You don’t get a lot of wins as a black nerdy fangirl, but thank fucking God for Frances Neagley, and the Jack Reacher franchise in general.
For those new here, I’ve been on board for Reacher since the very first season when I heard they really did go out and find big, honkin’ cornfed white boy the size of a mountain to play the ever-popular book character. The funny thing is, I really like that first season and still consider it the best one, but I didn’t really become a huge fan of the series until the second and third seasons where Alan Ritchson and Maria Sten really got to stretch their acting muscles. I’m sure you’ve already concluded that I have nothing but Freudian Excuses for why I outright ADORE Reacher and Neagley, whether that’s platonic or romantic, and I regret nothing. It is so hard for black women to find any representation at all in fiction, but even harder for autistic cutie pies like Reacher and Neagley to get writing this good, and have both characters played incredibly talented people who genuinely want to portray them well. Therefore, I’m just going to stop for a moment and gush about what I felt worked so well for the Neagley spinoff.
Therefore, spoilers for all four seasons of Reacher that have aired since October 7th 2026 and for the entire first season of Neagley.
Let’s take a step back before we start gushing about the woman of the hour.
As I said above, my Reacher obsession actually didn’t hit its height until the second season in which Neagley isn’t just a person he consults with once or twice, but she joins him to help him find out what happened to his old unit members. I was already delighted at their relationship when it was introduced, even though I have a long and detailed documented beef with studios constantly casting black women but only as the BROTP role with no romantic interest in the handsome white male lead, because of the amazing chemistry between Maria Sten and Alan Ritchson. It was such an adorable relationship, but I love that it didn’t come across as sisterly either; it still very much felt like Neagley was his work wife in season one, and then season two cemented it. Neagley went from his cute touch averse colleague to his literal fucking work wife, having a thousand times more chemistry with him than the boring, dusty white woman they stuck him with, Dixon, and it’s also insane their chemistry is so good that I could feel it through the fact that Neagley was, at the time, considered aro/ace by her own words. She got along with Alan so damn good that even though I view Reacher as aromantic (just not asexual), it was so clear how much these two love and respect each other. Reacher doesn’t tease or joke with many people, but he totally relaxes whenever Neagley’s around, smiling and giving way more interested facial expressions than when he investigates without her. I truly mean it—Alan and Maria have fucking nailed this dynamic long before it evolved into what it is today, and I thank God for them both.
In that second season, we see so much of Reacher and Neagley’s friendship with him happily praising her (“I ever tell you you’re smart, Neagley?” “Not nearly enough.” SHOOT ME YOU TWO ARE SO FUCKING CUTE AND SO FUCKING MARRIED) and her happily accepting his praise because she’s amazing. The writers constantly throw a dusty white woman at him when Reacher had far more of a reaction to Neagley being forced to dress up for a black tie event over Dixon. No offense, but come on, no one bought that Reacher was floored by Dixon, who looked exactly the same, versus Neagley dressing up. But I’m not here to shit on Dixon—point is, their chemistry is fully cemented in the second season to the degree that it’s around when I started noticing other fans speak up about how much they like her. It felt great to see her getting this much praise because being a black fangirl means often bracing for bigots to find every single reason to hate a brown person they see next to their white favorite. Now, granted, I knew that because Neagley was portrayed as aro/ace and so she wasn’t a “threat” to the diet racists in the Reacher fandom, but we’ll talk about them more below.
Season three is easily a favorite in terms of the story and the action, which included the disgustingly sadistic Xavier Quinn and his pet psychopath Paulie aka the Dutch Giant. While I hated Duffy like most people did (I shit you not—Google it! Everyone hates Duffy so much that when I went to Google the phrase, “Reacher season three Duffy,” the search results AUTOMATICALLY without me having ever searched it before auto-completed the phrase with the word “annoying.” We hated her. Seriously. God, Duffy was a terrible character and that actress needs Boston accent lessons pronto.) Reacher had his hands full trying to survive the Dutch Giant, and the entire season hinged on Reacher being dead-set on getting revenge for the murder of an adorable and promising black woman he couldn’t save. I was heartbroken for him, but loved his resolve. I love that he was patient and when he got his man, he made sure Quinn knew why he was sending him to Hell—over the brilliant late Dominique Kohl. But what’s more is not only is this a fun, tense season, but it has yet another moment considered an MVP moment for Reacher and Neagley. Reacher winds up asking for her help and once the bad guys get wind of it, they sent two assassins after her that she easily dispatches in literally the best scene in the show’s entire run, and that’s when we get one of the best Reagley/Neacher scenes ever. Reacher apologizes for the men that went after Neagley, and she bluntly tells him, “I was involved the moment they came after you.” Reacher is then stunned to silence, visibly moved to hear the woman he loves say that she wasn’t about to sit on her ass when bad men came for the man she loved. It was just the best moment of the 3rd season and truly cemented them as soulmates, and again, you’re welcome to interpret that as platonic or romantic in the meantime.
