'Reacher' Season 4 Episode 8 Theories: Did Elspeth Have John Killed?

[Spoiler Alert] Reacher Season 4 episode 7 ended with John sacrificing his life to keep Waberi from detonating the bomb at the fundraiser and killing all the people over there with the chemical WMD. How did the John learn about this suicide bomber? So, earlier in the episode, Springfield saved Reacher and Tamara from being assassinated by Ahlquist’s mercenaries. Then the three of them got a hold of Ahlquist and forced him to reveal everything he knew about the photograph in the drive. Ahlquist said that CIA operative Foster had gotten the US government to green light a project called Operation Mongoose which involved the creation of the worst chemical WMDs and then reverse-engineering that compound to make antidotes. Around that time, Putra got in touch with the US government, asking them to send their army to train his men. In exchange for that training, Putra allowed the USA to work on Operation Mongoose in the jungles of Indonesia. Initially, with the exception of Ahlquist and Nolan, nobody knew that Operation Mongoose was about creating the antidote for chemical WMDs. When Putra found out the truth, he used it on his dissidents. In retaliation, John led a squad and finished off Putra and his soldiers. Amisha and Lila survived and began looking for that chemical WMD. When the photo of Putra, John, and Nolan, with Ahlquist and the formula in the background, was digitized, Lila and Amisha blackmailed Anna into handing it to them via a flash drive. Reacher ended up becoming a huge hurdle in that endeavor, but they eventually got the drive and decided to not only auction off that photo (which had the formula for the chemical WMD in it) but also do a live demo of the chemical WMD. When Reacher, Tamara, and Jacob learnt about this, they alerted John. John realized that his fundraiser party was the target and the bomber was Waberi. Reacher’s appearance at that party startled Waberi and he was about to trigger the bomb, but John tackled Waberi into the Delaware River, thereby causing the bomb to go off underwater. After all that, what will happen in the finale of Reacher Season 4? Allow me to speculate.

So, let’s start with the last thing that we see in the penultimate episode of Reacher Season 4: John and Waberi diving into the river and the bomb going off underwater. Reacher watched the incident with a shocked expression on his face, but it wasn’t revealed if John had died or not. Since the bomb was strapped to Waberi’s body, it’s safe to assume that Waberi is pretty dead. But until the final episode Season 4 confirms it, we have to consider the possibility that John is alive because the golden rule of entertainment is that you shouldn’t accept that a character has died until you have seen their dead body. Now, either of the possibilities lead to a bunch of scenarios. Let’s say that John is alive. Maybe he chucked Waberi into the water while he himself fell somewhere outside the bomb’s blast radius, and that’s why he’s relatively unharmed. What does that mean for him? Well, he is a presidential candidate who has neutralized a terrorist threat. That’s going to do wonders for his campaign and it’ll surely put him in the White House. If you want to be optimistic, you can say that John is a genuine hero and he has prevented a chemical WMD attack, and that’s why he is worthy of being the “President of the free world.” If you are a pessimist like me, you will come to the conclusion that John orchestrated the whole thing to increase his chances of becoming the president. That leads to the question: Why would John risk exposing himself and a bunch of people to a chemical WMD just to become the president? The answer to that question is another question: Did Waberi’s bomb have any of that chemical WMD at all or was it just a regular suicide bomb? I think it’s the latter and all those people at the fundraiser were never in any actual danger. I will go one step further and say that the actual detonator to Waberi’s bomb was actually in John’s hands and he was the one who detonated it once he had put some distance between himself and Waberi. So, how do Lila and Amisha factor into all this? Maybe they are working with John.

