This Christmas, Santa isn’t the only one coming to town. Season 3 of the popular Amazon Prime show Jack Ryan, based on Tom Clancy’s iconic hero, is set to come out on December 21st.
If it feels like it’s been a while since Season 2 came out, that’s because it has. In fact, by the time Season 3 bows, it will have been over three years since we last saw John Krasinski (The Office, The Quiet Place, etc.) in the role of Ryan. Fear not, though, because it appears that the wait for the already-announced season 4 won’t be nearly as long, with rumors suggesting it’ll come out sometime next year (also, Ant-Man’s Michael Peña has joined the cast, along with the return of Abbie Cornish, who played Cathy—Jack’s future wife—in season 1 but was noticeably absent in season 2, and isn’t expected in this season either).
Here are the plot details for Season 3 from Prime Video:
“In the third season of the action-thriller series, Jack Ryan is working as a CIA case officer in Rome, when he is tipped off that the Sokol Project, a secret plan to restore the Soviet Empire, is being resurrected more than 50 years after it was thought to have been shut down. Jack embarks on a mission to confirm the intelligence, but things quickly go awry, and he is wrongly implicated in a larger conspiracy. Accused of treason, with a Red Notice out for his arrest, Jack is forced to run from his own government, if he has any hope of uncovering the rogue faction before it’s too late. Crisscrossing Europe as he is hunted by former allies and new enemies alike, Jack races against the clock to stop the cascade of destabilizing conflicts from leading to global catastrophe.”
Book fans might not recognize this premise from any of Clancy’s thrillers, though there may be threads loosely based on or inspired by his writing. Oddly, from the start, the show went in a bold direction by not basing each season on one of Clancy’s novels but instead creating new stories for Jack Ryan. That allowed the studio to slot Krasinski, 43, in the lead role while keeping it current, and set in today’s world—as opposed to dating the show back in time when Ryan, who is currently the United States president in the book series, was younger.
Ironically, though book purists have been critical of the lack of using any source material, Krasinski has widely been regarded as one of the best Jack Ryans to date, with many considering his portrayal right up there with Alec Baldwin (who starred in the 1990 movie adaption of The Hunt for Red October).
Check out the trailer for Season 3 below:
On the book side of things, the next Jack Ryan novel is set to come out on December 5th. Titled Tom Clancy Red Winter, New York Times bestselling author Marc Cameron takes readers (and Ryan) back to 1985, where Jack “goes behind the Iron Curtain to seek the truth about a potential Soviet defector.” Currently, Red Winter is available for pre-order wherever books are sold.
Praised as “One of the hardest working, most thoughtful, and fairest reviewers out there” by #1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa Scottoline, Ryan Steck has “quickly established himself as the authority on mysteries and thrillers” (Author A.J. Tata). Steck also works full-time as a freelance editor and is building a growing community on Twitch. His debut thriller, FIELDS OF FIRE, which #1 New York Times bestselling author Jack Carr says “will leave you speechless and begging for more,” is now available. For more information, be sure to follow him on Twitter and Facebook. And to take part in free, exclusive BOOK CLUBS each month, join The Real Book Spy on Discord.