From that moment on, I knew I was going to be a whole fucking goblin for Reagley/Neacher. And yes, I made up that ship name.
Since Neagley’s premiere date was for 2026, she didn’t have any presence in Reacher’s fourth season, and her absence is sorely felt, but luckily, they instead featured Reacher in the pilot and finale of her first season. It is then that this show delivered the crown jewel of Reagley/Neacher scenes. I was beside myself and I still am weeks later, but let me draw in my screaming fangirl.
Reacher helps her out with a kidnapping case, so she takes him to a baseball game. While there, Neagley says, “So, if you ever get that ranch—the one with the four or five dogs, give me a ring, ’cause…working the land and drinking beer while watching ball games…doesn’t sound so bad sometimes.” Reacher is then stunned to silence and clearly appreciative and touched, but his emotional stunted state and his flat affect make him change the subject. When Neagley starts to get shy and retract the statement, Reacher then steps up to save the moment, suggesting they become cattle rustlers together. When I tell you I’m squealing like a teen K pop enthusiast over this scene? Nothing makes me happier than these two shy autistic cutie pies realizing they really only have one person they want to be around and that’s okay. It just fills my evil heart with fucking joy to hear them both verbalize it. Reacher and Neagley, to me, are very similar to Harry Dresden and Karrin Murphy (go fuck yourself, Jim Butcher; I’m required by law as the Queen of the Harry/Murphy fanfiction trashpile to say that every time I mention her name anywhere and anybody that read Battle Ground knows why), who are the biggest fucking “ride or die” work wife and work husband ever, yet they both struggle to verbalize their feelings for more than half that book series. Often, Harry and Murphy would do incredibly dangerous shit to save the other person, then deadass just laugh it off as friendship or struggle to just say “I love you” to one another after goddamn twenty years of being side by side. Reacher and Neagley both read like people who are on the spectrum, so to see them four seasons in finally admit they wouldn’t mind retiring on a ranch together is extra fucking rewarding. Life is hard. Words are even harder. I’m so proud of them for nailing this moment and not backing away when that would’ve been the easy way out.
And now we’ve arrived at the moment I’ve already rewatched about ten-thousand times since the season one finale premiered.
The Reagley/Neacher handshake.
Bitch, I’m shook.
I cried. Yeah, I know, that’s dumb. I still cried. Actually cried.
As I mentioned before, I’ve been so elated to see this portrayal of what I feel are two autistic people who are transitioning into a new emotional state they’ve never experienced before. I’ll talk about Neagley’s journey below in detail, but just for this moment, the payoff was fucking excellent. Anyone who has liked these two cuties, whether platonic or romantic, has gushed over this scene. While Tumblr is ignoring the show for the reasons we fucking knew they would, if you search “Reacher Neagley” in Instagram at the time of this post, you’ll see about 200+ posts of just this handshake. It truly meant so much to us to go on this journey and see them finally touch for the first time in a way that had nothing to do with hitting someone. What really makes it so good is simply how soft the entire scene is. For those who may not have seen it, Neagley’s ill father Calvin finally passes away and she buries him, but I’m not doing the scene justice.
Neagley is handed her father’s folded flag. She is visibly struggling to hold back tears and stand there. She raises her gaze. The camera then shows us that Reacher is standing apart from the funeral on a hill directly in her eyeline. Neagley sees him…and she stands taller. Her expression calms. She’s relieved to see the man that is her safe place dropped everything and ran to her side on the day she needed him the most.
Bruh. I mean, are ya SURPRISED I’d die for these two darlings???
But I’m not done yet. The scene continues.