Look, John has been painting himself as a goody-two-shoes who was a part of Operation Mongoose and yet he didn’t know anything about the chemical WMD. Isn’t that preposterous? What if John is the one who has employed Lila and Amisha to pose as terrorists threatening to set off a chemical WMD so as to boost John’s chances of becoming the next president? Maybe they had made a deal after Putra’s death or maybe they got in touch with one another right before John began his presidential campaign. But how does this whole endeavor actually benefit Lila and Amisha? If John becomes the president, he can give them all the wealth, weapons, and tech they need to be at the top of the game when it comes to mercenary work. Maybe the bomb attack was always meant to be a hoax so as to boost the prices of the contents of the drive before it goes on sale on the dark web. The bomb attack will help John, and selling off the drive on the dark web will help Lila and Amisha earn a lot of money, which they can use for whatever nefarious missions they want to go on. A win-win for all parties involved. In case any of this turns out to be true, Reacher will have an immensely hard time proving that John is unworthy of being the President of the United States of America. Reacher, Tamara, and Jacob are wanted people. So, on the one hand, the trio has to prove their own innocence, and on the other hand, they have to convince the people of the country that John is a fiend. At this point, either of those tasks seem impossible, but I’m sure Reacher will find a way. That brings us to the other set of possibilities that stem from the fact that John is indeed dead and the chemical WMD didn’t become airborne and was instead mixed with the water. Who could have orchestrated that? My money is on Elspeth. There’s something about her demeanor, her decision to approach Reacher before John could, and the way she has responded to every revelation, that makes me think that there’s more to Elspeth than meets the eye.

If I assume that Elspeth is the one pulling all the strings, then there’s a good chance that John is dead because he wouldn’t be of much use to her alive. She was counting on the fact that John would sacrifice himself if there was a bomb threat. But why would she risk getting killed with the chemical WMD? At the cost of sounding repetitive, maybe Waberi’s bomb never had the chemical WMD. Maybe it was just to bait John into sacrificing himself. It’s possible that Elspeth has made an arrangement with Lila and Amisha to sell the formula after checking its effectiveness in the lab, which is something that they have done already; they don’t need to cause a mass casualty event to do so. However, why would Elspeth do all this? To become the next president of the USA, of course. If John is dead, she will get all the sympathy votes and make her way into the White House. After that, she can use her power and resources to keep Lila and Amisha on her payroll (in case the money they’ll get from selling the chemical WMD and its formula isn’t enough) and use them to kill off any political dissidents. If that’s true, then Reacher and his friends will have to fight an uphill battle to prove that Elspeth is the villain, while proving that he and his friends are innocent. I mean, you can turn the people of the country against John by revealing his actions in Indonesia to the public. That said, Elspeth doesn’t seem to have a shady track record that Reacher and co. can use against her. The only way to prove that Elspeth is the antagonist of this whole story is if Reacher and co. manage to get a confession out of Lila and Amisha, or if they can uncover call records, texts, or video recordings of Elspeth’s meetings with Lila and Amisha. Why would Lila and Amisha confess to being in cahoots with Elspeth? Well, you see, once someone is in danger of being crushed by Reacher’s bare arms, they will confess to all the crimes they have committed. Even if you have a death wish, once Reacher starts working on you, yeah, even if you are hardened mercs from Indonesia, you will buckle under the pressure.

Now, what if neither John nor Elspeth is involved in any kind of conspiracy with Lila and Amisha? What if John is truly dead? What if the bomb actually had chemical WMD in it? Well, in that case, the demo that will help boost the sale of the contents of the drive has been hampered. And Lila and Amisha will be looking to make another batch of the chemical WMD and detonate it somewhere else in Philly before the auction of the drive begins. In case they had made multiple batches in anticipation of the fact that Waberi might fail, then getting another suicide bomber to partake in the demo probably won’t be a major issue. I still don’t understand why they had to bring someone from Djibouti to carry out that task. If it’s imperative for them to fly in someone to kill themselves for a demo, then yeah, they have to postpone the auction and prepare for the demo again. Whatever the case maybe, Reacher and co. have to find Amisha and Lila before they try to use the chemical WMD again. We know that Lila, Amisha, and the rest of their squad are working out of some kind of a warehouse. If they don’t clean house after that failed suicide bombing, maybe Reacher and co. will be able to locate that warehouse and arrest them. I know that that sounds a little too straightforward but maybe after everything that the characters have been through, they deserve this straightforward conclusion. Hopefully, after Lila and Amisha have been apprehended, they will confess to all the crimes they have committed, thereby proving that Reacher, Tamara, and Jacob are innocent. Once they have proven their innocence, I hope they get to go after the CIA–Foster’s department, to be specific–and hold them accountable for jeopardizing their country for a mission they didn’t even complete. After that, Jacob and Tamara can resume their job while Reacher can go back to being the Wandering Titan. Anyway, those are my theories for the finale of Reacher Season 4. If you have any opinions on the same, feel free to share them in the comments section below.