‘The Lincoln Lawyer’ Boss Explains Changes From Book for Season 2

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for all of The Lincoln Lawyer Season 2 Part 2.]

As with the first season of the Netflix series based on Michael Connelly‘s books, The Lincoln Lawyer doesn’t exactly stick to what was on those pages in Season 2.

The second half dropped on August 3, and Mickey (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) does get a not guilty verdict for Lisa (Lana Parrilla) in court, only to realize, after they spend the night together, that he hasn’t really met her ex-husband and someone should really check what’s buried in her garden. But the danger’s not quite over for Mickey yet, with a car seemingly trying to run him over near the end.

Here, co-showrunner Ted Humphrey breaks down the Season 2 finale and discusses where it leaves everyone. (Plus, get scoop on a potential third season, if Netflix renews the series, and which book it would be based on here.)

Like with the first season, there are a few changes from the book on which this season is based. What did you want to do when it came to what changed and how in Season 2?

Ted Humphrey: With Season 1, we knew we had to update the book. It was written in, I think, 2007 and the antagonist, the client, was kind of a Harvey Weinstein-like Hollywood producer. We knew we wanted to update all of that to something that felt more relevant to today. And then we faced the same issue in Season 2 when we were adapting The Fifth Witness. So Michael Connelly, my co-showrunner Dailyn Rodriguez, and I got together in advance of opening the writers room for Season 2, and we spent three weeks maybe just kicking around the book and ideas and how we wanted to do that.

The plot of the book and the plot of the client’s plight revolved around the mortgage crisis in 2008 and 2009, and her being accused of murdering a mortgage banker who was foreclosing on her home, and obviously that didn’t make any sense for today’s LA. So we hit upon the idea of the gentrification issues that are very relevant in LA today and the kind of foodie celebrity chef culture and a way to merge those things. Then just to make it all a little more cinematic, if you will, we came up with the idea that rather than [like] in the book [where] Lisa’s a bit of a thorn in Mickey’s side that we would make her a love interest and that dovetailed very nicely with the story we were telling with Maggie [Neve Campbell] and Mickey’s ongoing story.

Speaking of making that relationship romantic, you had that “fire me” moment in the finale before the reveal about her husband. 

Manuel is obviously a really attractive guy. He’s terrific actor. We just felt like this season was a great opportunity to hit the sex appeal angle a bit with him. You’ve got the breakup with Maggie and then a wonderful opportunity in the middle of the season to get him and Maggie back together again. But it’s heartbreaking as it always is for him. The one thing from the books that we’ve kept very, very true to is that this guy can just never quite get it right with his ex-wife, who’s really the love of his life, and there’s something kind of very real about that. And that “fire me” moment, is that a hundred thousand percent legally accurate? I say speaking as a former lawyer, maybe not, but it makes for great drama.

Courtesy Of Netflix

Speaking of Mickey and Maggie, you are rooting for these two even though it’s just not going to work between them, but then you have her moving away. What did you want to do with them, and what does that mean for what we might see from Maggie going forward? Is it going to be the same amount possibly or is this it?

It’s not it. What it means going forward is a little bit of an open question. It has to do with the schedule of the show; obviously, as you know, there’s two strikes now going on right now, and so the schedule of all of Hollywood is up in the air at the moment. We don’t have officially a third season yet. We are very hopeful. The ratings have been very, very good so far, so we’re very hopeful that we will get that announcement and get it fairly soon. But even once we get it, we don’t know when we will be able to get back to work. We had begun work on Season 3 in the writers room before the strike happened, and so we’ve put that aside and we don’t know when we’d go into production. So it has to do with Neve Campbell’s schedule. It has to do with the storytelling needs of the show.

But you will see Maggie again. You will see Neve again in that role. It’s just kind of exactly when and exactly how much remains to be seen, and much of that is dictated organically really by the books and the stories.

Yeah, I was wondering if it was more about Maggie and Neve’s schedule versus what you’re doing with Mickey, from a storytelling point of view.

And it’s been a long windy path for this show, as you may know. It was originally set up one place and then we went to Netflix and it’s been a long road to development. Neve is a very successful, in-demand actress and somebody I’ve wanted to work with forever, so this is just what you do in Hollywood, you work around this and make these things work.

There’s also the matter of that car that almost hit Mickey and Legal Siegel’s (Elliott Gould) warning about Alex. Are you setting that up as something only Mickey needs to be concerned about? The others as well?

I think it’s all the above. If there’s danger out there, there’s danger for everybody.

Lara Solanki/Netflix

Is Lorna (Becki Newton) right and Lisa was the one who sent those men to beat up Mickey and for the reason she said?

In the book, Lisa confirms that to Mickey. We chose not to do that for a number of reasons, dramatic and creative, and leave it more open-ended as something that Lorna suggests. So that’s kind of one that I guess my preference is to leave it for the audience to come to their own conclusions on that.

So that’s not something that you would come back to? You’d rather just leave it as it is left at the end of Season 2?

And there’s nothing to say that in the success of the show, Lisa may not make a reappearance someday.

Lorna and Cisco’s (Angus Sampson) wedding was perfect. They didn’t have the easiest season, so where did you want to leave them?

That relationship is so interesting to us because it’s in many ways the least defined element of the books, and so it was the one that was the most open to interpretation and where we had the most leeway and highway to travel in the show and in some ways that makes it the most exciting. Obviously we’re setting Lorna up with her journey through law school and taking the bar exam and so forth to be taking a bigger and bigger part in the professional life of the firm going forward. And we are setting Cisco up to have hopefully put aside his somewhat checkered past. But those things don’t always work out quite the way you plan, let’s put it that way.

Izzy’s (Jazz Raycole) sort of moved on, though she is filling in while Lorna’s on her honeymoon. What can you say about what you envision her future on the show to be given where you left her?

Izzy is the one character out of the core characters who is an invention of the show. Izzy’s not a character that occurs in the books. I have heard some rumblings that from Jazz Raycole that Michael Connelly mentioned to her that he might actually write Izzy into the books because he’s so enamored with the character, which is great and wonderful. Jazz is terrific and the character has just has really been a delight to write for. We will find what the next kind of challenge is for Izzy down the road. But we’re just very proud of the character. And it was kind of a combination of a character that was in The Brass Verdict and just the show’s invention.

Mickey and Izzy, every scene with those two is so good, especially the hospital scene.

Yes. And even going back to Season 1, the scene where they went and ate tacos, even some of the more lighthearted scenes are terrific. They have a wonderful chemistry, offscreen as well as on. It’s fun to watch the dailies and the outtakes of those two. They have a lot of fun together.

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'The Lincoln Lawyer' Boss Confirms Book for Potential Season 3

Is there anything you can say about which characters would return, like for example, Andrea? Yaya DaCosta was really good this season.

Yes, there is a plan to potentially bring Andrea back in a possibly even bigger role at some point going forward. She was terrific, and we loved her, and she was a great addition to the show. Anytime that happens, you want to keep working with it.

And to see the two of them facing off in court… You could see why it seems like they have fun doing it, those two characters.

They absolutely did. I do want to say as an aside, I’ve been doing this for a fair amount of time, and we just have not just a talented cast — they are incredibly talented — but also a great group of people, and they really all care about each other. It might sound like a bit of a cliche, but it is very much a family atmosphere on our set. Everybody kind of takes care of each other, and I think that comes through on the screen. I think it comes through in the relationships that you see between people on the screen.

The Lincoln Lawyer, Seasons 1 and 2, Streaming Now, Netflix