The Spy Franchise That Inspired ‘Reacher’ Will Officially Not Return in 2026

Published Oct 28, 2026, 8:00 PM EDT

Adam Blevins began working in the entertainment industry in 2022 as a Staff Writer for Agents of Fandom, where he progressed to Senior Editor and interviewed talent from Marvel Studios, House of the Dragon, and Planet of the Apes. He joined Collider as a News Author in April 2024, was promoted to a Senior position in December 2024, and has written over 3,000 articles for the site, including exclusives relating to Avengers: Doomsday, The Penguin, Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, and more. He primarily writes about the latest box office numbers and the hottest movies and TV shows on streaming, while also covering superhero and sci-fi news. He has completed a set visit for The Chosen and even has several months of experience writing Gaming Features at ScreenRant. You can find him on X, LinkedIn, and Muckrack.

Apple TV has had plenty of popular shows blossom in the last few years, but none have the same output level as Slow Horses, the hit spy thriller show starring Gary Oldman and Jack Lowden. The first season of Slow Horses began streaming in 2022, and later that same year, the series returned for Season 2. Only one new season was released in 2023 and 2024 — which is still a more impressive turnaround time than most shows in the modern streaming era — but there was also a new season last year and this year, with Seasons 7 and 8 expected to be released in 2027 and 2028. Slow Horses has become so popular in the last few years that it’s forced other platforms like Netflix to settle on shows such as Black Doves as a sort of replacement for the series.

Meanwhile on Peacock, the show closest to scratching the Slow Horses itch is The Day of the Jackal, which aired its first season near the end of 2024. The Day of the Jackal is based on the novel of the same name by Frederick Forsyth, whose writings also helped inspire another iconic spy/action book series, Reacher, which was adapted into a series on Prime Video starring Alan Ritchson. Peacock wasted no time renewing *The Day of the Jackal *for Season 2, and while there was optimism at one point that the show would return before the end of the year, this is confirmed to no longer be the case. Peacock has explicitly confirmed that The Day of the Jackal Season 2 won’t return until 2027, meaning there will be a full two-year gap between seasons.

Four action series. One of them is built around exactly the way you handle pressure, people, and a room that has just gone very quiet. Here is where you would survive the trilogy, and probably headline it.

You are precision with a grudge. You don’t posture, you don’t escalate, and you don’t warn anybody twice. That is exactly why the people who know you are so careful never to be the reason you start.

You understand the thing the whole franchise is secretly about: the cars are spectacular, but the crew is the point. You collect people, you keep them, and you’d drive through a building for any one of them.

You over-prepare and then take the dangerous part yourself anyway. It looks like control, but it’s really responsibility. You have never worked out how to ask somebody else to carry the risk.

You are not the most trained person in the building, the best equipped, or the one anybody would have picked. You are simply the one still standing at the end, which turns out to be the only qualification that matters.

window.arrayOfGalleries[“article-gallery-1-156610532”] = ’“<div class=“w-gallery-carousel”><section id=“main-carousel-1-156610532” class=“splide splide-gallery” data-gallery-expanded-id=“main-expanable-carousel-1-156610532” data-gallery-expanded-thumbnail-id=“expanded-gallery-thumbnails-1-156610532” ><button class=“expand icon i-expand” type=“button”></button><div class=“splide__track”><ul class=“splide__list” style=“—gallery-aspect-sm: 2 / 1; —gallery-aspect-md: 2 / 1; —gallery-aspect-lg: 2 / 1;” ><li class=“splide__slide gallery-main-img”>