Reacher: What really drove Roscoe away, and why her return feels unlikely

Prime Video’s Reacher premiered in 2022 and became one of its biggest shows with back-to-back hit seasons. The audience found Alan Ritchson's portrayal of the buffed-up former soldier Jack Reacher accurate with Lee Child’s books.

While Reacher was loved, so were the female counterparts in each season. One of those was seen in Season 1. While solving the counterfeit money case and tracking down the murderer of his brother, Jack Reacher meets the cops Oscar Finlay and Roscoe Conklin, who turn out to be his allies.

Working together on the case brings Reacher closer to the tough cop Roscoe, and fans hoped to see her in future seasons, too. Unfortunately, Roscoe never showed up again. This is actually due to Lee Child’s books, which followed the trend of introducing a new female counterpart of Reacher in every book, as seen in Seasons 2 and 3 of Reacher. With due creative liberties, the show might make Roscoe return in Reacher’s life. It is a situation that hasn’t arisen yet, as the past seasons did not need a Roscoe and Reacher reunion.

More on this in our story.

Roscoe’s return seems impossible due to the different storylines carried in every season of Reacher

Reacher meets Willa Fitzgerald’s Roscoe Conklin in Margrave in Season 1, where, with Finlay, they solve the counterfeiting syndicate, which involves several government officials and even police officers. While solving the case, they also protect each other amid life-threatening situations. We also saw how Roscoe and Reacher’s chemistry brought them together, but also how independent and fierce the Sergeant was when she got upset when Reacher tried to shield her from an attack.

Time and again, Roscoe proved that she is more than capable of taking care of herself, which might be one of the reasons why Reacher got attracted to her. Their chemistry and their relationship made the fans hope for Roscoe’s return. Furthermore, her giving him her phone number written on a Clark bar wrapper at the end of Reacher Season 1 also gave the audience hope that Reacher might someday call Roscoe.

However, in Season 2, Reacher and Karla Dixon’s relationship made any hope of Roscoe’s return a lost cause. Susan Duffy’s introduction in Season 3 made it clear that the Prime Video series was going to follow the trend with the female leads as Lee Child did in his books.

In a February 2025 interview with Forbes, Lee Child talked about the different female leads and how even he gets sad when he has to leave that character in that book and move on to the next. He said:

"There is a different woman in every book and I'm hopelessly in love with them and I'm bitterly disappointed when the book finishes and I have to leave them."

Be it Roscoe, Dixon, or Duffy, these women were independent and had their goals, which made them unfit for Reacher’s nomadic life, as none of them would follow him on his path. While Reacher had to move on after solving his brother’s murder, Roscoe wouldn’t have left her town, which needed to be rebuilt after the revelation of the syndicate of corruption in the area.

Therefore, they had to part ways as both of them had clear goals ahead, and Roscoe is too strong a woman to be pining over a relationship that lasted for a short time. Although in Season 2, Finlay’s appearance was a surprise for the fans of the show as he wasn’t supposed to be back after the season, and gave hope to the viewers that, like him, Roscoa might also show up in some episode. However, without a relevant plotline for the beloved character’s return, it seems unlikely that we will see Roscoe again.

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Also Read: Reacher spin-off centered on Neagley highlights a worrying pattern for the Prime Video series

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