Forget The Boys, Prime Video's New Shared Universe Is Taking Over Streaming

While The Boys was once Prime Video’s flagship franchise, one action thriller series has since comfortably outdone the superhero satire in terms of popularity. Although HBO’s fantasy mega hit Game of Thrones might have done a lot to push the boundaries of screen censorship, Prime Video’s The Boys proved that no cable network can compare to streaming services when it comes to jaw-dropping explicit content.

Even after years of Ryan Murphy’s FX anthology show American Horror Story tripping over itself to shock viewers, The Boys only needed a few minutes of screen time to set a new gold standard when it came to shocking gore and gross-out content. Throughout 2019’s The Boys season 1, the series featured a string of increasingly gruesome deaths that left viewers watching through their fingers, and the show’s reputation for transgressive moments only grew as its run continued.

Of course, since The Boys is based on comic book writer Garth Ennis’s infamously shocking series of the same name, viewers shouldn’t have been surprised to see this envelope-pushing content. Even still, the nastiest moments of Homelander’s reign of terror and Billy Butcher’s rampage of vengeance against corrupt super made The Boys and its spinoffs, Diabolical and Gen V, tough to watch at times. As such, viewers shouldn’t be shocked to learn that Reacher and its spinoff, Neagley, have overtaken the superhero satire as Prime Video’s true flagship franchise in 2026.

While the Bosch franchise was Prime Video’s first ambitious attempt to turn a series of bestselling books into a popular crime thriller series, the streaming service didn’t truly nail this formula until 2022’s Reacher. Based on the book series of the same name by British author Lee Child, Reacher stars Alan Ritchson as the titular hulking soldier of fortune.

A more muscular MacGyver, Reacher is a military veteran and wandering drifter who travels across America stumbling upon criminal gangs, corrupt cops, terrorists, and all manner of other villains. As mentally brilliant as he is absurdly physically strong, Reacher is a classic action hero who spends every novel in the series, and every season of the show, getting into life or death scrapes to stand up for the little guy.

Reacher season 1 was a true sleeper hit for Prime Video in 2022, becoming a global smash and a major critical success for the streaming service. The show’s popularity only grew throughout seasons 2 and 3, resulting in Reacher’s season 5 renewal arriving before season 4 even premiered in August 2026. Fortunately, Reacher season 4, based on Child’s 2009 novel Gone Tomorrow, proved just as popular as its predecessors among viewers and critics alike.

As if this weren’t enough, Reacher also received its first spinoff, Neagley, in September 2026. Focused on Maria Sten’s recurring supporting character, Neagley season 1 followed her attempts to get to the bottom of a former associate’s death under mysterious circumstances. Despite not quite recapturing the near-flawless critical reputation of Reacher, Neagley was still a big critical success in its own right, and was renewed for a second season.

Reacher & Neagley Were Both Streaming Hits For Amazon

While Prime Video’s James Patterson adaptation Cross is almost as critically adored as Reacher, the action thriller has not yet become as big a mainstream hit with viewers. Similarly, CBS’s Tracker, based on novelist Jeffrey Deaver’s book The Lying Game, hasn’t quite been able to replicate the massive worldwide success of Reacher despite its seemingly similar story and characters.

The breakout popularity of Reacher and subsequent critical and streaming success of Neagley proves there is something unique to this franchise that makes it work, offering viewers some of the most purely entertaining escapist thrills on streaming at the moment. Neagley’s second season renewal proves that Reacher’s popularity isn’t entirely beholden to Ritchson’s screen presence as the title character, and this is a more important detail than it may seem.

Although the aforementioned Bosch franchise was popular enough to spawn seven seasons, a three-season sequel series in Bosch: Legacy, and a two-season spinoff in Ballard, the show had a hard time moving beyond its original star, Titus Welliver. Thus, 12 years after Bosch’s 2014 debut, the upcoming prequel show Bosch: Start of Watch will be the first series in the franchise not to feature Welliver in a major role.

Neagley Having A Team Sets Up A Crossover With Reacher

Although Ritchson’s Reacher does appear onscreen in Neagley season 1, the fact that the original show’s first spinoff confidently told a new story centered on a new main character is already a promising development. Sten’s recurring role in Reacher seasons 1-3 meant that Neagley already felt like a major part of the show’s universe, but, as a series, Neagley didn’t have a source novel from Child to base its season 1 story on.

As such, the spinoff’s debut outing could have been a disaster thanks to the twin problems of Ritchson’s radically reduced screen time and the lack of Child’s source material. Instead, the success of Neagley proved that Reacher could become a thriller franchise to compete with major network TV crime thriller staples like the NCIS shows or the Law & Order franchise.

Since Neagley is based in one place and has a stable team, it would be easy for the spinoff's crew to join Reacher and help him out in a future season of Prime Video’s original show. This would make the franchise’s two shows feel even more interlinked, making Neagley essential viewing for anyone who wanted to be up-to-date on Reacher’s story.

Ironically, the simplicity of the Reacher franchise’s straightforward premise is a major part of what makes the show so potentially profitable as a franchise for Prime Video. Whether it was the spinoff Gen V or the upcoming prequel Vought Rising, The Boys was always a lore-heavy franchise that relied on viewers remembering dozens of major characters and their complex relationships.

In contrast, Reacher is essentially a procedural where each new season introduces the main character to a new setting, with new supporting characters. Compared to, for example, HBO’s sprawling Game of Thrones franchise, The Boys and its spinoffs, or Taylor Sheridan’s increasingly complex Yellowstone saga, Reacher and Neagley expect very little in the way of buy-in from new viewers, and the Prime Video shows have been handsomely rewarded as a result.