Reacher – Season 1 Episode 1 “Welcome to Margrave” Recap & Review

Welcome to Margrave

Episode 1 of Reacher begins with a man running away from a strange figure holding a silenced gun. After shooting their victim, they brutally beat him to the ground and cover him in cardboard.

This intriguing opening paves way for our series to begin. We’re in Margrave, Georgia and Jack Reacher has arrived in town. Police follow shortly after though, guns pointed and demanding he follow them. Reacher is under arrest for murder. Along with around 220 dollars and an old World War II medal, he doesn’t have much else on him. In fact, he’s completely silent.

Chief Detective Finlay is there to help though, confirming why he’s in custody. That man we saw at the start is our victim, and Reacher is being accused of murdering him. The deceased is a 30 year old male who was unfortunately hit with two 9mm 95-grain close-range shots to the back of the head. He was also badly beaten too.

Reacher finally speaks, confirming that he’s not the killer. He believes there are three killers here. The first, a professional shooter. The second a complete psycho to beat the body post-mortem. And the third? Someone methodical enough to cover the body with cardboard. It’s an interesting theory but Finlay is not so sure. Interestingly, the victim happens to have a scrap of paper in his shoe, with a number and the word “Pluribus.”

Reacher’s alibi needs to be checked so for now he’s stuck in a holding cell. While he’s behind bars, Finlay is led to a tip-off, a man by the name of Hubble.

With a black car outside his house, the man is skittish and immediately takes the blame for the murder. He claims it’s self defense but the details don’t match up. Finlay intentionally distorts the facts to call him out, and it works an absolute peach. Although Hubble is arrested too, the case has taken an intriguing turn.

When Hubble is arrested, Reacher amusingly breaks his own cable ties and goes on to give a full profile of Finlay, right down to the little details about his nicotine withdrawal. It’s a great way of showing how intelligent and methodical Reacher is, but unfortunately he too is sent to lock-up alongside Hubble.

Once they reach jail, Reacher warns Hubble that he’s going to need his strength, but for Reacher he quickly establishes himself as a bad mofo. After saving his skin, Hubble opens up and confirms what we suspected. He’s being forced into taking the blame for this crime.

The guys responsible have their own financial scheme and warned if he were to cross them or disrupt their operation, they’d nail him to a wall in front of his family.

After a particularly brutal bathroom brawl, Hubble and Reacher are moved out of gen pop. The thing is, that’s not an accident. It seems the prison guard that night, Spivey, set them up to fail on purpose. The men who initiated the bathroom brawl were given instructions to do so.

Although the pair are free to go in the morning, thanks in part to Roscoe’s thorough work, he realizes there’s something bad going down in Margrave.

Interspersed around these scenes, we’re graced with a simple but effective flashback of Jack’s childhood from 1998. Alongside his brother Joe, the pair hit back against a bunch of bullies. This seems to be the origin for when trouble started to find Jack.

When Reacher returns to town,  learns a little more about the current make-up of Margrave. It seems a man named Kliner came to town 5 years back and set up his company there, dealing in real estate, trucking and machine parts. In exchange for a sweet deal on some land, Kliner poured money into the town.

His son KJ happens to be outside though and he’s quick to warn Reacher to watch his back.

It doesn’t take long for an agitated Finlay to show up and demand Reacher help out with the investigation. Unfortunately, this one is going to hit close to home. The victim is Jack’s brother. Because of this, Reacher intends to find those responsible and make them pay.

The Episode Review

Reacher kicks things off with a great opening episode, one that manages to mix action, drama and mystery together beautifully. Quite who killed that man is unknown but I’m sure we’ll find out more about this financial scheme and how Hubble ties into it soon.

That bathroom brawl in the prison is absolutely brutal and easily one of the best parts of the episode. The action here is quite reminiscent of The Punisher too, with a solid introduction to Jack Reacher and great characterization to boot.

It looks like we could be in for quite the action-packed ride across these 8 episodes, and if this keeps up Amazon may have struck gold with this series.