‘Reacher’s Neagley Finally Steps Into the Spotlight

Now that Reacher is a certified hit, Prime Video is pumping up its action universe based on the books of Lee Child with a spinoff centered on the military vet’s unofficial second, Frances Neagley (Maria Sten).  And as viewers already know, the former Special Investigations Unit Sergeant and all-around badass can more than carry her weight…and her own show.

“[Showrunner Nick Santora] called Reacher a Silverback Gorilla, but then he said, ‘And Neagley is like the cute little kitten that crawls around on his shoulders,’” the undeniably commanding Sten recalled at the show’s first panel during San Diego Comic-Con in July. “And I think we’ve evolved from the kitten to the lion.”

Set in Chicago where she is now a private detective, the series opens with the startling El-platform death of one of Neagley’s very few loved ones, which sets off an investigation that will take her from the city streets to a rural commune riddled with controversy. But before she takes any action, we get an unexpectedly sweet passing of the torch as Neagley and Alan Ritchson‘s Reacher, fresh off working a kidnapping case together, share a day at a Cubs game, connecting in their patently guarded way over their different approaches to justice.

“The thing about Reacher is wherever he goes, trouble finds him,” Sten told the Comic-Con crowd. “He’s not looking for it; he keeps running into it. Neagley’s approach is the opposite. I think she sees the problem and decides she’s going to go fix it. That’s very much also what’s happening in this season. We come into it with the death of a childhood friend and she realizes there’s something fishy going on and she’s deciding to investigate it… That is very much her MO: Getting into people’s business if people are not doing what they should be doing.”

Helping her cause after Reacher hits the road for his next adventure is a pair of allies as unlikely as the monolith she normally runs with. First is Det. Hudson Riley (The Night Agent‘s Greyston Holt), a Chicago P.D. outsider who just “happens to come from family career criminals, as one does,” explained Holt. “He’s an honest, decent man with a lot of street smarts, but isn’t afraid to drop his gun [and] get a little scrappy and throw some blows.”

Second is Jasper Jones‘ Keno, a low-level hustler with a sad past and plenty of experience with local felons. “He’s a young kid, he gets the crap beaten out of him a lot and a lot of injustices dealt to him,” the impressive newcomer revealed. “But he doesn’t want to burn the world for it. He’s still aiming up, still trying to do the right thing.” In fact, it’s that earnest optimism (as well as his stoner chill) that Jones says makes Keno both a perfect criminal informant for Neagley and a loveably fraternal foil for Hudson. “I [see] him as a scrappy underdog with a heart of gold.”

Speaking of heart, something else that separates Neagley from Reacher is its willingness to go deeper into her family ties (Ritchson’s hero has no living kin) and the root of her haphephobia, a fear of being touched that has only been referenced in passing on Reacher.

“I read all the books that Neagley is in, and I very much informed my character based on Lee Child’s work, of course,” said Sten, who also credits “the work that Santora was doing on the page of the scripts” with helping her flesh out Neagley’s origins.

“I gave [Santora] a little backstory, and he tweaked it, and now we get to see that backstory,” she continued. “I think [this season] is about how different people experience and deal with trauma, and that that is, of course, why we are also diving into Neagley’s trauma and why she cannot touch people.”

“It is profound, what that [fear] does to a person and how that cuts them off from the world, I think in a lot of ways, because physical touch is such a big part of the human experience,” noted Sten. “And so of course something had to have happened to her for her to be that way. And that is what we are then answering, [about] her childhood and coming up through her teenage years in Chicago. I think the writers just did such an incredible job.”

Should the show take off — fans already love Sten’s take on the character and Child is set to release his first Neagley-centric novel, Zero Margin, in March of 2027 — they will hopefully have to keep up the good work for seasons to come.

Neagley, Series Premiere, Wednesday, September 16, Prime Video