Spin-offs are always a gamble. A character can be brilliant as part of an ensemble, but taking them out of the world that made audiences love them and asking them to lead their own series is an entirely different challenge.
For the new series Neagley, that meant one obvious question: could Frances Neagley step out from beside Jack Reacher and comfortably take the lead?
Thankfully, the answer is yes.
Maria Sten, who plays Neagley, has been one of the strongest parts of Reacher since Frances Neagley first appeared, but giving her the lead reveals just how much more there is to the character. Rather than attempting to recreate Reacher with a different face at its centre, Neagley takes what audiences already know about her and starts exploring everything we don’t.
That was also central to the decision to give Neagley her own series.
Speaking with FENNEC, co-creator and showrunner Nick Wootton said the team already knew what Neagley could do physically.
Neagley co-creator and showrunner, Nick Wootton
“We knew she could fight. We knew she could run. We knew she was sharp in investigation,” Nick said.
What interested the creative team was something much less obvious: Neagley’s refusal to touch other people or allow them to touch her.
“There was something about her that made her different from all the other special investigators that Reacher worked with,” Nick said.
With no explanation previously given for that part of Neagley, it presented an opportunity to look beneath a character audiences thought they already knew.
“We thought, ‘Oh, this is a fascinating way to get into a character, to try and understand why she is that way.'”
That distinction is ultimately what makes Neagley work.
There is still plenty here that will feel immediately familiar to Reacher fans. A sprawling conspiracy to unravel, people who are clearly underestimating the wrong person, plenty of action, and the satisfaction of watching extremely capable people work out what is really going on.
But Neagley isn’t Reacher, and the series is better for understanding that.
Where Reacher can quite literally bulldoze his way through a problem, Neagley approaches situations differently. She is calculated, observant and incredibly capable, and the investigative side of the series gives Maria plenty to work with beyond the action sequences.
Those sequences are still excellent. Neagley’s physicality feels different to Reacher’s, with Maria bringing speed and precision to the fights rather than trying to replicate the sheer force that has become synonymous with the original series.
Preparing for that physicality was no small undertaking. We spoke to Maria Sten and Greyston Holt about making the series.
Greyston Holt and Maria Sten
Maria spent months preparing her body for four months of filming, which included 16-hour days, fight sequences and a considerable amount of running.
“There is, of course, a prep in that your body does take a beating doing that kind of work 16 hours a day for four months,” Maria said.
She incorporated plyometrics into her preparation alongside conditioning to ensure she could repeatedly perform the running and action sequences.
And there is a lot of running.
Greyston Holt, who plays Detective Hudson Riley, was more than happy to concede one particular victory to his co-star.
“Maria looks way better running on camera than I do,” Greyston laughed.
Maria wasn’t quite willing to let him get away with underselling himself.
“I’m usually always way ahead of everyone else, and I was like, ‘Oh, he can keep up.'”
“I’m fast,” Greyston replied. “I just don’t look good doing it.”
Movie magic, apparently, can only do so much.
All that running also came at a cost, particularly for Greyston’s wardrobe. While filming a major chase sequence in Chicago during particularly hot, humid weather, Greyston wore the full Hudson uniform: a leather jacket, suit, gun holsters, and dress shoes. Unfortunately, his suit trousers weren’t quite prepared for the combination of running and, as Greyston readily admitted, his “big thighs”.
“I think I blew through four or five pairs of pants,” he laughed, adding that these weren’t exactly cheap replacements either. “These are, like, nice Canali suits. I think we blew the budget that day just on my pants alone.”
Between the heat, the running and an increasingly endangered supply of Canali trousers, it was perhaps one of the more expensive chase sequences for reasons nobody had anticipated.
Beyond all the running, fighting, and gun handling, however, Neagley lets us see considerably more of the woman behind all that capability.
Her history, relationships and discomfort with physical contact have previously given us glimpses of a more complicated character, but here those details finally have room to breathe. The series explores parts of her childhood and family history that add genuine emotional weight without suddenly turning Neagley into somebody unrecognisable.
For Maria, having the opportunity to finally explore those parts of Neagley was one of the highlights of making the series.
“Getting to expand upon the character, getting to do the action, getting to deepen the world, the backstory of Neagley, and then finding this new family of characters that join us in this show, to me, are some of the big highlights,” she said.
It was also something of an unknown for the team behind the series. Nick said they had already seen around “60 to 70 percent” of what they needed from Maria through Reacher, but the emotional demands of Neagley were new territory.
