How did Reacher kill Paulie in Reacher Season 3 finale? Explained

'Unfinished Business' finally draws a conclusion, and the Reacher Season 3 finale gets its 'all's well that ends well moment.' Dominique Kohl gets her long-awaited justice, and Agent Duffy is able to return Teresa to her grandmother.

Monsters like Xavier Quinn and Paulie meet their much-deserved fate, all thanks to our brave, resilient, and strong titular hero - an iconic creation of Lee Child. While fans' excitement resulted a lot from how Reacher will stop Quinn in the finale, they were also quite expectant of the highly-anticipated Reacher-Paulie duel.

And once again, Reacher proves that strength is not everything in a fight. He struggles to match Paulie's stature and might but eventually finds a way to outwit him. Paulie does fire the gun at Reacher, but hardly did the former hardly knows that the barrel was plugged (another smart move by our protagonist).

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Reacher kills Paulie (but by using his wit more than his strength)

Reacher infiltrates Zachary's land successfully and asks Duffy, Villanueva, and Neagley to find a way inside the main building (where the gun deal with the Yemenis was supposed to take place). As the others try to stop the transaction from happening and save Teresa, Reacher deals with Paulie all by himself.

His words to Neagley, right before the fight, portray nothing but confidence:

"Leave him to me. I owe him."

Reacher strikes the first blow and chains Paulie down by the neck - totally catching him off-guard, but the latter soon retaliates, flipping Reacher over. The struggle goes on for a while until Reacher is knocked off, and the fight begins with full force.

As Reacher gathers himself and tries to get hold of the gun, Paulie kicks it away and asks him to engage without any arms - as Reacher says:

"Fine. Like men."

What follows is a series of punches and blows as Reacher keeps dodging - he makes good use of his agility. But things go awry and get much nastier as our hero is seen being through off through wooden walls, furniture, and glass. But his resilience and courage do not stop him from taking on someone twice his size.

But Paulie, obviously being the stronger one, gets the advantage and knocks out Reacher as a platform holding huge stocked sacks comes down on both of them. Paulie regains soon enough, regains and hangs Reacher from the ceiling using a chain - what seems like an almost irreversible situation.

However, Reacher miraculously survives the move, and as Paulie heads back towards Beck's house to warn Quinn of the situation, the former reappears. The next series of exchanges take place by the rocky shore of Maine, and the two of them accidentally head down straight into the fierce ocean waters while fighting.

The underwater duel is something that marks the peak of the fight's brutality; the exact word to describe the sequence would be gut-wrenching. Reacher makes it out alive, and it seems like Paulie has drowned during the fight.

But here comes the next twist when the seven-foot-tall bodyguard resurfaces amidst the highway and tails Reacher back inside the surveillance room. Both of them struggle to get hold of the gun as shots fire and try to finish each other off, but Paulie is finally able to grab it.

That moment when Paulie holds the machine gun pointed at Reacher feels like the end. But little did we know that Reacher had pulled out one bullet from the belt and used it to plug the barrel of the gun. As Paulie shoots at him, the gun backfires and kills him. Reacher's closing lines steal the show once again:

"You might be bigger and stronger. But I'm smarter."

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Also read: Reacher Season 3 ending explained