Reacher Season 4's Big Twist Even Took Alan Ritchson By Surprise [Set Visit]

This article contains spoilers for "Reacher" Season 4, Episode 4, "Karambits and Pieces."

The fourth episode of "Reacher" Season 4 delivers a shocking twist that upends the entire first half of the season — so shocking, in fact, that it even caught Alan Ritchson off-guard when he read the script. As the actor told /Film during a set visit, "I was like, 'Well, what's left? What do we do for the other four episodes?'" Turns out, the writers just turned things up to 11.

"Reacher" Season 4 had to deal with a major problem caused by Season 3. In simple terms, the fights in Season 3 were so good that the writers and stunt coordinators had to go above and beyond to top their previous effort. Prior to Season 4's debut, Ritchson did promise that this would be the bloodiest season of "Reacher" yet, but it seems the writers are also using twists to help elevate the narrative.

When we first met Agnez Mo's Lila Hoth and Anngun's Amisha Hoth in the "Reacher" Season 4 premiere, they introduced themselves as an Indonesian mother and daughter looking for a former Delta Force commander-turned-Congressman named John Sampson (Marc Blucas). The pair claimed Sampson fathered Lila in the '90s before leaving Indonesia. 

Then, the show switched things up. In Episode 3, Lila admitted to being a journalist dedicated to bringing down Sampson for his role in training the brutal Indonesian general Putra, who captured and killed Amisha's husband when they were both students. Turns out, none of that was true. Episode 4 reveals Lila and Amisha to be the season's real villains. Viewers unfamiliar with the book on which this latest season is based will likely be shocked, especially since Ritchson was taken aback when reading the script even after having read the novel.

"Karambits and Pieces" ends with the reveal that both Lila and Amisha Hoth were the ones responsible for the horrific killing of both an online cam girl and Jacob Merrick's (Christopher Rodriguez-Marquette) nephew, Ben Merrick. In the final moments of the fourth installment, Lila and Amisha are confronted in their hotel by henchmen. Instead of cowering, the pair pull out their karambits — curved Indonesian knives that a forensic pathologist identified as the weapons used to kill the cam girl from Episode 2.

It seems this Indonesian duo are actually trained assassins capable of taking out a gang of hitmen. If you've read the bonkers book on which "Reacher" Season 4 is based, "Gone Tomorrow," you'll know this reveal comes much later in the story, which is why Ritchson was so surprised to see it at the end of Episode 4.

The star spoke about how the twist differentiates "Reacher" Season 4 from previous seasons. Recalling Season 1, he said, "There were mysteries and twists and reveals [...] then you find out right at the end what's really going on, and [this season], you find out like halfway through. It's all of a sudden it's like, 'Oh, whoa there it is, Episode 4. You're like, 'They're the bad guy.' It happened so suddenly." 

Turns out the writers had a pretty good answer to Ritchson's aforementioned question of what's left for them to do in the subsequent four episodes. As Ritchson put it, "It just keeps getting crazier. It's, like, so cool [...] it turns into something completely mad."

2009's "Gone Tomorrow" is a very post-9/11 book that involves Al Qaeda and United States interventions in the Middle East. Clearly, the "Reacher" writers have changed major aspects of the story for Season 4, but what's been surprising is how quickly they've worked their way through the basic plot points of Lee Child's original book.

After one episode of Season 4, we'd already met almost all the major characters and made it through about a third of "Gone Tomorrow" storyline. Now, Episode 4 has delivered one of the book's biggest twists by revealing Lila and Amisha Hoth as the villains. It's no wonder Alan Ritchson was wondering where the writers were going to go after this, seeing as they'd essentially reached the novel's climax by the end of the fourth installment.

All of which makes the latter half of "Reacher" Season 4 a very exciting prospect. What are the writers going to do to keep things propulsive in the absence of Lee Child's story as a guide? According to Ritchson, they've ramped things up to "completely mad" levels, which, considering the first half of Season 4 has already been fairly explosive, should mean we're in for a heck of a ride. We already know "Reacher" Season 4 took inspiration from Christopher Nolan and Steven Spielberg classics, so that will help, and Ritchson certainly seems excited. During his set visit comments, the actor also said, "I think this is, I'm so sure, I would bet my life that this is going to be, by whatever metric, by orders of magnitude, better than anything we've done." Time will tell, but we can't wait to see if he's right.