Ready for another ride in Mickey Haller’s Lincoln? Netflix hasn’t announced the release date for the next chapter of The Lincoln Lawyer, its hit adaptation of Michael Connelly’s crime fiction, but filming on Season 3 wrapped in June, so the legal drama’s new episodes will likely be here before you know it. Good thing we have a brief on Seasons 1 and 2. Read on for the story so far…
Season 1 starts with the murder of attorney Jerry Vincent (Paul Urcioli), whose practice then transfers to Mickey Haller (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), a lawyer recovering from a painkiller addiction. One of Jerry’s cases was that of Trevor Elliott (Christopher Gorham), a video game designer accused of murdering Lara (Katy Erin), his wife, and Jan Ritz (Johann Urb), Lara’s lover.
In Mickey’s corner are Lorna Crane (Becki Newton), his legal aide and second ex-wife who was a hotshot law student until she was sexually assaulted by a professor; Cisco Wojciechowski (Angus Simpson), Mickey’s friend and investigator and Lorna’s fiancé; and Izzy Letts (Jazz Raycole), his personal driver. Mickey is also still in the orbit of prosecutor Maggie McPherson (Neve Campbell), his first ex-wife, with whom he shares daughter Hayley (Krista Warner).
At the end of that first season, Mickey gets Trevor acquitted and, just before another lover of Jan’s shoots Trevor dead, confronts him with the knowledge that Trevor actually did kill Lara and Jan since Lara was threatening to expose him as a fraud. Mickey also discovers that Trevor bribed the judge in the case, who then had Jerry killed and tried to have Mickey killed. Meanwhile, Mickey also gets an actually innocent former client named Jésus Menendez (Saul Huezo) freed from prison while the guilty party — that man identified only by his distinctive Japanese tattoo — watches on.
Jazz Raycole as Izzy Letts and Becki Newton as Lorna Crane in ‘The Lincoln Lawyer’ (Lara Solanki/Netflix)
In Season 2, a man named Russell Lawson (David Clayton Rogers) gets himself arrested on a burglary charge and hires Mickey to be his representation only to reveal—under attorney-client privilege—that he’s the tattooed killer in the Menendez case. Mentor David Siegel (Elliott Gould) urges Mickey to distance himself from the case, but Mickey still finds a way to get Lawson behind bars, and soon, Menendez’s case is dismissed.
Maggie takes a new job in San Diego, but Season 2 introduces a new love interest for Mickey, a chef named Lisa Trammell (Lana Parrilla), who gets him to help her with the restraining order real estate developer Mitchell Bondurant (Clint Carmichael) filed against her after a gentrification protest. But then Bondurant shows up dead, and Lisa is the prime suspect.
After a two-month midseason hiatus, the second half of Season 2 reveals that a true-crime podcaster who was looking into Lisa’s case is connected to Alex Grant (Michael A. Goorjian), the same Armenian mob heir whom Bondurant once threatened. Mickey casts suspicions on Grant and gets Lisa acquitted, just as he did in Season 1 with Trevor. Bondurant’s actual murderer turns out to be a building inspector named Walter Kim (Keong Sim), who was also being threatened by Grant.
But then, just as he did in Season 1 with Trevor, he confronts Lisa with the knowledge that she killed her estranged husband and buried him on her property, which she then refused to sell to Bondurant. Suffice it to say, Mickey and Lisa’s romance is over, and Lorna calls the cops on the chef-turned-criminal. Lorna and Cisco’s romance, however, is still going strong — and they even get married at Izzy’s new dance studio. The good times don’t last for long, though, as a mysterious car almost mows Mickey down — probably on Grant’s say-so — and a man named Julian La Cosse (Devon Graye) contacts Mickey, saying he’s wrongfully accused of murdering a woman named Giselle Dallinger, who turns out to be Gloria Dayton (Fiona Rene), the key witness in the Menendez case…
The Lincoln Lawyer, Season 3, TBD, Netflix