FIGHTING WORDS

‘Reacher’ Creator Has a Message for His Angry MAGA Fans

The show may have a conservative fan base, but the character’s author doesn’t see him that way.

This piece was originally published on Substack. Get book reviews, recaps, and deep dives sent straight to your inbox by subscribing to On the Same Page on Substack.

By now you’ve probably heard the name Reacher. Whether you’ve watched him absolutely demolish bad guys on television or read about his thrilling adventures across the 31 novels he stars in, the nomadic former soldier with a special knack for killing and one of the strongest moral compasses in the world has become a pop culture icon.

And when it comes to the Hollywood adaptations—which have, so far, seen different iterations across two movies and four seasons starring Tom Cruise and Alan Ritchson, respectively—a fan base has grown, and with it, a large conservative following.

But just because many of the fans may lean MAGA doesn’t mean the character’s creator necessarily believes Reacher represents that.

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Lee Child, the solo or co-author of all 31 Reacher novels, told On The Same Page, the Daily Beast’s book-focused Substack, that even though Reacher may be former military police, that doesn’t mean he’s the patriotic American soldier that Trump’s America may paint him to be.

“What does patriotism mean? It means that you stand for your country, right or wrong. But in saying that, you’ve got to be prepared to admit that it’s wrong sometimes,” Child said. “And so to me, that is the heart of patriotism. It’s not blind loyalty. It’s a fundamental belief, but you’re prepared to recognize that things need improving and you go ahead and improve it.”

“It’s really important to understand Reacher as claimable by everybody,” Child added.

Child, an Englishman himself, explained that the real reason he set his Reacher series in America is because of its huge geography. But when it comes down to who Reacher is at his core, that doesn’t have to do with American ideology because his type of character has “existed forever.”

“As long as humans have been telling stories, there are constant stories about the mysterious stranger who shows up in the nick of time and solves the problem and then leaves, riding off into the sunset,” he continued.

Child explained that American Western films “borrowed” the character’s concept from medieval Europe, which, in turn, borrowed it from Scandinavian sagas, Anglo-Saxon battle poems and Greek mythology.

“That character has been around forever,” Child said. “And so Reacher is today’s version, and he’s living in America, but he can be identified anywhere. Every culture, every country has this guy. Japan has him—the Ronin, a samurai disowned by his master and sentenced to wander the land doing good. That also showed up with King Arthur and the Round Table: Sir Lancelot. Again, some kind of transgression; he was banished, and he’s sentenced to wandering the land doing good.”

Alan Ritchson, who portrays Reacher in Amazon Prime’s hit series Reacher, has been a vocal advocate against President Trump.

Ritchson previously blasted the elderly president for being “all up into 13-year-olds,” said Trump was “raping the world,” and even revealed that the Amazon Prime series was set to follow Child’s second book in the Jack Reacher series, Die Trying, before a certain president regained power.

“My favorite book,” Ritchson wrote on Threads about the 1998 novel. “Fun fact: I had it approved until someone got reelected.”

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In May 2026, Reacher was renewed for a fifth season. While Child wouldn’t share which of the his Reacher tales that it would explore, he did say that his personal favorite novel he has ever written was The Midnight Line, which follows the story of a female soldier who is wounded in Afghanistan and, while being treated at the hospital, develops an OxyContin addiction that then impacted her entire life.

“I really wanted to do it sympathetically from the addict’s point of view,” Child said. “Normally in crime fiction, the addict is just a cipher. Maybe we follow him to the dealer’s house to get a clue or something, but we don’t dwell on the addict’s personal situation.”

Child explained that he got “a lot of positive mail” about The Midnight Line, even from doctors in the field who were thanking him for highlighting that OxyContin addiction doesn’t just come from bad behavior.

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But just because The Midnight Line is Child’s favorite novel, that doesn’t mean Reacher will tackle it next.

“It’s a rather unstructured type of process,” Child said of the meetings to choose what book the Amazon show will explore next. “The main people on the show just talk, and we end up kind of emerging with a collective favorite.”

If Child had his way, he says the show would run for 31 seasons, showcasing each novel in the series. But since that isn’t the most feasible outcome, the process is “much more reactive” for him. He doesn’t go into meetings with a book in mind; he lets the conversation guide his thoughts.

And even if MAGA isn’t thrilled with Ritchson leading the show, Child has no complaints about his performance.

“Alan is an actor. Actors are unbelievably diligent and hardworking. Alan works like crazy,” Child said. “And he reads the books over and over again, trying to mine the nuance and the detail in order to make it better and more authentic on the screen.”

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Child explained that he likes the Reacher series more than the movie adaptations.

“It’s not so much about the actor or the way that they did it, but the huge difference between the feature film and the streaming seasons,” Child said. “You’ve got so much more time on television.”

Child previously told Collider that he “had a clause in that movie contract that after two movies I had a veto whether we would do any more. I exercised that veto.”

The author explained to On The Same Page that he killed the movie franchise after streaming became an option, as the Amazon Prime television series lets viewers dive deeper into the gritty character and the world he’s built. Each season typically gets a “luxurious” eight hours of screen time instead of the film format, which limits scenes.

“You’ve got time to do all the story—the quiet bits, the funny bits, the human parts,” he says. “You’re not always squashing it down into a very brief running time.”

Although Child may not prefer the movie versions of his books, he still applauded Cruise’s portrayals of his legendary character in the films Jack Reacher and Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, despite the film adaptations receiving less critical acclaim than the show.

“Tom is a wonderful actor and a very smart storyteller,” he said. “Talking to him about the theory of storytelling is fantastic. You’re talking to a guy who’s done it all in his life, and he really knows what a good story is. It is fascinating discussing it with him.”

While Child felt “working with both of them is a joy,” he emphasized that the television series has been his favorite since streaming seasons are “a much better home for novels.”

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