4 Action Series Are Dominating Amazon Prime’s Streaming Chart (& None Are Reacher)

Amazon Prime Video has been low-key building up its library with solid blocks of genre TV, including action series that keep viewers on the edge of their seats. In fact, action may soon be the biggest branding label for Amazon’s streaming service, considering that right now, as of writing this, there are no less than four different Prime Video action series that are taking over the streaming service’s charts. And what’s even wilder is the fact that Reacher, Amazon’s big breakout hit, isn’t even one of those shows!

Prime Video’s action series The Terminal List, its new prequel series The Terminal List: Dark Wolf, Butterfly, and Countdown have all cracked the top 10 on Prime Video’s US streaming charts. The Terminal List: Dark Wolf has jumped to the No. 1 spot after just five days of release; Butterfly sits at No. 3 after more than two weeks of release; Countdown comes in right behind it at No. 4 after a month of release, and the lead up to, and premiere of, Dark Wolf helped propel the original Terminal List series to No. 6, three years after it first premiered.

Amazon Prime Video Is Delivering Action Shows Viewers Love (Even If Critics Don’t)

If you look at these four particular series mentioned above, there is a common theme: they are delivering hard-boiled action (and often espionage) experiences that a lot of mainstream viewers enjoy.

Going by Rotten Tomatoes audience scores, The Terminal List (94%) is an overwhelming hit; yet critics slapped it with a 40% score, which is a pretty wide schism in opinion. The new prequel series Dark Wolf seems to have closed that gap, with an audience score (83%) that is much closer to the critical consensus (71%), which is a sign the franchise is taking steps in the proper direction to improve. The series stars Chris Pratt as a Navy SEAL who gets pulled into the dark world of espionage through the CIA. The original series saw Pratt’s character, James Reece, trying to stay alive and unravel the mystery of who is assassinating his platoon of special operatives; the prequel series jumps back a few years to examine the dark story of how Reece first made the transition from being a SEAL to working in CIA special operations. Based on the Jack Carr novel, the franchise is only growing in popularity.

Countdown and Butterfly are both newer series, which seem to be (respectively) following the same kind of trends in response as the Terminal List shows. Countdown stars Jensen Ackles (Supernatural, The Boys) as an Army Ranger-turned-LAPD officer, who is assigned to a task force of different law enforcement agencies to help solve the brazen murder of a Homeland Security officer. Like Terminal List, Countdown was hit with an abysmal critics’ score (35%), but audiences seem to overwhelmingly enjoy it (72%). Butterfly stars Lost‘s Daniel Dae Kim as a former US intelligence operative now hiding out in South Korea, who is forced to resurface when he learns his daughter (Reina Hardesty) has now become a ruthless assassin, working for the spy organization he helped create. Butterfly seems to be enjoying the more balanced consensus that Terminal List: Dark Wolf is, with a critics’ score (67%) that is much closer to the viewers’ score (85%).

Reacher Made Amazon’s Action TV Brand Possible

Just because you don’t see Amazon’s Reacher on the current streaming charts, make no mistake: that series set the blueprint for Prime Video to become a hub of action television. In fact, Reacher is largely responsible for helping the entire “Dad TV” trend get established, right alongside shows like Yellowstone and Tracker.

Currently, Reacher is in development on Season 4, which will be based on the novel Gone Tomorrow by Jack Reacher creator Lee Child. That story sees Reacher in NYC, where he inadvertently encounters a suspicious woman who ends up taking her own life on a crowded subway. When Reacher begins investigating, he finds out the woman has government ties and is part of a much larger conspiracy, one that Reacher can’t help but dig into.

In addition to Reacher Season 4, a spinoff series about Reacher’s friend and ally Frances Neagley (Maria Sten) and her work as an independent corporate security operative.

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