Reacher Season 3’s Undercover Plan Explained: How He Infiltrates Beck’s Operation

Warning: Major spoilers for Reacher season 3 below!Reacher hatches a complicated plan to infiltrate suspected drug runner Beck’s operation in season 3 – and it only gets more complex the deeper he gets. Season 3 adapts Persuader, the seventh novel in author Lee Child’s Jack Reacher book series. The story begins in earnest when Reacher (Alan Ritchson) spots an old enemy he thought he had killed years before walking the streets, which leads to some DEA agents recruiting Reacher for a dangerous undercover mission involving rug importer Zack Beck (Anthony Michael Hall).

The premiere of Reacher season 3 opens with the title character rescuing Beck’s son Richard (Johnny Berchtold) from an attempted kidnapping, and finding himself in Beck’s compound. The first three episodes remain faithful to Persuader, where Reacher has to improvise and outthink his new employers as the rushed plan he hatched with DEA agent Duffy (Sonya Cassidy) slowly unravels around them. Reacher’s goal for infiltrating Beck’s business is also at odds with Duffy’s; she wants to rescue a missing informant, while Reacher just wants to kill Quinn (Brian Tee) once and for all.

How Reacher & The DEA Agents Staged The Kidnapping Attempt On Beck’s Son

Reacher and Duffy stage the kidnapping for maximum effect

The kidnapping that opens Reacher season 3 is lifted right from Persuader, as Ritchson’s antihero “saves” Richard from a kidnapping and takes him back to Beck. Fans of the series may immediately suspect something is off, like the likelihood of Reacher just stumbling upon a kidnapping and carrying a large magnum with him. That’s because Richard’s kidnapping was an elaborate ruse to get Reacher inside Beck’s mansion, with the episode detailing Reacher, Duffy, and the other DEA agents mapping out the kidnapping step by step.

This involves Reacher shooting both real and blank ammo, with squibs to simulate gunfire. They have to fake the death of Richard’s bodyguard by throwing a grenade into his car, which is actually a flashbang designed to stun. Reacher is also aware he has to remove the option of taking Richard to the police, so he makes it look like he killed a cop by accident during the shootout; in reality, DEA agent Villanueva (Roberto Montesinos) was rigged with squibs to simulate this effect.

In essence, it’s a wild plan that would never happen in reality – but it’s somehow acceptable in the world of Reacher. It also works in their favor, with Beck being thankful enough to Reacher that he gives him a job and a new home. Just as Reacher thought, there were holes in the plan they hadn’t thought of, which cause big problems in later episodes.

What Reacher’s Mission Going Undercover With Beck Actually Is

Reacher and Duffy have different goals

Agent Duffy is Reacher’s latest love interest, and she is the one who recruits him to go undercover with Beck. Like Reacher, the mission is personal to her too. She sent a confidential informer named Teresa undercover inside Beck’s operation, who later disappeared. While bringing Beck and his mysterious employer down is part of the operation, Duffy’s main goal is to rescue Teresa. Just like Persuader, season 3 will be teasing this mystery out. Reacher finds Teresa’s earring inside a cell in Beck’s compound, proving she was there, but they don’t know if she’s alive or dead.

For Reacher, he wants to find Quinn and kill him once and for all. Quinn was in military intelligence during Reacher’s time with the 110th Special Investigators and was suspected of selling classified intelligence, and Reacher recruited a bright young Sergeant named Kohl (Mariah Robinson) to investigate the case with him. The two formed a close friendship working together, with Reacher ultimately tasking her with arresting Quinn.

Tragically, Quinn gets the upper hand, and Reacher later discovers Kohl’s badly mutilated body in Quinn’s house. In the book, this led Reacher to track Quinn down and shoot him in the head – something the rogue officer ultimately survived. Season 3’s third episode “Number 2 with a Bullet” confirmed Quinn is Beck’s boss, and previously had his son Richard kidnapped, tortured and his ear cut off in a power play to take over Beck’s business.

How Reacher Covers Up His 3 Murders & Takes Duke’s Place

Going undercover is a messy business for Jack Reacher

The second and third episodes of Reacher’s third season find the character becoming a minion for Beck. He’s given various tedious tasks like driving a truck or escorting Beck’s son into town, but Beck’s head of security Duke (Donald Sales) – who really works for Quinn – keeps Reacher out of the loop on any inside business. Reacher decides that in order to get anywhere with his mission, he needs to take Duke’s place as Beck’s security head moving forwards.

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Before he gets anywhere with that, the second episode “Truckin”” has Reacher paired with a criminal nicknamed Angel Doll (Manuel Rodriguez-Saenz) to identify the truck the supposed kidnapper drove. Beck suspects the kidnapping attempt came from a rival gang, so Angel Doll and Duke are looking into that possibility. Sadly for Reacher, he’s not the most convincing actor, so when Angel Doll inspects the wrecked vehicle, he notices holes in Reacher’s story. When he confronts Ritchson’s anti-hero at the end of “Truckin'”, Reacher decides it would be easier to kill Angel Doll to remove him as a threat.

Episode 3 then involves Reacher sneaking out of the Beck compound to clean up the literal mess he made of Angel Doll – only for him and Duffy to get attacked by two truckers who stumble on the scene. After killing them too, Reacher and Duffy hide their bodies in vacant containers, with Duffy then hacking into Angel Doll’s emails to track his prior activity. Reacher has her send an email from Angel Doll to Duke, claiming to know where the kidnappers are hiding out.

This is a trap laid by Reacher to get the drop on Duke, and once they’re inside, he points his gun at Beck’s head of security. Duke refuses to spill anything and claims Reacher is toothless, since Duke is under the impression he’s with the DEA; Reacher executes him with a shot to the head. He then shoots up the house to convince Beck a raging firefight just happened before blowing it up to remove all evidence. Reacher also hands Angel Doll’s gun to Beck, who believes the former must have sold him out to a rival gang.

Why Reacher Needed To Become Beck’s Second-In-Command

Reacher showed initiative to Beck

Reacher’s rapid rise up the ladder of Beck’s operation is almost inspirational, but it’s very purposeful. With Duke and Paulie (Olivier Richters) deeply suspicious of him and time potentially running out for Teresa, Reacher needs to know the ins and outs of Beck’s operation fast. The only way this can happen is to take Duke out of the picture, and since Beck is short on men, Reacher is the only real choice as a replacement.

Duke’s death secures Reacher the promotion he’s seeking, and future Reacher episodes will see how he performs in the role. He has yet to encounter Quinn either, but given that the latter barely survived a headshot, he may have no memory of Reacher. Either way, with the inevitable Reacher vs Paulie fight on the horizon, things are liable to get more intense on Amazon’s series.