The first season of Reacher stands as one of the few modern examples of a well-executed lone wolf archetype, the sole righteous man in a corrupt town who must take justice into his own hands. What’s more American than the fantasy of the Western sheriff, white hat on his head, six-shooter in the saddle of his white destrier, walking into a saloon and dispensing justice on the fringes of civilization? This archetype endures, despite being largely a relic of the past, because it posits a simple moral paradigm: that goodness and justice are absolute, and they can be enforced by righteous individuals.
There is something satisfying about seeing criminals beaten to a pulp by a 6'6" giant with an eidetic memory who just wants to be left alone but can't help getting into trouble. Who doesn't want linebacker James Bond?
Alan Ritchson as Jack Reacher
Though Reacher was insanely popular and hit all the right spots with the lone-wolf loving viewer, there was one conspicuous absence that made it more a throwback than a modern iteration. The Leviathan of the state and the 24/7 media apparatus was nowhere to be found in the rural Georgia town Reacher sauntered into. After the bodies drop, no Secret Service agents–who handle counterfeiting as their original mandate–interrogate him. CNN isn't there with news choppers. There are no TikToks from local teenagers filming the explosion. The interconnected world, and the apparatus of the state which manages it, are nowhere to be seen.
In reality, a money laundromat of this size isn't undone by a sheriff in a white hat. It's undone by one of its labourers being a methead, absconding with $20,000 in fake bills, getting pulled over for erratic driving, and singing to law enforcement faster than they can say "plea deal." The show about that convict exists somewhere as a rejected David Simon script - because it's not just more fun to see Reacher gun down bad guys; it's more cathartic.
It's entertaining to watch a strong individual righting an evil this large with an AR-15 replacing the sheriff's Colt Single Action Army.
The typical critiques of the sheriff and, on the other side of the law, John Wick, involve the alleged toxicity of their violence. Predictably, these critiques miss the point: violence is a mechanism, not the goal. The goal is acquiring justice - ending a criminal conspiracy or avenging John’s dog- and doing so with no external permission. Violence is just the (super dope-looking) means to an end.
John Wick breaks the rules of the Continental to the point of excommunication for his own revenge; him being hunted drives the entire second half of the franchise. Reacher doesn't wait for law enforcement. He acts, and when he's invariably proven right, the law doesn't even inconvenience him with a subpoena for the countless capital crimes he's observed and/or participated in.
This is what "competence porn" actually means, though I find the term slightly distasteful. It's not competence that audiences crave. It's competence without artificial bureaucratic impediments or a need for consensus. Alas, in reality, plenty of such competent warriors exist: they're on Delta Force or working for private security companies, and every one of them reports to a chain of command, follows rules of engagement, and files paperwork.
A Navy SEAL can do everything Reacher does, but that’s not the whole appeal of Reacher. The fantasy isn't just that a man can be this capable. It's that a capable man can operate without asking permission. This resonates particularly with men in the Anglosphere West, who carry a more pronounced tradition of rugged individualism—a self-identity that chafes against every form, queue, and approval process the modern Leviathan demands of them.
So the question becomes: if we know who the lone wolves are, if we love them for the competence they display, then what are some other examples where they interact with institutions? In fiction, we have the example of Dexter, where the titular character is a serial killer who channels his homicidal urges into murdering other killers… by working for the Miami PD. This way, the show isn’t pretending the institutions don’t exist, but it does side-step them. The FBI shows up in Season 2—the show's best season, precisely because the feds are closing in—but they are ultimately fooled and sent home.
Michael C. Hall as Dexter
While glaring federal incompetence isn’t outside of the question, the plot convenience is contrived when Dexter has such a prolific body count in such an enclosed space and no meaningful paper trail covering his tracks. Regardless, the show had a huge following because of the catharsis: the people Dexter kills are bad, and it’s fascinating to see a sociopath use his compulsions for something not entirely evil.
For a real-world example, we need look no further than Luigi Mangione. He decided to take action for what he perceived to be an injustice in the healthcare system, and went to great precautions to not get caught. But when the eye of Uncle Sam focuses on you as tightly as it did on him, it will dedicate the resources to catch you. Just ask Bin Laden. Mr. Mangione is now charged with federal and state murder charges (which is probably unconstitutional), but the legal niceties are irrelevant. He is seen as a threat to the Leviathan’s monopoly on violence by taking the law into his own hands, and so will likely be punished commensurate with the modern equivalent of drawing and quartering: ADX Florence.
Ultimately, the lone wolf still connects with us as an audience because it frees us from the chafing of organizational procedure and indecisiveness. Reacher and John Wick don’t answer to subcommittees before going on their rampages. Dexter doesn’t get caught by someone noticing his clerical filing errors or tracking the GPS on his cellphone to constantly being in the vicinity of victims. And that’s fine for fantasy, but the boring, unromantic reality is that Luigi Mangione was caught at a McDonald’s for a cash reward based on a grainy security camera photo.