Reacher and Neagley then walk along and he goes even further by stating he had been calling the hospital for updates and it was how he found out Calvin passed away. He even admits he was calling to check up on her, not just Calvin, and if your heart isn’t melted yet, then this next scene takes care of that for you!
Neagley: Thank you, Reacher.
Reacher: (slightly confused and shy) I wasn’t far. I was only in St. Louis.
Neagley: No. Thank you for always accepting me the way that I am. But that’s not the way I’m always gonna be.
(the music swells as Neagley slowly reaches out her hand for a handshake; she’s nervous, but smiling)
Reacher: (he looks amazed, proud, and honored, so he sticks out his hand and slowly shakes hers, smiling with love in his eyes) It’s nice to meet you, Neagley.
Neagley: I can’t believe it. (she grins cheekily) You’ve got soft hands.
Reacher: (a mixture of amusement and disbelief, then affection as he realizes she’s just messing with him)
(they both smile, then continue walking together)
My overly emotional empathic bitch ass:
SEDATE ME. YOU FUCKING MARRIED AUTISTIC CUTIES FINNA MAKE ME DIVE OFF THE ROOF.
I cannot handle how utterly soft the handshake is? And the moment before it? Her teasing him?! Come on! I’m only human! I cannot withstand the verbalization of their relationship. It’s such a natural, beautiful evolution for their characters to realize maybe they have just one person they adore in this world and that’s not so scary or dangerous. Someone said something brilliant about Reacher recently, and it’s that he is the most violently kind man you’ll ever meet. That’s it. These two melt me into butter because while they kick tons of ass and make no bones about ending evil people, yet they then are also this soft and sweet with one another. It was such a huge fucking step for her to make the decision to heal from her trauma, but with Reacher specifically because it means they both now know they are each other’s safe place. Neagley fussed at him during the end of season two not to be gone from her so long and with the admission they’d buy a ranch together plus the handshake makes me so excited for where the road could lead them. Again, I’m someone who is happy with whether everything they do is considered platonic or romantic, but for the sake of Reacher’s evolution as a character, I’d like to see him stop fucking the girls they throw at him every season (THAT EVERYONE COMPLAINS ABOUT FOR GOD’S SAKE JUST STOP IT ALREADY) and see him come to terms with either his platonic or romantic love for Neagley. It would open the show up to new scenarios if Reacher starts to realize he loves her more deeply and doesn’t want to only see her once every few years. It would also open her up to explore a sexuality she thought didn’t exist (and yes, before you even ask, my trash panda ass done already posted SO MUCH fucking Reagley/Neacher fanfiction and I regret nothing other than the diet racist fandom refusing to .gif this damn show) and it would be great to see her in therapy discussing these new feelings she’s having for both Reacher and Riley.
And now that we’ve discussed the Most Important Handshake In TV History ™, we can discuss her actual spinoff show. Sorry for three pages of gushing. No regrets.
AHEM.
Her show is better than Reacher’s show.
*ducks all the rotten fruit and vegetables you throw at her*
I AM SORRY OKAY BUT IT IS.
Alright, alright, put the pitchforks and torches down and I promise I’ll explain why.
So Reacher rocks. I love that show to death. However, now that it’s had four seasons out, it’s fallen into patterns that are a bit frustrating, and I consider there to be two problems I’d like them to fix in order to catapult this from a good show to a great show.
First, as mentioned above, everyone and their mama (including me) has now complained about this stupid Girl of the Week format that they keep doing. Look, do I get on paper why they keep tossing Reacher one girl per fucking season, pun intended? Yes. I am assuming that Reacher doesn’t have as much of a flat affect and shows further emotions in the books or I am assuming that Prime has a quota of tits and ass and sex to fill for its mainstream shows and has told the writers’ room to keep putting the Girl of the Week in there for the Fanservice that is expected. Whatever the reason, it’s the number one complaint that I have about this damn show. Reacher doesn’t need a love interest outside of Frances Neagley. He doesn’t. He just doesn’t.
And that’s literally okay.
