlay then asks how he knew they were from South America, to which Reacher tells him that they were speaking Spanish and carried Glock 17 pistols. Furthermore, one of the men used a martial arts technique called Ricey to headbutt Reacher, which is only used by South American special forces.

4) Reacher deduces that people from Margrave Police Department might be involved in his brother’s murder

Based on their reactions while keeping him in custody, Jack Reacher deduces that someone from the Margrave Police Department might be involved in the murder.

He tells Finlay that one of his officers, Baker (Hugh Thompson), might be involved in the murder as he wasn’t concerned about Reacher fleeing and let him go into the bathroom alone, even though he was a murder suspect.

5) Jack finds clues left by Joe

While tracking a man who used Joe’s alias, Ron Hassey, Jack with his exceptional investigative skills, manages to find Joe’s briefcase that the man hid in the bins and also manages to find the key to the briefcase, which was a tricky process.

6) Jack Reacher uses ketchup and salt to clean metal

In season 1, Jack Reacher uses an old army trick by using ketchup and salt to clean metal.

As Jack, Finlay, and Roscoe search for Joe’s car, they find it completely charred. Therefore, to find the VIN, he uses ketchup for acetic acid and salt for abrasion making a metal cleaner on the spot, and finds the VIN of his brother’s car.

7) Reacher cracks Kliner's fake cash distribution system

In season 1, based on various clues, he cracks how the Kliners distribute the fake cash and manage their counterfeiting operation.

He unravels that Margrave is the perfect place as the arterial roads of the state are well connected to other states. They also manage to avoid the police as they are more busy managing the highways, providing a great opportunity for them to transfer the fake cash to other places.

8) Uses a plastic bottle to scare a suspect

In one of the witty yet funny moments from season 2, Jack Reacher puts a gun in a plastic bottle, claiming it to be a homemade silencer, and scares Chad (Cory Bertrand) and forces him to call Marlo Burns, played by Christina Cox.

9) Jack cracks the animal feed theory

In season 1, Jack is able to find out why Kliner has 116 cows and why he buys a massive amount of animal feed.

He figures out and tells Roscoe that animal feed contains diatomaceous earth, which is an absorbent coagulating agent and is used in pesticides, pool filters, and also animal feed. The Kliners used the animal feed to absorb the spent chemical to avoid being caught up like the last time.

10) Jack Reacher cracks the clues that Joe had left

Cracking Joe’s clues was the most important task in busting the Kliners' counterfeiting scheme. As Finlay and Jack go to Pete Jobling’s house, they discover that the house was involved in a fire and neither Pete nor his wife Judy were there.

Jack, with his quick thinking and attention to detail, reveals that this was not the Jobling house Joe wrote about in his clues. He tells Finlay that Joe had written Joblings’ garage and not Jobling’s garage as Pete’s wife had not changed her surname to Jobling. The only house with two Joblings would be Pete’s parent's house, and that’s what Joe had written on the clue.