The Terminal List vs Reacher: fans say Chris Pratt's thriller beats Prime's action king in one department
Prime Video has two shows about very large men solving problems violently. One of them gets the reviews. The other gets something critics can't give it.
The Terminal List finally returned on October 21, 2026, four years after its first season, with all eight episodes dropping at once. That puts Chris Pratt's Navy SEAL thriller up against the other big guy on Prime Video: Alan Ritchson's Reacher, which wrapped its fourth season in September and handed off to its spinoff, Neagley.
On most measures, Reacher wins easily: it has four seasons to Pratt's two, a spinoff and the critics. But there's one category where Pratt's show has been beating Ritchson's since 2022, and the season 2 numbers say it isn't letting go.
The critics' scorecard
On critics, it isn't a contest. Reacher holds a 95% series average on Rotten Tomatoes, and no season has dipped below 92%. Season 4, which adapts Lee Child's Gone Tomorrow, debuted at 100% on nine reviews before settling at 92%.
The Terminal List has never had that kind of week. Season 1 opened in July 2022 at 42% on Rotten Tomatoes and 40 on Metacritic. Season 2, based on Jack Carr's novel True Believer, is doing better at 60%, per Rotten Tomatoes, though some critics are still unconvinced.
"Generic and simplistic in every respect, it's a by-the-books dadcore effort."
— Nick Schager, The Daily Beast, on season 2
Not every review is that rough. FandomWire's M.N. Miller gave season 2 a 7 out of 10 and wrote that Pratt "impresses with a subdued, vulnerable performance," per CinemaBlend's roundup.
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The department where Pratt wins
The department is the audience score, and it's not close. Here's how the two shows look on Rotten Tomatoes' Popcornmeter:
- The Terminal List: 92% across the series. Season 1 sits at 94% from more than 5,000 ratings, and season 2 opened at 86%.
- Reacher: 77% across the series, from more than 5,000 ratings.
Put the two scorecards together and the shows are mirror images. Reacher's critics like it 18 points more than its viewers do, and The Terminal List's viewers like it 41 points more than its critics do. Part of the gap is how each show sells itself. Reacher is a well-made action show, and Amazon pitches The Terminal List as something closer to a tribute.
"This season is a love letter to the Special Operations community."
— Chris Pratt, via Amazon
Amazon says the franchise, including 2025's prequel The Terminal List: Dark Wolf with Taylor Kitsch, has reached more than 100 million viewers worldwide.
Season 2 picks up the fight
The new season sends James Reece from Moscow to Langley. The CIA finds him in hiding and offers a presidential pardon if he helps stop a growing terrorist threat, per The Week. Constance Wu and Luke Hemsworth are back, and Tom Hopper and Dar Salim carry their Dark Wolf characters over, alongside newcomers Costa Ronin and Olga Kurylenko.
Reacher isn't going anywhere either. Season 5 was set to start production in Toronto this summer, so Prime's two heavyweights will keep trading slots. Critics have made their pick. The audience score says viewers would like a rematch.
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