As I said, to me, Alan plays him like a man who is on the spectrum and aromantic, but not asexual, even though I still think none of the girls but Neagley have had chemistry with him. Almost everyone agrees Roscoe is the only girl who was written and acted in a way that at least sells their fling easily. I personally don’t ship it, and I didn’t watch them have sex because to me, I don’t feel like he’s getting much out of it other than scratching a bodily itch. Dixon (season two) was boring, Duffy (season three) had negative ten chemistry with him, and Lila’s boinking scene (season four) was so fast and so not important that they just got it over with in three episodes and never reference it again, so it’s just a needless element. If they think the neurotypicals would call an abstinent man “weird,” let them. The audience just watched an entire season of a show about a woman with haphephobia—the fear of touching another person. The fanbase has shown you they are rallying behind Reacher and feels no need to see him have sex with other partners outside of Neagley. You can fit the titties and ass into other parts of the show very easily, so this is the first major thing that Neagley’s show has over this one: she doesn’t have this huge annoying subplot that adds nothing to her character the way he does. I know his fuck sessions are short and over with quickly, but it’s just a pointless part of the series and everyone’s complained about it enough times that I pray this next season doesn’t have a love interest for him at all.
Second, they still keep cutting Reacher off from feeling things since the first and third seasons. What I mean by that is that traumatic things happen to Reacher, and we visibly see him scared or worried, but they don’t allow him any quiet moments of reflection or soliloquy to show us how he is impacted by his crazy missions and cases. It’s bugging me due to the tremendous actor they have with them. Reacher has shown us with his connection to Neagley that despite his flat affect and possible autism or any other neurodivergence, he does feel things and he cares deeply for his fellow man. Every season is about something that he is determined to make right, and he does right by as many people as he can each season. There’s no reason not to allow him to have nightmares or voice his fears aloud to someone else, like the scene in season two before he leaves the car and talks to Neagley. I want more scenes like that car scene, where he really contemplates his life and his friendship to her as well as his wanderlust. I would rather this show not sink into a rut and just become a repetitive, Supernatural-kind of affair where they just copy/paste it without letting him evolve as a character. This problem isn’t seen in Neagley’s show. At first, she starts out her usual self—confident, snarky, badass—and then the wild ride of solving the Echo Canyon case causes her to find out she does have repressed traumatic memories that are the real origin of her haphephobia, and the emotional journey she goes on is so heartbreaking, but well-written and even better acted. Neagley’s show nails its emotional beats without ever making it feel sappy or stupid. It deals with trauma in a way that I frankly have to compliment for how layered it is. There is so much to unpack about her and her father Calvin, but we’ll get to that shortly.
Now then, I will say that Neagley and Reacher do share one trait that needs improvement: in the Tropes world, there is a trope called the Idiot Ball. The Idiot Ball is when a normally intelligent or competent character who has demonstrated those traits to us enough that we know they have them then just “picks up” the Idiot Ball and holds it so that the writers can force whatever they need to happen, and then the character puts the Idiot Ball back down and proceeds as their normal intelligent or competent self like nothing happened. It’s routinely something that is done when the writers’ room is feeling lazy or it’s done if there was some kind of complication that changed a scene and the writers had to slap some lame thing together for conflict. Reacher does this at least once per season, and it drives me crazy. I get it. You guys made this man way too badass. It’s hard to write smart, effective badasses, but I beg of you—please stop making Reacher pick the ball up once per season to do a really idiotic thing just because you were too lazy. Last season, it was him fucking Lila Hoth when he had no reason to trust her after she lied to his face and also, the rest of the case itself implicated her yet he just ignored that somehow and didn’t figure out she was evil until the last second. This same man wouldn’t believe his own unit members were dirty two seasons ago, so that is 100% Idiot Ball. For Neagley, it was when they had her recognize that the assassins broke into her place, killed her boss, and then cleaned it up, and yet she inexplicably eats the food still there when she knows Echo Canyon wants her dead. If they had dosed it with poison instead of the trauma drug, guess what? Neagley’s dead and there’s no show. There was no reason for that to be the lazy way she ingested the drug. She had no idea what they looked like; you could easily have her getting coffee and one of them slips it in there when she’s not looking. I can think of 10,000 ways to get Neagley to ingest the trauma drug other than that Idiot Ball mess we saw. This problem doesn’t ruin the show, but I hate rolling my eyes at a show that I enjoy this much. Please, I beg you—stop making them do idiotic things just because you wrote them too smart and capable. You can find organic ways to cause conflict with smart characters, mmkay? Do better.
Let’s now get into the weeds of what really made me binge this show literally the day it came out.
