Reacher channels Rambo and Predator in Season 3 Episode 6

Reacher Season 3 Episode 6 sees the big guy doing impressions of Sly and Arnie as he executes bad guys in a forest.

Reacher Season 3 features Jack going undercover to both track down a missing person and hunt a ghost from his past called Julius McCabe.

That mission has him working in conjunction with the DEA, and his cover has nearly been blown multiple times, including at the start of Episode 6, where his bacon is saved in ridiculous fashion.

He’s also killed lots of villains, and that spree continues in this same episode, which is titled ‘Smoke on the Water‘, and owes much to the action movies of the 1980s. Be warned, SPOILERS ahead.

How Reacher gives Arnie and Sly a run for their money

The sequence in question plays out midway through Episode 6. McCabe sends his goons after Reacher while shouting “I want him dead.” Jack escapes in a truck, and having somehow dodged scores of bullets, heads for the trees on foot. But the villains give chase on quad bikes.

Firing with machine guns, they keep missing, while Reacher uses his smarts and shoots out the lights on their bikes so they can’t see him.

He then slaps mud on his face, like Arnold Schwarzenegger camouflaging himself from the alien in Predator, and appears from behind trees like a ghost, breaking one baddie’s neck, then stealing a knife and stabbing another in the throat.

Reacher proceeds to take the henchman out, one-by-one, much like Sylvester Stallone in the original Rambo movie, First Blood.

Indeed, the similarities with John Rambo are strong in this scene – like the Vietnam veteran, Reacher has also seen combat, so knows how to use the woods to his advantage, disappearing and reappearing to shock and surprise his prey.

The difference is Rambo was killing cops, who admittedly thought they were doing the right thing hunting him down. Conversely, Reacher is dispatching stone-cold killers with his cunning and combat skills.

He ties chord attached to a bike around one guy’s neck, then reels him in, the man eventually choking to death. Then, still covered in mud, Reacher makes it to town – which even looks like the location in First Blood – and cleans himself up in a laundromat. And this means the action-packed sequence ends with yet another excuse for Jack to go topless.

For more on the big guy, here’s how to read the Reacher books in order, plus how many Reacher movies Tom Cruise made. Also, check out our list of the best TV shows of 2025 so far.