“We sort of ultimately had faith and took it for granted that she could do the other emotional scenes that she would be called on to do, really not knowing because that hadn’t been part of the original series,” Nick added.
Any uncertainty disappeared once they saw what Maria brought to those scenes. “She just nailed it,” Nick said.
And she really does.
Maria retains the dry, fiercely independent character audiences already know, but there is vulnerability underneath her that we simply haven’t had the opportunity to see before.
One of the biggest surprises, however, is how quickly Neagley builds a supporting cast worth investing in.
Rather than surrounding its lead with characters who exist purely to move her from one piece of the mystery to another, the series builds a group around her. Hudson, Renee and Keno each bring something different to the story, and their developing dynamic with Neagley becomes one of the most enjoyable parts of the season.
Greyston believes that growing relationship is also one of the things that separates the series from Reacher.
“So much of what is, I think, unique to our show compared to Reacher is we’ll learn to love these characters, and we’re going to be with them for a while,” Greyston said.
For him, watching Neagley, Keno, Renee and Hudson grow together both on and off screen was one of the highlights of filming.
That sense of a developing family gives Neagley a different energy. Neagley may be fiercely independent, but watching her navigate letting other people into her world is far more interesting than simply surrounding her with a revolving door of characters.
By the latter half of the season, the group dynamic, as much as the central mystery, keeps things moving.
The mystery itself starts relatively contained before becoming considerably bigger and more complicated. Bad people do increasingly bad things, escape seems impossible, and there are enough twists to keep the eight episodes moving.
Sometimes that escalation is exactly what you want from this universe.
Neagley knows the audience it is playing to and isn’t embarrassed about delivering the action, mystery and satisfying sense of justice that made Reacher successful in the first place.
Alan Ritchson’s appearance as Reacher in the series is also handled particularly well.
It would have been easy to bring Reacher into the story as the big character audiences were waiting for, only for him to arrive and temporarily take over. Instead, his appearance feels like a natural link between the two series and, in many ways, a passing of the torch.
Reacher is still an important part of Neagley’s world, so Alan’s appearance makes sense, but he never overshadows what Maria has built around the character. He isn’t there to rescue her or suddenly make the series about him. His presence connects Neagley back to where we first met her while simultaneously allowing her to move forward on her own.
It is a nicely crafted link that respects the relationship audiences already know while making it very clear whose show this is now. By the time Reacher appears, Neagley has already proven she doesn’t need him to carry the story.
Perhaps the best compliment I can give Neagley is that I didn’t finish it thinking about when the next season of Reacher was coming. I wanted more Neagley.
Thankfully, Nick already has a clear idea of what that future looks like.
With the core four characters and Chicago remaining central to the series, future seasons will continue following Neagley’s evolution in real time. Importantly, everything she confronts during this first season isn’t suddenly going to disappear.
“There are elements of this character who’s like, ‘I’m fine, everything’s cool, I know what happened to me, I’m moving on,’ where it’s like, you know, people around her are like, ‘Not sure that’s how it works,'” Nick said.
He described her continuing progression as “two steps forward, one back, one step forward, two back”, alongside more action, investigation and mystery.
That might be the most exciting thing about where Neagley leaves us. This first season answers questions about a character we have known for years, but doesn’t pretend eight episodes are enough to completely explain her.
It is familiar enough to comfortably belong in the same universe as Reacher, but different enough to justify being there. Maria proves Neagley can carry a series of her own, while the new ensemble creates something around her that feels worth continuing to explore.
I had a great time watching it, and after seeing what Neagley managed to establish in its first season, I genuinely can’t wait to see what they do next.
SPOILER WARNING:
The following contains major spoilers for Neagley’s final episode.
For those who have already made it to the end, Nick also revealed that one of his personal highlights from creating the series came surprisingly late in the writing process.
The final episodes reveal the truth behind Tommy Crane and his connection to Neagley’s father, including that Tommy had been assaulted and that Neagley’s father killed the man responsible.
According to Nick, the writers initially didn’t know exactly why Tommy had gone to the cult.
“We didn’t know why Tommy Crane went to the cult. We had no idea. It was just sort of like he was looking for answers,” Nick said.
Then the pieces suddenly fell into place.
“We were like, ‘Oh my God, no, no, no. This is why. This is why – he was the first victim.'”
For Nick, it was one of those moments where a story that had been developing across the season suddenly clicked into place.
“It was like, ‘Oh, it all just clicked,'” he said.
And, with a little self-awareness about how neatly everything ultimately came together, he added: “People are going to think we know what we’re doing.”
