At one point, Jay Baruchel was set to join Season 4 of Reacher, which ironically premieres on the 2026 TV schedule very soon. However, he had to drop out. Now, as Season 5 of the action series kicks into high gear, he’s joined the cast (again), and I’m thrilled about it.
Jay Baruchel Is Joining Reacher Season 5
As we get ready to watch Season 4 of Reacher with an Amazon Prime subscription, Alan Ritchson and co. are hard at work on Season 5. Production on the book-to-screen adaptation began about a week ago, and now more casting news has been released.
Specifically, Jay Baruchel is set to join the ensemble, and he will play Chief Buck Bauer in the next installment of the show. Alongside him, Kevin Durand, Amanda Ip and Ciara Bravo have also joined the cast, creating a very fun crew for Reacher’s next adventure.
That next adventure will be based on Lee Child’s book Make Me. This novel follows Reacher as he stops in a mysterious town and works with a private investigator to find someone. As they uncover information, they realize there’s quite the criminal conspiracy to deal with.
Outside of names, no further details were provided about the characters the new cast will be playing in the show. Based on the information about the book, though, I cannot wait to learn more about them and the roles they play in Reacher’s story.
However, this news also has me thinking about what could have been…
Reacher Season 4 Was Actually Supposed To Feature Jay Baruchel
Originally, Baruchel was supposed play small-town policeman Jacob Merrick in Season 4 of Reacher. Considering Alan Ritchson’s character tends to work closely with someone like this, I imagine he would have played a large part in the upcoming episodes.
However, the How to Train Your Dragon star was “forced” to exit the series, according to Deadline, over a personal matter. He was then replaced by Christopher Rodriguez-Marquette, and on August 12, we’ll get to see him sharing the screen with Ritchson in the fourth season of Reacher.
At the time, I was admittedly disappointed to hear Baruchel had to leave. While I get why and I’m looking forward to seeing Rodriguez-Marquette, I was stoked to potentially see the This Is the End actor in this show. I feel like he and Ritchson would have a very entertaining chemistry and would juxtapose each other nicely.
So, I’m over the moon that Jay Baruchel was able to return to Reacher, and hopefully he'll stick around this time.
Considering how Amazon is cranking out shows, and the fact that Season 5 of Reacher is already in production, hopefully we’ll get to see Jay Baruchel and Alan Ritchson sharing the screen sooner rather than later. However, thankfully, we have a set of episodes that Ritchson has called “the best season [they’ve] ever made by a long shot” to hold us over, as Season 4 of Reacher begins airing on August 12.
