🤐 SPOILER ALERT 🤐

All interviews included in this article were completed prior to the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strike.

Mickey Haller (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) might have great luck in the courtroom, but somebody please get that man out of parking garages.

The Lincoln Lawyer Season 2, Part 1 ends with the lawyer getting beaten up in a parking garage, and the first half of the season flashes back to the events leading up to that attack. Three months prior to the assault, Mickey’s finding new fame after winning his big Trevor Elliott case at the end of Season 1. As Garcia-Rulfo tells Tudum, “Having that success helped him to build his confidence, but he does get a little cocky after.” Still, Mickey’s momentum is in full swing as he finds himself landing yet another high-profile case. 

The hotshot lawyer’s pursuit of justice continues when he meets acclaimed restaurateur and activist Lisa Trammell (Lana Parrilla). Things get steamy between them, but Lisa quickly goes from being Mickey’s love interest to being his client. After notoriously callous real estate developer Mitchell Bondurant (Clint Carmichael) is found dead, Lisa is arrested and charged with murder. She’s been vocal about stopping gentrification in the Frogtown neighborhood where her restaurant is located, and Mitchell’s urbanization plans jeopardized her business and community. With plenty of evidence detailing their public feud, Lisa is named the prime suspect. It’s a messy case from the start. As the trial and Mickey’s relationship with his client intensifies in Season 2, Part 2, he must really focus on proving Lisa’s innocence. 

As we’ve come to expect from previous episodes of The Lincoln Lawyer, there’s plenty of glimpses of LA’s dining scene this season too, but does Lisa also have an appetite for murder? Let’s examine Season 2 and unpack the most shocking moments from the finale — both of which leave Mickey too stunned to speak. 

Can we back up a little? Who’s that guy Russell Lawson?

In this season’s first episode, Russell Lawson (David Clayton Rogers) becomes Mickey’s client after being arrested for breaking into a home and exposing himself. Facing the prospect of six years behind bars, Russell is adamant that he was roofied at a bar and has no memory of the crime. After Mickey’s able to get his client out of jail, Russell pays him $5,000 to keep him on retainer in case anything else comes up. 

How does Russell blackmail Mickey?

The same day Mickey gets Russell out of jail, he returns home to find the man sitting on his back patio. He tells Mickey that he paid extra for a retainer, which officially makes him Mickey’s ongoing client. Because of the duty of confidentiality, Mickey isn’t allowed to disclose any information Russell reveals between them to authorities. And oh boy, are things about to get twisted. Russell pulls up his sleeve to expose a Japanese kanji tattoo, thus revealing that it was Russell watching Mickey surfing in the closing shots of Season 1. The tattoo also means that Russell murdered Martha Renteria in Season 1, as key witness Gloria “Glory Days” Dayton (Fiona Rene) disclosed last season that the killer had a kanji tattoo on his left arm.

In order to stop Mickey from looking for him, Russell switched up the rules of cat and mouse and found the lawyer first. By drugging himself, having Mickey represent him in the cover-up crime, and then hiring him on retainer, Russell’s able to get away with murder since Mickey can’t turn on his client without being disbarred. 

Does Mickey ever get out of Russell’s blackmail?

In Episode 2, Russell’s confidence finally catches up to him. After getting a ticket for running a red light, he returns to Mickey’s office to get off the hook. Clearly over the mind games, Mickey agrees to help his new client out. He files a trial by written declaration on the traffic ticket, seals a copy in an envelope and tells Lorna to call Russell to pick up the envelope later that day. “He needs to pick it up today. Today — that’s important,” Mickey says.

Later that night, Glory Days is home alone when someone breaks into her home, posing as a food delivery person. It’s none other than Russell, trying to kill her. He holds a knife to her neck and they get into a physical altercation. Before he can really hurt her, the LAPD busts through the door and arrests Russell. Glory Days tells them that he’s the one who killed Martha, and they take him away. As it turns out, when Russell stopped by the office to pick up the envelope, Mickey purposefully laid out Glory’s jail release documents next to the envelope — knowing his client would snoop around. Included in those documents was Glory’s home address. It was all a setup — Russell’s downfall was thinking he could outsmart Mickey.

