Warning! This article contains spoilers for Reacher season 3’s episode 5.
Reacher season 3 avoids adapting one Paulie scene from the original book, which would have made you hate him even more. Similar to its predecessors, Reacher season 3 does not drift too far from its source material. While it does introduce a few changes to Lee Child’s Persuader, it remains largely faithful to the essence of the story in the book. Like Persuader, it shows how Reacher gets involved in an undercover operation to find the truth about a rug seller’s shady business alliance with his former enemy, Quinn.
Season 3 of the Amazon Prime Video detective series also accurately shows how one of Quinn’s henchmen, Paulie, turns out to be the scariest and meanest villain Jack Reacher has encountered. Similar to the book, the show portrays how Paulie is not only taller and more muscle-bound than Reacher but also objectively stronger than him. However, when it comes to one story beat surrounding Paulie, which would have made him look even scarier, Reacher season 3 seems to ignore it intentionally.
Mrs. Beck’s Absence Makes Paulie Less Evil In Reacher Season 3
Lee Child’s Persuader Makes Paulie Even More Unlikable
In the show, Paulie is portrayed as a ruthless scary giant who can even take Jack Reacher down with a single blow. By highlighting his torrid military background and revealing how he even ruthlessly attacked one of his senior officers during his tenure in the armed forces, the show ensures that audiences understand the depth of Paulie’s menace. Reacher season 3’s episode 5 also shows how Paulie kills a maid in Zachary Beck’s home after he learns that she is a covert ATF agent. Scenes like these establish Paulie’s utter lack of mercy and make him incredibly intimidating.
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However, the series avoids featuring Mrs. Beck as a character who, in the original book, often gets tortured by Paulie. Instead of making Paulie seem even more repulsive by showing how he treats Zachary Beck’s wife, the show does not feature Mrs. Beck at all. It only hints that Mrs. Beck passed away long before the events of Reacher, which also significantly impacts Zachary Beck’s relationship with his son, Richard. Her absence from the show’s narrative makes Paulie seem a little less loathsome, but that does not make him any less intimidating than his book counterpart.
Paulie Is Still Formidable Enough In Reacher Season 3
The Show Perfectly Captures How He Is A Threat To Reacher
When Alan Ritchson’s Jack Reacher confronts Paulie for killing the maid, Paulie shows no qualms about his action, shrugging off the murder with an unapologetic “Oops!” Since Reacher has previously been able to teach his enemies a lesson in a matter of seconds, it becomes hard not to believe that he will do the same with Paulie. However, surprisingly, Paulie barely flinches when Reacher punches him in his ribs. While Reacher, like a viewer, struggles to process the giant’s sheer strength, Paulie whacks him in his face and makes him fall to the ground.
…The slap scene highlights how Paulie does not even need “brains” to overpower Reacher because his “brawn” is enough.
In the next scene, Reacher spits blood in his bathroom sink while examining the red marks Paulie’s slap left on his face. Even though Reacher was able to outsmart Paulie in a previous Reacher season 3 episode by making him punch himself, the slap scene highlights how Paulie does not even need “brains” to overpower Reacher because his “brawn” is enough. His massive size advantage over Reacher, military background, and sociopathic tendencies make him look formidable and repulsive enough even without the Mrs. Beck story beats from the original Lee Child Jack Reacher books.
What Lee Child Thinks About Reacher Season 3’s Book Change
Lee Child Approves The Book Change
Shedding light on the book change, the Jack Reacher series’ author, Lee Child, said that Mrs. Beck’s arc “was a nasty strand, and it produced even more revulsion against Paulie in the book. But, we felt we don’t need more revulsion.” He also explained that, in Reacher, they wanted to focus more on the “criminal conspiracy.” Since one look at Paulie in the series was enough to establish that he would become Reacher’s biggest challenge, Lee Child and the show’s creators felt that his demeanor was enough to sell him as a formidable villain “without the gratuitous mistreatment of Mrs. Beck.“
