Minor spoilers for Reacher Season 4 are ahead. You can stream the show with an Amazon Prime subscription.
Thanks to Reacher (and other projects), Alan Ritchson has firmly established himself as an action star. The action sequences in the book-to-screen adaptation of Lee Child’s novels are next level, and that’s in great part thanks to the lead actor’s performance. To that point, the stars of Reacher Season 4 told me about the moment they realized they were really in the action with Ritchson, and…it involves a bowling ball.
In Season 3, we got the iconic Paulie vs. Reacher fight, and learning that it was “the most physically demanding thing” Olivier Richters and Ritchson did made me really realize just how intense the action in this series is. For the show’s new star, Anggun, who plays Amisha Hoth, she had that realization while filming a sequence for Season 4 that involved the show’s star hurling a bowling ball:
For me, he embodies Reacher. He's actually true to the book and probably even more. He's giving that je ne sais quoi to Reacher. And for me, the first action bit that we filmed was the bowling alley, and then seeing him in action grabbing that bowling ball, and then throwing it to the guy that was like, ‘Oh, we're really in this.’ It's really impressive.
This moment involving a bowling ball comes in Episode 3 of Season 4, when Lila and Amisha go to a bowling alley to meet with Reacher. They’re attacked by a group of guys (this happened before we knew Lila and Amisha were the villains), and yes, it did involve the titular character absolutely hurling a bowling ball at a man’s head while “Boogie Shoes” played. He also hit guys with a bowling pin and a trophy, FYI.
Anggun then emphasized that “to this day” watching Ritchson perform action is “impressive.” I have to say, I totally agree. However, there’s no doubt that seeing him chuck a bowling ball at someone (whether it was a real bowling ball or a prop bowling ball) is epic and a great way to realize the action star he is.
Speaking more generally about Ritchson’s skills as an action star, Agnez Mo, who plays Lila, told me:
He is just a strong dude. He's like a big, strong dude. And to see him – because obviously, like we're there, we have a big chunk of the fighting scenes, but nothing compared to what he does every day on set. And I heard that obviously Season 4 is the most, I guess, action-packed compared to other seasons. You know, we could only imagine. Like we were already tired doing crazy, amazing, few fight scenes, and you know, to think that he's doing all the scenes, and also, on top of that, the fighting scenes, and on top of that, remembering all the choreography.
Anggun also chimed in to say that Ritchson does “a lot of running” too. So, all around, he’s an action star who kind of does it all. I just think it’s amazing that it was a scene involving a bowling ball that served as one of the first moments this realization really sank in.
The action didn’t stop there for any of them; it was just the beginning. Now, to see how Reacher takes on the Hoths in the critically acclaimed fourth season of Reacher, you can catch new episodes on Amazon Prime as they drop every Wednesday on the 2026 TV schedule.