We love the lone wolf because he is free from the machinery we despise. And I say "we" deliberately, because I am not above this: we need the Leviathan. It provides us services that we not only demand, but expect. The same audience that fantasizes about Reacher gunning down cartel dealers calls 911 when someone breaks into their house and justifiably expects officers to arrive fast. We drive on public roads to jobs inside regulatory frameworks that keep our buildings from collapsing. We bitch about the TSA and would lose our minds if a plane got hijacked.
The state is bloated, inefficient, and self-serving in ways that would make a comic book villain blush. And yet nobody has shrunk it. Not Obama. Not Trump. And DOGE didn't cut a penny; it just rearranged where those pennies went. ICE and the military (and by extension, military contractors) got fatter, other agencies got leaner, and in no situation did the organism get smaller in an absolute sense.
This isn't because politicians are cowards, though many are. It's because the public is contradictory. We want services and hate taxes; we want the other guy regulated and ourselves left alone. We want the benefits of living in a large, militarily powerful empire, but hate the trillions it costs. The state is the average of those contradictions expressed as bureaucracy, ever trying to balance between the contradictions of the voter base and the entrenched interests of the stakeholders it continuously creates. You get the Leviathan you deserve and we have been earning ours for decades.
If Reacher is the one protecting your town, you are not living in a free society. You are living in a failed state. The problems he solves are easy to understand as plots: individual villains with faces doing dastardly things so he can punch them. And that is super satisfying. But let’s be real: in a liberal democratic system, a money counterfeiting operation isn’t taken down by one man special investigating (as fun as that is). It’s probably getting apprehended by half a dozen agencies, who bicker endlessly about funding and who gets credit for the catch as they flip a rogues’ gallery of truly awful people into protected federal witnesses. That’s just the reality of a world with the Constitution.
And the alternative to the Leviathan isn't Reacher's quiet freedom. It's every man with a grievance and a gun deciding he's the protagonist of his own story—a fun premise for a film and a nightmare as administrative policy, one that leads to blood feuds and 1990s Somalia. The picket fence and Sunday football require force to be wielded by someone in their defense.
That someone is the state, for all its inefficient, self-serving ugliness. So enjoy the fantasy. I do. Reacher is fun. John Wick is style incarnate. But the kayfabe has limits.
The Lone Wolf and the Leviathan
The first season of Reacher stands as one of the few modern examples of a well-executed lone wolf archetype, the sole righteous man in a corrupt town who must take justice into his own hands. What’s more American than the fantasy of the Western sheriff, white hat on his head, six-shooter in the saddle of his white destrier, walking into a saloon and dispensing justice on the fringes of civilization? This archetype endures, despite being largely a relic of the past, because it posits a simple moral paradigm: that goodness and justice are absolute, and they can be enforced by righteous individuals.
There is something satisfying about seeing criminals beaten to a pulp by a 6'6" giant with an eidetic memory who just wants to be left alone but can't help getting into trouble. Who doesn't want linebacker James Bond?
Though Reacher was insanely popular and hit all the right spots with the lone-wolf loving viewer, there was one conspicuous absence that made it more a throwback than a modern iteration. The Leviathan of the state and the 24/7 media apparatus was nowhere to be found in the rural Georgia town Reacher sauntered into. After the bodies drop, no Secret Service agents–who handle counterfeiting as their original mandate–interrogate him. CNN isn't there with news choppers. There are no TikToks from local teenagers filming the explosion. The interconnected world, and the apparatus of the state which manages it, are nowhere to be seen.
In reality, a money laundromat of this size isn't undone by a sheriff in a white hat. It's undone by one of its labourers being a methead, absconding with $20,000 in fake bills, getting pulled over for erratic driving, and singing to law enforcement faster than they can say "plea deal." The show about that convict exists somewhere as a rejected David Simon script - because it's not just more fun to see Reacher gun down bad guys; it's more cathartic.
It's entertaining to watch a strong individual righting an evil this large with an AR-15 replacing the sheriff's Colt Single Action Army.
The typical critiques of the sheriff and, on the other side of the law, John Wick, involve the alleged toxicity of their violence. Predictably, these critiques miss the point: violence is a mechanism, not the goal. The goal is acquiring justice - ending a criminal conspiracy or avenging John’s dog- and doing so with no external permission. Violence is just the (super dope-looking) means to an end.
John Wick breaks the rules of the Continental to the point of excommunication for his own revenge; him being hunted drives the entire second half of the franchise. Reacher doesn't wait for law enforcement. He acts, and when he's invariably proven right, the law doesn't even inconvenience him with a subpoena for the countless capital crimes he's observed and/or participated in.
