The Lincoln Lawyer Recap: Blasts From the Past Open Season 3 — Grade the Premiere

Ever since the first season of Netflix’s The Lincoln Lawyer , the showrunners have been preparing viewers for Gods of Guilt , the fifth book in the legal series created by Michael Connelly. The Season 2 finale back in August 2023 already teed us up for it, with the arrest of a man named Julian La Cosse, who was told to call defense attorney Mickey Haller if ever his world came tumbling down.

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Well, being accused of the death of his sex worker “friend” — Haller’s first season key witness, Gloria Dayton — would certainly constitute as big trouble.

This is where we’re headed, but not before a flashback to better times….

Fifteen years prior, Mickey Haller was a morning surfer happily married to the love of his life (Neve Campbell’s Maggie), and a father who could do his job as an attorney for the public defender’s office and pick up his toddler from daycare. We also get the sense, as he dreamily gazes toward a car dealership, that he is a man about to trade in his Volkswagen Cabriolet for a blue Lincoln convertible that gives him his famous moniker.

The flashback also goes to establish a new-to-us enemy, Detective Bishop, played by Mindhunter ’s Holt McCallany, whom Haller embarrasses during a pivotal cross examination. When a humiliated and angry Bishop warns Haller that someone will end up dead because of his antics, we return to present day, where the witness Haller had sworn to protect had, indeed, ended up in the morgue.

Julian, it turns out, is a tech pimp who created the platform Glory Days and her colleagues used to plan their “dates” with clients. Complicating the case is that Julian saw Gloria the night of her death, when he went to collect money she owed him. It ended in an altercation, but Julian swears he left her there alive. While it doesn’t seem like the scrawny IT nerd is capable of murder, Haller – fresh off defending last season’s client, who was both his love interest and very guilty of murder – no longer trusts his own instincts.  But knowing he was the one who put Gloria in harm’s way, Haller can’t help but feel the need to pursue this mystery.

Haller rushes off when he finds out David “Legal” Siegel, his mentor, has been hospitalized for a heart problem. Bedridden but still sharp as a tack, Legal uses his downtime to help Haller recap the case from two seasons ago. Haller explains that to get Gloria out of jail for cocaine possession, so that she could then testify for him, she first had to rat out cartel boss Hector Moya. Is this case about Moya and his men taking out their snitch?

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Before Haller can get deeper into Gloria’s fate, he is called in by his daughter Hayley to defend her old babysitter, Eddie Rojas, who has been accused of carjacking. In a brilliant display of what Haller does best, he gets the plaintiff to incriminate himself and, since Eddie feels indebted to him, Haller scores a new driver in the process – a driver that wants to put him on an exercise and nutrition plan, no less.

Back on the big case, Haller’s go-to investigator Cisco has discovered that, on the night of Gloria’s death, there was a fire in her building. He and Haller suspect it was set to cover up Gloria’s murder, but the sprinklers took the fire out before it could destroy the evidence. Everything still points to Julian killing Gloria, but since taking on the case is the only way he will get to the truth, Haller reluctantly agrees to defend him.

Whether or not his client is guilty, Haller already faces an uphill climb in court. His old nemesis, Bishop, has become an investigator for the DA’s office and is jonesing for payback.  Bishop’s success will depend on if Haller makes it to court at all as, when the Lincoln Lawyer arrives home, he finds his house trashed and a rattlesnake waiting in his bed.

Well, at least we know Haller’s on the right trail.

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