Reacher Season 2 Book: What To Know About Bad Luck And Trouble

Warning: Major spoilers for Lee Child’s Bad Luck and Trouble below!

Reacher season 2 will adapt Lee Child’s novel Bad Luck and Trouble, which will tell a very different story from the first series. After the Tom Cruise movies failed to deliver what Reacher readers wanted, Amazon’s TV adaptation has proven a wild success. Not only was it a hit critically and in terms of ratings, but it also attracted new fans to the franchise. Reacher season 1 adapted Killing Floor, the first novel in Child’s long-running series about the titular wandering avenger.

The showrunners had over 20 Reacher novels to choose from for season 2, and they landed on book 11, Bad Luck and Trouble. While this means fan favorites like Roscoe (Willa Fitzgerald) and Finlay (Malcolm Goodwin) aren’t returning, the second season will be taking both the Alan Ritchson-shaped protagonist and the series itself in a new direction.

Members Of Reacher’s Former Military Unit Are Being Murdered

Reacher reunites with old friends to seek justice

Bad Luck and Trouble opens with a badly wounded man being dropped out of a flying helicopter, with readers soon learning this was an old friend of Reacher. He soon learns from Neagley (Maria Sten) that their old colleagues from the 110th Special Investigations Unit are being murdered for unknown reasons. Reacher and Neagley soon reunite with other 110th members like David O’Donnell (Shaun Sipos) and investigate who is behind the killings.

Like pretty much every Jack Reacher novel Bad Luck and Trouble still follows a murder mystery format. Reacher inadvertently gets involved in a case – and a very personal one – and after using his big brain, he starts using his big muscles to set things right. A key difference with Reacher season 2 is that he’ll be surrounded by members of his former team too, whom he handpicked in his army days for their unique skills; they’re just as brutal in a fight as he is too.

Reacher Has A New Love Interest

Reacher develops a romance with ex-teammate Dixon

One of the elements of Amazon’s series that audiences instantly hooked into was the oddly sweet romance between Reacher and police officer Roscoe. There was widespread disappointment when it was confirmed Roscoe wasn’t returning for season 2, as each book always ends with the nomadic Reacher moving on. He almost always finds himself in a new romantic entanglement though, and in the case of Bad Luck and Trouble, Reacher’s new love interest is Karla Dixon.

Serinda Swan (Marvel’s Inhumans) will play the role on season 2, with Dixon being a former member of the 110th who has become a forensic accountant. Her skills with math are key to solving some of the novel’s mysteries, but whereas there was an attraction between her and Reacher during their army days, the latter refused to act on it since he was her boss. Since that’s no longer the case in the book or Reacher season 2, those passions get reignited.

The Villains Are Trying To Steal An Experimental Weapon

Reacher’s unit faces off against corrupt defense contractors

After dodging some assassins and red tape, the reunited team eventually discovers who has been killing their pals. The trail leads to defense contractors New Age, who have been building a unique homing missile capable of shooting down any aircraft. While they had been pretending to destroy any remaining prototypes of their “Little Wing” missile – named after a Jimi Hendrix song – they’ve been selling them to terrorists in secret. When former members of the 110th began to uncover this, New Age resorted to murder to cover up their crimes.

The finale of Bad Luck and Trouble involves Reacher and the surviving members of the 110th racing to stop the missile sale, which if it goes through could result in horrific terror acts all around the globe. Reacher also brings down one of the main villains in a fitting act of revenge, and the team disbands once more, having proven their motto “You do not mess with the special investigators!” very accurate.

Bad Luck And Trouble’s Bad Guy A.M. Is A Dark Mirror To Reacher

Like Jack Reacher himself A.M. is something of a ghost

One thing that will be intriguing about Reacher season 2 is how it handles terrorist arms buyer A.M. He goes by this moniker because every alias he uses starts with those letters, such as Adrian Mount, Alan Mason, Azhari Mahmoud etc. Ferdinand Kingsley (Silo) will play the villain, where it’s likely his role will be a little more prominent. In Bad Luck and Trouble, A.M. is something of an enigma and only appears sporadically, but just like season 1 did with K.J. Kliner (Chris Webster), his part will likely get beefed up fo the show.

A.M. is a villainous counterpoint to Jack Reacher himself too. Both men are about as close to invisible as its possible to get in the modern world, having few connections or attachments. Whereas Reacher is still fundamentally connected to humanity, A.M. has basically shed his entirely, and uses his intelligence and cunning to make money off of other people’s misery.

Bad Luck And Trouble Dives Deeper Into Reacher’s Psyche

Being with friends gives a greater insight into Reacher as a character

Child was inspired to write Bad Luck and Trouble when he began reflecting on his former job before becoming a writer. It was getting fired from that very job that inspired him to write a novel in the first place, but when plotting his 11th Reacher adventure, he began to wonder about his old colleagues and what they were up to. That seed grew into Bad Luck and Trouble, where Reacher reunites with the closest friends he has in the world, and the people that know him best.

While they’ve all moved on and become regular civilians, this only highlights Reacher’s turn towards disconnecting from society. Reacher season 2 will almost certainly explore this element, as the book dug a little deeper into the title character and how his mind works. This is part of what made Bad Luck and Trouble such a great choice for a second season, as season 1 already set up Reacher and his eccentric qualities; the new series can now unearth some hidden layers.

Bad Luck And Trouble Is More Action Packed That Killing Floor

Reacher season 2 will play like more of an action movie

Comparing the Killing Floor novel to Reacher season 1, there was a marked upswing in terms of action and fights. The finale, in particular, featured a way higher bodycount than its novel counterpart. Bad Luck and Trouble features a bigger scale and threat than Killing Floor, which was at its core a small-town murder mystery – just one that featured a hero built like Dolph Lundgren.

Bad Luck and Trouble is a more propulsive story by its nature, building towards an inevitable clash between the 110th, New Age and A.M. Since the first season of Amazon’s show had to pump up the action a little, season 2 will definitely do the same. In fact, Reacher season 2 will be more of an action film compared to the first series, especially since it has a gang of four heroes who all need villains to punch.