This is what "competence porn" actually means, though I find the term slightly distasteful. It's not competence that audiences crave. It's competence without artificial bureaucratic impediments or a need for consensus. Alas, in reality, plenty of such competent warriors exist: they're on Delta Force or working for private security companies, and every one of them reports to a chain of command, follows rules of engagement, and files paperwork.
A Navy SEAL can do everything Reacher does, but that’s not the whole appeal of Reacher. The fantasy isn't just that a man can be this capable. It's that a capable man can operate without asking permission. This resonates particularly with men in the Anglosphere West, who carry a more pronounced tradition of rugged individualism—a self-identity that chafes against every form, queue, and approval process the modern Leviathan demands of them.
So the question becomes: if we know who the lone wolves are, if we love them for the competence they display, then what are some other examples where they interact with institutions? In fiction, we have the example of Dexter, where the titular character is a serial killer who channels his homicidal urges into murdering other killers… by working for the Miami PD. This way, the show isn’t pretending the institutions don’t exist, but it does side-step them. The FBI shows up in Season 2—the show's best season, precisely because the feds are closing in—but they are ultimately fooled and sent home.
While glaring federal incompetence isn’t outside of the question, the plot convenience is contrived when Dexter has such a prolific body count in such an enclosed space and no meaningful paper trail covering his tracks. Regardless, the show had a huge following because of the catharsis: the people Dexter kills are bad, and it’s fascinating to see a sociopath use his compulsions for something not entirely evil.
For a real-world example, we need look no further than Luigi Mangione. He decided to take action for what he perceived to be an injustice in the healthcare system, and went to great precautions to not get caught. But when the eye of Uncle Sam focuses on you as tightly as it did on him, it will dedicate the resources to catch you. Just ask Bin Laden. Mr. Mangione is now charged with federal and state murder charges (which is probably unconstitutional), but the legal niceties are irrelevant. He is seen as a threat to the Leviathan’s monopoly on violence by taking the law into his own hands, and so will likely be punished commensurate with the modern equivalent of drawing and quartering: ADX Florence.
Ultimately, the lone wolf still connects with us as an audience because it frees us from the chafing of organizational procedure and indecisiveness. Reacher and John Wick don’t answer to subcommittees before going on their rampages. Dexter doesn’t get caught by someone noticing his clerical filing errors or tracking the GPS on his cellphone to constantly being in the vicinity of victims. And that’s fine for fantasy, but the boring, unromantic reality is that Luigi Mangione was caught at a McDonald’s for a cash reward based on a grainy security camera photo.
We love the lone wolf because he is free from the machinery we despise. And I say "we" deliberately, because I am not above this: we need the Leviathan. It provides us services that we not only demand, but expect. The same audience that fantasizes about Reacher gunning down cartel dealers calls 911 when someone breaks into their house and justifiably expects officers to arrive fast. We drive on public roads to jobs inside regulatory frameworks that keep our buildings from collapsing. We bitch about the TSA and would lose our minds if a plane got hijacked.
The state is bloated, inefficient, and self-serving in ways that would make a comic book villain blush. And yet nobody has shrunk it. Not Obama. Not Trump. And DOGE didn't cut a penny; it just rearranged where those pennies went. ICE and the military (and by extension, military contractors) got fatter, other agencies got leaner, and in no situation did the organism get smaller in an absolute sense.
This isn't because politicians are cowards, though many are. It's because the public is contradictory. We want services and hate taxes; we want the other guy regulated and ourselves left alone. We want the benefits of living in a large, militarily powerful empire, but hate the trillions it costs. The state is the average of those contradictions expressed as bureaucracy, ever trying to balance between the contradictions of the voter base and the entrenched interests of the stakeholders it continuously creates. You get the Leviathan you deserve and we have been earning ours for decades.
If Reacher is the one protecting your town, you are not living in a free society. You are living in a failed state. The problems he solves are easy to understand as plots: individual villains with faces doing dastardly things so he can punch them. And that is super satisfying. But let’s be real: in a liberal democratic system, a money counterfeiting operation isn’t taken down by one man special investigating (as fun as that is). It’s probably getting apprehended by half a dozen agencies, who bicker endlessly about funding and who gets credit for the catch as they flip a rogues’ gallery of truly awful people into protected federal witnesses. That’s just the reality of a world with the Constitution.
And the alternative to the Leviathan isn't Reacher's quiet freedom. It's every man with a grievance and a gun deciding he's the protagonist of his own story—a fun premise for a film and a nightmare as administrative policy, one that leads to blood feuds and 1990s Somalia. The picket fence and Sunday football require force to be wielded by someone in their defense.
That someone is the state, for all its inefficient, self-serving ugliness. So enjoy the fantasy. I do. Reacher is fun. John Wick is style incarnate. But the kayfabe has limits.
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