The ensemble cast (that thankfully didn’t die; my GOD, y’all stressed me out) and it sounds like won’t rotate out is a great decision. I actually am fine that Reacher has a new cast every season for each book, but I admit that with its fourth season being a little lackluster, I was happy to see Neagley’s new team will be the same cast. (For the 4th season of Reacher, I enjoyed Det. Tamara Green a TON as well as Congressman Sampson and his wife, but the villains were telegraphed and I’m still angry that Tamara Green is based on a character called Theresa Lee and she and Reacher fuck in the book this season is based on; they changed it so he fucks Lila instead in the show. I am convinced the only reason why is that the actress playing Tamara is dark skinned and we know Hollywood has a fucking vendetta against handsome white leads with dark skinned black women. Everyone has been clowning that stupid “not my type” line as the writers trying to force us not to ship them when they had way more chemistry than Reacher and Lila did. Plus, the small town cop Jacob annoyed me half to death with how stupid and useless he was all season.) They chose a small, but tightly acted and well-written set of supporting characters, starting with the man who convinced me that another dude might actually be right for Neagley other than Reacher, Det. Hudson Riley.
Oh, Riley.
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
So I had no expectations at all going into this series. I assumed Neagley would stay touch averse, but then when they revealed her touch aversion and haphephobia is indeed from a repressed traumatic memory, I was fascinated by the idea that they will have her arc be about healing from her phobia. For that reason, I assumed they’d do like they did with Reacher and assign her an adorable white work husband, and that is Detective Hudson Riley.
And what a work husband.
They really did a lot right with this man. First off—and Greyston Holt, should you ever read this post or should we ever meet, please understand I say this with zero malice intended—they made sure to cast someone who is hot, but not TOO hot, and not hotter than Alan Ritchson (NOT THAT IT IS POSSIBLE; ALAN CALL ME SIR–*is dragged off the mic by a hook*) and I know that’s weird reason to be happy, but I love that? The reason why is I hate it when movies or shows have a secondary love interest for a character who already has someone perfectly suited for them that’s stupid levels of hot and they pick someone less hot to be the second love interest, yet expect me to just automatically ship it. My mom once made me laugh about the movie San Andreas being unbelievable, not because of the earthquakes or natural disasters, but because no woman in their right mind would’ve divorced The Rock (now, mind you, The Rock BEFORE he turned out to be The Turd, so I agreed with that statement). I hate it when they give you a perfect love interest for a lead, then toss some other guy in there like we’d ever care about him, and Neagley didn’t do that with Hudson Riley. This isn’t the Hunger Games where we all know that Katniss is gonna end up with Peeta, but they cast Liam Hemsworth as Gale and he’s so fucking hot we kept subconsciously wanting him to get with Katniss (or at least me and Honest Trailers did, LOL). It’s finally a show in which the hotter guy is just as good a choice as the less hot guy, but please believe, this is not to say Holt’s not fine as hell. That’s one good lookin’ Canuck, but I note here that the casting was the first thing I liked about Riley.
And then he opened his mouth and really made me like him a lot.
First off, I LOVED Riley calling Neagley out on her shit. You don’t get to complain about his Daddy issues when you’re not all the way together with the haphephobia and with your buried trauma. I loved that he called her out, but I love more that he later apologized. He was right to call her out, but he also did it in a rather insensitive way, and it’s nice to see a man that can admit when he’s fucked up. It instantly made me take notice of him as a person; you can tell a lot about someone who apologizes too much or too little, so for a straight cop to be able to openly say he was sorry to her more than once? Yes. Instant feather in my cap. That instantly made me like Hudson Riley as a person.
And then his relationship parallels the one with her and Reacher, but in a good way, and without feeling too similar nor too soon.
Like I said above, I had already assumed they’d assign her a cute white guy partner, but I had assumed that it would go the way of something like Elementary, where all seven seasons, Watson and Holmes remain platonic with obvious Ship Teases where necessary, but they stuck to their guns. Reacher didn’t hit the gas too fast, which is easy to do in a show of this nature. Instead, Riley and Neagley’s relationship is a bit like an enemies to lovers or a rom-com, starting off cold and hostile, then slowly bonding over the course of solving the case and becoming friends and partners. I genuinely felt it when Riley said, “someone comes at you; they come at me” and I genuinely felt it when he was worried about her and asked her to keep him in the loop better and I genuinely felt it when he said, “I don’t want anything bad to happen to you; I like you, even when you’re not always that nice…like right now.” Not only does he get what she’s about, he fucking respects it. It sent me over the moon. I do call the show out on the contrived coincidence that he grew up with a girl that also had haphephobia that he was romantically with, but the rest? Hudson Riley, you pull up a chair and you sit comfortably at this damn table, sir. I have to say he won me over so much by just being so patient and having very little toxicity going for him despite being a Chicago cop with a criminal family. I didn’t think I’d like him as much as I wound up liking him, and it’s due to the great writing and even better acting.
