Warning: Contains spoilers for Reacher season 1.
Just like previous adaptations, Amazon’s new Reacher TV series based on the Jack Reacher novels had a cameo of author Lee Child. Lee Child (the pen name for James Dover Grant) is a British author and is the man behind the more than two dozen Jack Reacher novels and many supporting short stories. It is not uncommon for authors to have a small cameo appearance when their works are adapted for screen, and Child follows in the footsteps of well-known writers prone to making cameo appearances such as Stan Lee, Terry Pratchett, and Stephen King.
Amazon’s Reacher season 1 adapts Lee Child’s very first novel, Killing Floor, which was first published in 1997 and won a string of awards. The first-person narrative introduces Jack Reacher for the first time as he enters the fictional town of Margrave, Georgia, and is promptly arrested for a murder that he couldn’t possibly have committed. Some of Lee Child’s books that were published later in the series served as prequels to Killing Floor, providing additional insight into Jack Reacher’s character and history, but this was the first novel to be published that featured Jack Reacher.
It was revealed early on that Lee Child would appear for a cameo alongside Alan Ritchson’s portrayal of Jack Reacher, just as he had done for the Tom Cruise movies that preceded it. For fans of the books eager to see Lee Child’s Reacher cameo, they have to wait until the final moments of the season. The final scenes of the show see Reacher say farewell to Finlay (Malcolm Goodwin) in the diner where he was first arrested before he buries his medal and gets closure for Joe’s death and sets out on the road again. As Reacher enters the diner to see Finlay, a man drops his paper on the table and walks out, pushing past Reacher and mumbling “excuse me,” prompting Reacher to give the man a strange look. The man is Lee Child; it's a fun moment to see the fictional Reacher come face to face with his creator.
The Lee Child cameo in Amazon's Reacher season 1 is exceedingly brief and not telegraphed in the same way as, for example, the Stan Lee MCU cameos. However, this fits with the trend of his past cameos in the Jack Reacher movies. In Jack Reacher (2012), based on the 2005 novel One Shot, Tom Cruise’s Reacher has spent a night in jail and Lee Child cameos as the police officer releasing him and giving him a skeptical look across his desk. Similarly, in Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016), Lee Child’s cameo is as a TSA officer who has to check Reacher’s through for a flight when he is using a fake ID, once again giving him a skeptical look.
The Tom Cruise Jack Reacher movies both adapted books from later in the series and their audience reception varied. The movies were not truly faithful to the original books and many fans were stuck on the casting of Tom Cruise as a six-foot-five ex-military character. While Lee Child had a cameo in all of the adaptations, he had an additional role in the Reacher TV series, also serving as an executive producer. Lee Child always defended Tom Cruise’s casting; however, his more involved role in Alan Ritchson’s portrayal may help to explain why Amazon’s Reacher succeeds as a faithful adaptation of Killing Floor with the changes all serving to flesh out characters and plots that were limited by the first-person narration without losing the original tone.