If you’re among the Reacher fans deciding what to watch next after burning through Prime Video’s hit series, The Equalizer is the answer, and it’s not even close. The blueprint is almost identical: a former military man, quietly living on society’s margins, who cannot stand by when the vulnerable get crushed underfoot.
Alan Ritchson’s Jack Reacher has become one of those rare TV characters people genuinely miss between seasons. According to Wikipedia, the second season, with Nick Santora as showrunner, rolled out from 15 December 2023 with three episodes, then dropped one per week through to 19 January 2024. Filming had taken place between September 2022 and March 2023 across Ontario, Canada, with Toronto, Brampton, Mississauga and Hamilton all serving as locations. So if you’ve already devoured both seasons and you’re in that particular kind of withdrawal, here’s where to go next.
Why Reacher Fans Should Watch The Equalizer First
The Equalizer started life as a US TV series in the 1980s, with Edward Woodward playing Robert McCall, a retired spy quietly dispensing justice to people who had nowhere else to turn. It ran from 1985 to 1989. The concept was then rebooted as a theatrical film with Denzel Washington in the lead, and the casting is about as good a fit as you’ll find in modern action cinema.
Washington brings an edgy darkness to McCall that matches Reacher for sheer intensity. Both characters share the same basic affliction: they are genuinely irritated that bad people assume there are no consequences for bad behaviour. McCall, like Reacher, is a former military man who has stepped back from that world to live quietly. Reacher drifts from town to town owning nothing; McCall takes a humble job at a Home Depot-style hardware store. Neither man goes looking for trouble. Neither man can walk past injustice either.
Where Ritchson uses his extraordinary physique to convey threat, Washington does it differently. He brings a sense of solidity and stillness to the fight scenes, and those moments when he shifts from relaxed and almost goofy into something cold and absolute are genuinely chilling. Fans of Ritchson’s deadpan humour will find plenty of the same in Washington’s interpretation. Rent The Equalizer on Prime Video.
More Films for Reacher Fans Who Need Another Fix
Once you’ve worked through The Equalizer, there are several other films that scratch the same itch.
The 2012 Jack Reacher film, based on Lee Child’s novel One Shot, is worth your time despite the obvious elephant in the room: Tom Cruise is physically nothing like the character as written. That said, the mystery at the film’s core is one of Reacher’s best on the page, and there are enough well-constructed fights to satisfy anyone who loves the series. Stream it on Kanopy or Paramount Plus, or rent it on Prime Video.
Washington also appears in Man on Fire (2004), playing John Creasy, a former Marine who takes a bodyguard job protecting a young girl named Lupita “Pita” Ramos, played by Dakota Fanning, in Mexico. When she is kidnapped, Creasy embarks on a single-minded campaign of violence to get her back. It is pitched darker than the Reacher series, but the core impulse is the same: protect the innocent, punish everyone else. Stream it on Fubo or rent it on Prime Video.
A Working Man (2025) stars Jason Statham as Levon Cade, a former Royal Marine Commando now working as a construction foreman in Chicago. When the daughter of a friend is trafficked by Russian mobsters, Cade reluctantly re-enters the world he left behind and delivers a run of beat-downs that would earn Reacher’s respect. Stream it on Fubo or rent it on Prime Video.
Nobody (2021) follows Hutch Mansell, played by Bob Odenkirk, a former professional assassin living a quiet suburban life until a home robbery kicks off a chain of events that strips away his mild-mannered exterior entirely. If Reacher’s ability to absorb punishment and keep moving is what you’re here for, Nobody delivers exactly that.
Finally, the South Korean film The Man from Nowhere (2010) is essential viewing. Won Bin plays Cha Tae-sik, a man running a pawn shop with no apparent past, whose only real connection is to a young girl in his building. When a criminal gang comes after her, his real history surfaces at considerable cost to everyone in the way. The film is widely credited with influencing John Wick, and any Reacher fan will find the same satisfying logic running through it: the wrong person, pushed too far. Stream it on Fubo or rent it on Prime Video.
The Equalizer remains the strongest starting point of the lot, and is currently available to rent on Prime Video for £3.99.
