Why Jack Ryan Season 4 Is Such a Disappointment to Fans

Amazon Prime Video’s Jack Ryan is back for Season 4, and it has some fans calling this latest batch of episodes a disappointment. 

The fan-favorite Tom Clancy adaption has been fairly successful in its three seasons thus far, with audiences falling in love with John Krasinski’s take on the classic Clancy character. 

However, as the streaming series comes to a close, the Jack Ryan faithful have not been too impressed, complaining about “rehash[ing of] classic spy tropes” and “silly plot twists” amongst other things. 

So, with all six episodes now out in the open, here are five of the biggest reasons why Jack Ryan Season 4 should be seen as a disappointment. 

Lazy Writing

One of the biggest complaints about Jack Ryan‘s fourth and final season comes from its writing. 

Season 4 is full of plot holes, logic inconsistencies, and down-right non-sensical character decisions. Coming in, there were the makings of something great in Season 4.

Jack Ryan and the team were set to find themselves going head-to-head with a faceless adversary, one that harbored a conspiracy to dismantle everything they had fought to keep safe right at home within the CIA.

However, what ended up being presented could be described as convoluted with no real logic behind this conspiratorial web. 

Political thrillers like Jack Ryan only work if every step along the way makes sense and is believable. But this spy story makes logical leaps, with almost no motivation to back up any of the decisions on either side of Season 4’s conflict with the mysterious Triad.

Unrealistic Action

Like most Tom Clancy adaptations, Jack Ryan has been no stranger to action. The three seasons so far have featured warzone shoot-outs, minor nuclear blasts, and more than its fair share of covert infiltrations. But Season 4 amps things up, taking the series from gritty, spy drama into the world of the ridiculous. 

Gone is the pulse-pounding realism of Seasons 1-3, and here are super-human feats that would make Iron Man jealous. 

There are moments of characters being shot, jumping up, and getting behind the wheel to make an escape as if nothing happened. And in one particular sequence, Krasinski’s former CIA analyst is electrocuted multiple times, burned with boiling water, and then showered with a bowl of salt, and is completely fine the very next day. 

It is moments like these that take the series out of the real world, which most Clancy fare prides itself in being so set within. 

Disappointing Climax

Given that Jack Ryan Season 4 is the final batch of episodes for the hit Prime Video series, one would expect a fitting send-off for John Krasinski’s fan-favorite hero. However, that was not the case. 

After episodes upon episodes of teases of the Triad’s bomb, the season’s climax came down to a shockingly simple bomb-defusing scene that was over before it ever really even started. 

During Season 4’s six-episode run, the bomb had been dubbed the most technologically advanced and unhackable weapon on Earth. But when Krasinski’s Jack finally got his hands on it and all the tension was built up, all he had to do was snip one solitary wire. 

After all that build-up, the whole season ultimately came down to one man trying to bring a bomb over the border in a truck, and taking down that bomb was a one-step process. 

Say what one will about other seasons of the series, but all three of the past season have at least come down to a tense showdown. Season 1 had the fate of the American government in question, Season 2 followed a corrupt election in South America, and Season 3 could have caused World War 3 and the reinstitution of the USSR. 

After all that, this ‘snip the wire and go home’ moment felt like small potatoes after what Jack and this cast of characters had gone through previously. 

Not Enough Jack Ryan

And all these past points come as Jack Ryan isn’t even much of a focus in Season 4 of a series bearing his name. 

So many new side characters are introduced in Jack Ryan’s fourth and final season that Krasinski’s hero ends up feeling like an afterthought by the series creators. 

That is not to say, Seasons 1-3 have not had side characters, with some highlights from those past seasons being Wendell Pierce’s James Greer and Michael Kelly’s Mike November, but the focus always was still put on Jack Ryan. 

Yet, in Season 4 the story is spread so thin across its lean six-episode run that Ryan fades into the background, something that is just not okay, especially in what was supposed to be his last farewell to fans of the series. 

Weak Villain Motivation

Possibly the most disappointing part of Season 4 comes with its villain. The mysterious Triad sounded like such a fun concept to end the series on. A shadow organization that had members embedded across the, with unlimited resources and a propensity for the chaotic. 

However, that is about as far as it went when it came to the Season 4 big bad. 

The group had little to know motivation, other than to show that they could smuggle anything around the world. That is it. No government plot, or aim to bend the world powers to its will. Just an evil group going, “Hey look what we can do,” and that is it. 

This is in stark contrast to villains of the series’ past, where motivations were carefully laid out and slowly revealed over time, so that by the time a season finale came around, audiences were sitting there going, “Oh, it all makes sense now!”

However, the Triad ends up being a generic action movie antagonist with no clear or interesting motivation, which is a massive bummer. 

Jack Ryan Seasons 1-4 are available on Prime Video now.