What’s going on with Mickey’s love life?

Some old flames never die, which is true for Mickey and his ex-wife, Maggie (Neve Campbell). At the beginning of the season, they have dinner at elysian, a swanky restaurant in Frogtown. Their date doesn’t end romantically, however, and Maggie ends up leaving the eatery early after a disagreement. As Mickey eats alone, elysian’s owner and chef, Lisa, walks over to say hi. They immediately hit it off and take their chemistry from the table to the bedroom. “Mickey is a damaged soul, still pining for Maggie and the family he’s lost — again,” showrunner Ted Humphrey tells Tudum. “And Lisa is a lost soul, looking for the real partner she never found.”

For Parrilla, their connection is multifaceted. “I think they’re drawn to each other for a few different reasons,” she tells Tudum. “One of them is a sort of cultural connection. Secondly, their passion and love for food connects them. Thirdly, I think they have a sexual connection. Within five minutes, they’re in her bedroom.” 

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Humphrey agrees the food is key. “[It’s] the way to a man’s heart, especially this man,” he says. “Food is nurturing — there is something instinctive and primal about it. We are always drawn to people who take care of us.”

Executive producer Ross Fineman adds that although he’s a man “who loves love,” Mickey “doesn’t get it right all that often.” He tells Tudum, “Mickey’s still close to his two ex-wives, but his newfound fame has made him an easier target for everyone, including women.” He adds that despite the lawyer’s crazy professional life, Mickey doesn’t actually want to be single. “He’s more than receptive to fitting in some female companionship into his very hectic lifestyle. Like he does with his clients, in his personal life, once Mickey is all in, it’s hard for him to see past the nearsightedness of his trust for that person. Hopefully in the future, Mickey will protect his heart a little better, but don’t count on it. Lisa has her own personal baggage, and it’s hard for us to determine ‘want’ from ‘need’ in her case.”
 

So what’s taken from Mickey’s car when he’s beaten up? 

Mickey comes across a news story about podcaster Henry Dahl (Matt Angel) turning Lisa’s trial into a limited TV series. Which is a head-scratcher, considering Mickey’s the one in possession of the actual documentation of Lisa’s rights. He calls Lorna (Becki Newton) in a panic and blames her for misplacing the contract. Lorna’s been busy planning her wedding, and he thinks she must’ve taken the contract out of Mickey’s car without realizing it. But we all know Lorna would never. 

“You know, I have been keeping your office up and running while you run around completely preoccupied,” she tells Mickey. “You haven’t had your head on straight since you met this woman.” Mickey’s having none of it. “It’s my business who I take on as a client. You’re not my associate, Lorna,” he snaps back at his ex-wife.

“I think [Mickey] knows where it went or who took it,” Garcia-Rulfo tells Tudum. “I think he even thrives [on] obstacles, you know?” He has his theories about who the thief is, but we’ll have to wait until Part 2 to find out how they went missing. 

Who beat up Mickey in the parking garage?

After searching his office for Lisa’s contract, Mickey walks into a dark and empty parking garage to search his car. If we’ve learned anything from The Lincoln Lawyer, it’s that danger is right around the corner. The folder is there, but the papers are gone. All of a sudden, two men in black approach. “Hey, you’re that lawyer from the news, aren’t you?” one of them asks. As Mickey is about to reply, they start throwing punches. Whoever hired these two men to attack Mickey is clearly out for blood. “The parking garage was nice a callback from Season 1,” says Fineman. “It felt to us like it would be fun to show the viewers again that, unexpectedly, anything can happen.” 

Adds Garcia-Rulfo, “There’s something about garages. I know a lot of people say the same, but they’re just scary. They freak me out.” 

He has good reason to be nervous of them since Jerry Vincent’s murder occurs in the parking garage in Season 1, and Mitchell Bondurant is killed in a parking garage this season. “I saw an article not that long ago in the LA Times talking about iconic parking garages in LA,” says Humphrey. “They are part of the landscape here so there’s a logic to it. We decided to have some fun with it this season. Also, for a guy who works out of his car, you can always find one, right?”

Does Mickey survive the attack?

