Reacher Season 4's Story Is Only Happening Thanks To AI

Published Sep 11, 2026, 1:30 PM EDT

Ben Sherlock is a Tomatometer-approved film and TV critic who runs the massively underrated YouTube channel I Got Touched at the Cinema. Before working at Screen Rant, Ben wrote for Game Rant, Taste of Cinema, Comic Book Resources, and BabbleTop. He's also an indie filmmaker, a standup comedian, and an alumnus of the School of Rock.

Warning! Spoilers ahead for Reacher season 4, episode 7.

Reacher season 4 has the show’s most complicated plot to date. Every season of Reacher follows more or less the same formula — Reacher drifts into a new town, stops to help someone in trouble, and gets drawn into a much larger conspiracy — but this time, the conspiracy has higher stakes than ever. Since it involves a presidential candidate, Reacher is in more hot water than any of the previous seasons.

At this point, it’s getting harder and harder for Reacher to surprise its audience. We know the title character has plot armor, so there’s no real sense of danger. This season ended three episodes in a row with Reacher being held at gunpoint, with seemingly no means of escape, and left the next episode to open with his unlikely getaway. But the latest episode has brought a genuinely surprising twist: A.I. is the villains’ savior.

The Lee Child books that Reacher is adapting came out years ago. The novel that season 4 is based on, Gone Tomorrow, was originally published in 2009. But Reacher’s writers have always done a good job of updating the stories for the modern world, and season 4’s A.I. storyline is a perfect example.

The Villains In Reacher Season 4 Can Only Decode The Photo Thanks To AI

Prime Video just dropped the penultimate episode of Reacher’s fourth season — season 4, episode 7, “Vote for Sampson” — in which Reacher figures out that Sampson’s campaign dinner will be the target of the attack. The main MacGuffin of this season has been a photo on a USB drive and, until recently, it was unclear why everyone is so eager to get their hands on this picture.

In this second-to-last episode, Reacher, Tamara, and Springfield finally got their answer as they caught up to Ahlquist and questioned him. Ahlquist told them that the scientists in Indonesia had created a deadly chemical weapon, but they never finished making the antidote to its effects. The formula is written on a board in the background of that photo, but it’s too blurry to make out what it says. But, thanks to A.I., the villains are able to enhance the photo and decipher the formula on the board.

Not only does this A.I. use modernize the story for the current climate; it’s also very convenient for the writers. Before the invention of A.I., those writers would’ve spent days kicking around ideas for how these bad guys could get their hands on the formula written in the photo. But in the age of A.I., they can just put it in the hands of A.I. The laziest writers actually use A.I. to write for them, but using A.I. as a deus ex machina is still pretty lazy.

Jack Reacher Is Not A Fan Of Modern Technology

One of Reacher’s main characteristics is that he doesn’t like modern technology. He’s a very old-school guy. He doesn’t have a phone, he barely knows how to use a computer, and earlier in this season, he was baffled by the concept of OnlyFans. He’d never even heard of it, and when his friends tried to explain it to him, he was horrified. Reacher is a man out of his time; he’d be much more comfortable in the golden age of jazz than he is in the days of the internet and social media. At a time when everyone on Earth is connected by technology, Reacher remains off the grid as a lone-wolf drifter.

So, it’s not too surprising that Reacher is (unknowingly) leading the charge against A.I. being used for evil purposes. Reacher might not have even heard about A.I. — I can’t imagine he’s ever typed a prompt into ChatGPT — but he’s unwittingly fighting the machine and standing up to the tech bros.

Reacher

8/10