Michael Connelly’s Mickey Haller Takes on His Most Personal Case Yet in the Third Season of Netflix’s ‘The Lincoln Lawyer’
The third season of Netflix’s The Lincoln Lawyer, based on the novels by Michael Connelly, gives LA defense attorney Mickey Haller a complex new case with a deeply personal connection.
The title character of Netflix series The Lincoln Lawyer always gets personally invested in his clients, which is part of what makes him so good at his job. If Mickey Haller (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) takes a case, he’s guaranteed to do everything he can to make sure justice is served. In the new third season of The Lincoln Lawyer, that personal investment gets a bit complicated, since Mickey’s new client is accused of murdering Mickey’s friend and previous client Gloria Dayton (Fiona Rene).
Mickey’s sense of right and wrong is unerring, though, and he knows that the scared, desperate Julian La Cosse (Devon Graye) didn’t kill Gloria, who worked as an escort under the name Glory Days. Mickey takes on Julian as a client precisely because he wants to see Gloria’s true killer brought to justice, and in the process he unravels an elaborate conspiracy.
Based on author Michael Connelly’s fifth Mickey Haller novel, 2013’s The Gods of Guilt, the third season of The Lincoln Lawyer raises the stakes for Mickey and his associates even higher, but it retains the warmth and humor that has made the series so watchable thus far. Three seasons in, The Lincoln Lawyer has developed a strong ensemble of characters who are all fiercely loyal to Mickey, supporting him as he takes on some very powerful and very dangerous people.
This season, that ensemble loses one of Mickey’s ex-wives, prosecutor Maggie McPherson (Neve Campbell), but gains a different prosecutor, Andrea Freemann (Yaya DaCosta), who was Mickey’s courtroom adversary in the second season and is now his potential girlfriend. Mickey’s second ex-wife, Lorna Crane (Becki Newton), graduates from paralegal to full-fledged lawyer this season, giving Mickey a full complement of female attorneys as past and present love interests.
It’s a bit disappointing to see Campbell appear only briefly, and mostly just to deal with Mickey and Maggie’s teenage daughter, but she makes the most of her limited screen time. DaCosta provides a different sort of energy as a woman Mickey can truly open up to, who understands the risks he’s willing to take for his clients.
Andrea also gets her own subplot as the season progresses, and one of the strengths of The Lincoln Lawyer is its balance between modern streaming-TV serialization and classic procedural-style stories. Mickey spends most of his time focused on Gloria’s murder case, but the show has time for detours into other cases that provide comic relief or deepen character development.
Those two storytelling styles are sometimes at odds with each other, and it’s a bit jarring when the season suddenly jumps ahead six months at the beginning of the third episode. Showrunner Ted Humphrey packs a lot of plot into each 10-episode season, though, and that time jump allows Mickey’s story to move ahead, both professionally and personally, and it provides extra momentum for various subplots as well.
Garcia-Rulfo remains charming and a little mischievous as Mickey, who bends but never quite breaks the rules in his pursuit of success in the courtroom. A flashback in the season premiere not only gives Campbell her most significant appearance but also provides an origin for Mickey’s love of Lincoln cars, as he eyes his beloved vintage Lincoln with a look that’s usually reserved for romantic longing. That playful spirit keeps The Lincoln Lawyer from getting bogged down by its sometimes heavy subject matter.
There are multiple shady operators blocking Mickey from the truth about what happened to Gloria, but Holt McCallany stands out as a corrupt, self-righteous ex-cop who detests Mickey for not looking the other way when the police falsify reports and obscure the facts in order to send criminals to prison. Now working as an investigator for the district attorney’s office, he’s more menacing than the actual cartel boss that Mickey also has to deal with.
Like fellow Connelly adaptation Bosch on Amazon Prime Video, The Lincoln Lawyer is a rock-solid, often old-fashioned drama series, fitting perfectly into the long tradition of TV legal thrillers. The third season doesn’t mess with a successful formula, but anyone who’s enjoyed the series thus far should be satisfied with its remarkably consistent dedication and quality.
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Josh Bell is a freelance writer and movie/TV critic based in Las Vegas. He has written about movies, TV, and pop culture for Vulture, IndieWire, CBR, Inverse, Crooked Marquee, and more. With comedian Jason Harris, he co-hosts the podcast Awesome Movie Year.