As we saw in the beginning of Season 2, Part 1, the mid-season finale ends with Mickey laying unconscious and bloodied up in the parking garage. Thankfully, Season 2, Part 2 opens up with Mickey recovering in the hospital surrounded by loved ones. 

Why is Maggie moving to San Diego?

Although Mickey and Maggie are divorced, the exes have never truly moved on from one another. At the end of Episode 6, they share a romantic evening and it seems likely they’ll rekindle their relationship. However, it turns out that for Maggie, the night together was more of a goodbye. The morning after, she drops the bombshell on Mickey that she’s been offered a job with the DA’s office in San Diego and is moving there. “If I stay, we are just going to keep winding up in each other’s arms,” she tearfully tells Mickey. 

Did Lisa kill Mitchell?

After a lengthy and contentious trial, Lisa is found not guilty of murder. In Mickey’s closing argument, he states how it would’ve been too obvious for Lisa to lay her bloodied gardening gloves and murder weapon out in the open for the police to find. “Why did that weapon conveniently show up at the exact moment Lisa’s in trial? There’s one reason why: because someone planted those things,” Mickey tells the jury before they deliver their verdict.

Throughout the season, Mickey always reassured Lisa that he believed in her innocence — even if he was skeptical. “Mickey is the last of the true believers,” says Fineman. “He tells his clients that his opinion doesn’t matter when it comes to their guilt or innocence, but it does. And once he commits to someone, he believes in them — not always to his benefit, by the way. Mickey has an inner commitment to believing people are good, even if they have made mistakes in the past. So, I don’t think he sees the bloody glove as her innocence being in question; he sees it as a road bump to her ultimate finding of not guilty.”

Humphrey agrees Mickey is struggling to stay true to his “defense lawyer ethos” — that it doesn’t matter if she’s innocent or not. “In fact, as he so often tells us, the guilty ones are easier,” says Humphrey. “You know what you’re dealing with. The problem is he really wants to believe she’s innocent. But ironically, he knows that if she is, his mountain just got that much higher to climb. Because he can’t let her go down for something she didn’t do, no matter how bad it looks.” 

What exactly happened between Lana and her first husband?

Apparently, the secret to growing healthy cilantro is using a dead body as fertilizer. Lana didn’t murder Mitchell Bondurant, but she’s not entirely innocent. It’s revealed she killed her first husband, buried him underneath her garden, and hired an actor to pose as him during the trial. Why did Lana kill him?

“That is a question that I think is best left up to the viewer to answer for themselves,” Fineman says. “What version do you believe? Mickey’s: that Jeff was going to take away her dream and she snapped — or Lisa’s: that he was abusive and she couldn’t take it anymore?” Parrilla believes it’s more of the latter. “She’s not a psychopath killer,” she says. “She’s a woman. I think this happens a lot with people in situations that are violent and abusive, and if they take an action step toward protecting themselves and it becomes unlawful and murderous, immediately we judge the person who’s done the wrong act.”

Who is Glory Days?

In the last scene of Season 2’s finale, Mickey’s goes to meet a potential new client. Julian La Cosse (Devon Graye) is behind bars, accused of murdering his friend, and wants to hire Mickey to represent him. “My friend recommended you: Giselle Dallinger,” he says. “She said that if I was ever in trouble to call you — that you’re the best lawyer in town. Now she’s dead and I’m in trouble.” The name doesn’t ring a bell, so Mickey goes to the medical examiner’s office to see who Giselle is. As the examiner pulls away the white sheet, we discover the body belongs to Glory Days. Mickey and Glory had previously worked together on the Jesus Menendez case, but in Season 2, Part 1, Glory told Mickey that she was moving to Hawaii to start a new chapter. Upon seeing her body, he has a flashback of receiving a Hawaii postcard from her shortly after her move. “You are the only thing I miss about L.A. Be well. X.O., Gloria,” she signed. 

“It’s going to be the toughest case he’s ever had, both professionally and personally,” Fineman says. “This was his friend, someone he cared about, and he needs to know what happened to her. And there’s a nagging sense that he might have been responsible in some way.”

Stream The Lincoln Lawyer Season 2 now.

Additional reporting by Tara Bitran.