The Lincoln Lawyer Season 3's Ending Needs Serious Debriefing
First, they came for Mickey Haller’s Lincoln. Now they want a piece of the lawyer. The legal expert who works out of the back of his Lincoln has made many enemies over the course of The Lincoln Lawyer’s three seasons—and one of his foes is out for revenge. After the shocking conclusion of season 3’s trial, the series had yet another twist in store for viewers: Mickey (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) is framed for murder and arrested. Is this the most danger that the Lincoln Lawyer has found himself in yet?
When season 3 begins, Mickey Haller is already in quite a complicated situation. He’s set to defend a new client, Julian La Cosse (Devon Graye), who is accused of murdering his former client Gloria Dayton (Fiona Rene). The new case also leads Mickey to recall a third (!) character from his past, Hector Moya (Arturo Del Puerto), a drug trafficker Gloria and Mickey helped put behind bars. If it feels hard to piece it all together, it’s probably because all of these events occurred before The Lincoln Lawyer’s very first episode. Still, that doesn’t stop the Netflix drama from making Moya’s past arrest the key to La Cosse’s defense.
Mickey Haller can’t move forward in season 3 until he reckons with his past.
As it turns out, La Cosse is completely innocent. This is a first for Mickey, who defended guilty clients the past two seasons. After he visits Moya in prison, the former drug dealer helps him realize that Gloria couldn’t have tipped off the DEA to his criminal activity on her own. She must’ve had an accomplice. He suggests that a DEA agent named James De Marco (Michael Irby) might have been involved, and he’s right on the money.
In the season 3 finale, former LAPD detective Neil Bishop (Holt McCallany) testifies that De Marco killed Gloria to cover up his illegal actions in Moya’s arrest. Everyone framed everyone! Gloria and De Marco set up Moya, De Marco killed Gloria, and then De Marco framed Julian. After testifying, Bishop pulls a secret gun tied around his ankle and shoots himself in the head right on the witness stand. I guess he was fearful that De Marco would retaliate against him. But De Marco goes on the run and is killed at the border by a cartel member with connections to Moya.
The Lincoln Lawyer worked up quite a complicated case for season 3.
Still with me? So everything is neatly wrapped up for Mickey in the end. His suspects all killed each other, and his client is actually innocent for once. La Cosse even gets a nice settlement. But the Lincoln Lawyer is never allowed a moment of happiness. His Lincoln is wrecked following a car accident, and it’s very obvious that someone is out to kill him. As co-showrunner Ted Humphrey told TV Insider, “It wouldn’t be much of a drama if we didn’t throw a curveball into his life.”
On his way home, Mickey is randomly pulled over by the cops. Somehow the officers find a dead body in the trunk of his Lincoln. It’s another former client, season 2’s Sam Scales (Christopher Thornton). Of course Mickey didn’t kill him. But who did?
“We just thought, what could top this?” Humphrey explained to TV Insider. “Well, what happens when you’re the innocent man? And how do you deal with the fact that, traditionally, a lawyer who represents himself is a fool for a client?” If the series is renewed for a fourth season, it looks as if Mickey will take on his toughest challenge yet: defending himself.