I also liked that Riley asks for a kiss, but isn’t upset or hurt when she declines gently. Instead, he looks forward to where things might lead someday. Riley’s patience with Neagley is what sold me on him so quickly, and I don’t mean in a gross way like men should just be handed a participation trophy for the bare minimum. No, no, I mean how many times he checks on her mental health during the show, making it clear he’s a sounding board and someone who is safe to be around. Neagley needs that with her isolated lifestyle and I am so glad that he seems to really want to help her understand her complicated new feelings and I look forward to if they touch at some point. Like Reacher, I’d be elated to see Neagley kiss him, but it’s okay if we take this shit extra slow because of the circumstances. Just know that he is by far the best part of the show aside from the emotional aspects handling trauma and the Reagley/Neacher scenes. Kudos, Riley. I dig ya.
Aside from Riley, though, the show’s roster is filled out with Renee and Keno. Renee is a secretary at York Investigations where Neagley worked and Keno is a runaway scam artist that agrees to help them infiltrate Echo Canyon and get evidence to convict and shut them down. I really found myself happy with how they’re written and acted, going from total strangers to Renee being genuinely worried about Keno and wanting to keep him safe during his dangerous mission. She rightfully calls Neagley and Riley out for being insensitive insisting he stay to gather the evidence; that’s the right call to show their flaws and show one of her strengths. I was delighted to learn that she has a lost brother as her character motivation and I look forward finding out if she ever finds him. Keno absolutely grew on me. I assumed he’d just be a nuisance at first, but then he commits to solving the case, even at the risk of himself, and I truly thought it was a great bit of writing. I liked them both and look forward to seeing how the rest of their stories unfold.
The antagonists are slimy, and I commend the show for hiring our own Dewey Crowe as Lawrence Cole (Side note: if you love Reacher, you’ll likely enjoy the hell out of the first four seasons of FX’s Justified. Just, uh, stop at the end of season four and you’ll thank me later for that advice. If you feel you must keep going, then skip ahead to Justified: City Primeval. Do NOT sit through Justified seasons 5 & 6 or you’ll regret it. The only thing you need from season 5 is “the twenty-one foot rule” scene and that’s it.) What a slimeball. All four of our antagonists were utter slime and you cheered when they got their fucking comeuppance after sending dozens of innocent people to their deaths. I enjoyed the hell out of the action and love that they found the most disgusting, hateful villains for Neagley and her team to take down. You truly want them to get what’s coming to them by the end.
Now then, we’ll touch on Neagley’s traumatic repressed memories and the scenes with her father, Calvin.
Hoo boy.
I cried. A lot. Wow, did they do her scenes unpacking the trauma well. What’s so hurtful is seeing her father refuse to admit the truth and fly into gaslighting her. Sadly, this is the most common M.O. when boomer parents are confronted by their Gen X or millennial kids or even their Gen Z/alpha grandkids. The older generation thinks that trauma should just be forgotten and buried and that we are to leave the past behind without holding them accountable, and the newer generations don’t agree; in fact, we violently disagree. Burying trauma doesn’t make the symptoms stop. It doesn’t do anything but hold together a very superficial, fake peace and allow people who have never been held accountable to keep behaving in the same destructive ways they always have, and to see this show call that out is beautiful. It’s very tempting for them to deny that boomers fly right to gaslighting and denial when confronted by their own children, but they show it here and it’s very important to see it. Why? Because they don’t just paint it as a black and white issue. Now, granted, they don’t tell us (in this season, anyway; leaving it open in case a future one does) why the pedophile that abused Tommy was never arrested, but he insists they found the evidence in his home and chose to execute him when it was apparent Neagley would be his next victim. The entire traumatic memory is still given enough writing to make it land. I can easily see a man who had already lost his wife just going off the deep end when his baby girl was targeted by a known pedophile, and Calvin was unable to keep Tommy safe. I like them taking Calvin to task for the gaslighting and the denial and the trauma, but still made him a sympathetic character at the same time, not a demonic father like poor Hudson Riley has to deal with. They handle this entire subplot with respect, and as someone with a traumatic background, I appreciated the living shit out of seeing how realistic it was for Calvin to deny it all until the guilt was too much and he left Neagley a dying letter confessing it all. He still allowed her a measure of peace after he died, and that too is a complicated grey area that I like for this show.
