Alan Ritchson has confirmed what fans of “Reacher” have long suspected: one of the most anticipated storylines from Lee Child’s original novels was ready to go into production, and then it wasn’t.
The revelation came in the comments section of a social media post. A fan praised the Prime Video series for delivering a strong run across every season so far, while noting a lingering disappointment.
According to the fan, the show has steered clear of adapting one of the earlier books in the source material because its plot doesn’t stand alone as neatly as later entries do, and each year brings fresh hope that the next season will finally tackle the one where Reacher works his way through a compound run by a white supremacist militia, only for that hope to be dashed again.
Ritchson himself weighed in on the thread roughly a day later. “My favorite book,” he wrote. “Fun fact: I had it approved until someone got re-elected.”
The actor didn’t elaborate further in the comment, leaving fans to fill in the blanks about which “someone” he meant and what exactly got in the way. But the timing lines up with a pattern in how outspoken Ritchson has been about the current political climate, most notably in a lengthy sit-down with Dax Shepard on the Armchair Expert podcast.
During that conversation, Ritchson connected his personal history of letting go of resentment toward people who abused power over him earlier in his career to what he sees happening in Washington right now.
“Look at the politics that we deal with right now,” he said. “The White House is in ruins. A UFC cage on the lawn and you just do it. You just do it and nobody says anything and no consequences. Nobody asked. It wasn’t done legally. There’s no plan in place. Now you’re asking for money to create a slide. It’s like, what are we doing? And there’s no consequences.”
He pushed further on the idea that walking away from anger doesn’t come easily to him when the wrongdoing in question remains unresolved.
“So no, I’m not good at letting go,” Ritchson said. “I dislike that that s[]t still lives in the world unabated, unchecked, unresolved. Look at the Catholic Church and the predatory behavior that is just going completely unmet.”
Later in the episode, Ritchson traced that anger back to a broader motivation, describing what drives him when people in positions of power fail the public.
“I don’t want to get into politics, but if I do it’s because I have so much resentment for the evils of the world that have abused the power in politics and neglected the opportunity and their obligation to help people,” he said. “I would go into that field and beat all these people at their own game and be the best politician in the world so that I can have access to helping people in a way that they should have been helped the whole time.”
Ritchson also tried to draw a distinction between everyday conservatives and what he described as a rotten culture at the top of the party.
“You think about the conservative party these days, there’s so much toxicity there and corruption I think, and you could sort of blanket all Republicans as bad or whatever, but there’s something about the genetic makeup of some of those people that become soldiers and stuff,” he said.