I also had always assumed that Neagley was touch averse naturally; finding out she feels lonely and even notices she may want Riley to touch her someday was surprising, but not unwelcome. I know there will be a section of people disappointed she won’t stay touch averse, but I also didn’t realize that she had haphephobia rather than just a touch aversion. Phobias aren’t always a result of trauma, but they often are, so it was great they answered the question and then didn’t imply that she is being “fixed” because something is broken; instead, she found out something she thought was a natural part of herself was caused by trauma, so she’d like to get healthy and stop being lonely. Adding that she is lonely is what made the difference. If they hadn’t done it, then it’d feel like they were “fixing” her and I also am so glad Reacher reacted with kindness and humor and love; he could’ve blown the moment by asking questions or making an insensitive joke, but he nails it.
What I want for this show moving forward is just expanding and embellishing on the things it’s already been writing about in Reacher season four and Neagley’s first season—digging into who she is and what she wants, and then filling in the same with her new tiny team. I pray to God they are written and acted just as well in season two and I pray none of the usual fucking politics about a show with a WOC hurt them at any point. (And God forbid, I hope Death stays the fuck away from EVERYONE INVOLVED after the shit with Hayden, Tim, and Dolly.) I really hope they listen to our feedback and make sure the show is written well and everyone’s arcs are fairly distributed. I can’t wait to see what her next case is and I pray we accumulate more fans as the show continues.
And now, I get to get on my soapbox for a second.
AHEM.
Fuck the Reacher Tumblr fandom for all its support of his show, but then it’s goddamn CRICKETS when it’s time for Neagley.
And I mean it.
Fuck. You. All.
Mmkay, FINE, I’ll elaborate: Not all of you on the entire site–just this specific section of the fandom that is so quick to make a .gif of Reacher shirtless or naked that they can get that .gif generated inside of ONE HOUR after a new episode has premiered, and yet we’re now almost three weeks away from Neagley’s premiere, and I see zero .gifs of this show on Tumblr. I had to go to Tenor directly just to find them. I’m livid, but not the least bit surprised. After all, these are the same pricks that let Captain America: Brave New World flop for superficial fuckass reasons, but yet nobody had a bad word to say about Thunderbolts under-performing at the box office with the same mixed reviews. I have long been used to the diet racists on Tumblr, and I am calling them ALL out right now. This is horseshit. You squawk all day long about wanting more content for people of color and more content for autistic and aro/ace/ representation. They GIFT WRAP a show to you that is about a likely autistic touch averse biracial black woman with haphephobia who is a life companion/platonic soulmate to a handsome white autistic character YOU ALREADY LOVE…and your reaction is utter fucking silence?
Go to hell and take your hypocrisy with you.
I’m not saying every Reacher Tumblr fan will instantly love Neagley. It’s a different show. No. I’m saying that it’s ridiculous you motherfuckers can .gif Alan’s beautiful Cake (TM) in ONE HOUR and THREE WEEKS LATER, I have to go to goddamn Tenor just to find a single .gif of Neagley. You can all fuck off and stop wheedling in the tags about how you want this representation. You were handed this representation on a silver fucking platter and you deliberately chose not to watch it or even give it a chance. I’m tired of listening to this shit and I’m going to go over here with the neurotypicals to hang out and geek about the show since you fuckers can’t be bothered. I ain’t taking it back. Tumblr, you can kiss my black ass for abandoning Neagley.
Quote me on it.
*steps off soapbox and tucks it away*
So here’s to you, Neagley. It’s been ages since I have felt so seen, and to have Neagley admired by no less than two hunky white dudes that think she’s pure sunshine just makes it even better. I hope there are nothing but good things in her future, and Reacher’s too, and I’m so glad everyone put their heart and soul into this first season to really make it shine.
Kick ass, girl. See you in the funny papers.
A proud fangirl,
Kyoko