“We knew going in that Season 4 was going to be the most emotional and personal [one yet],” Humphrey tells Tudum. With so much on the line and characters from his past catching up to him, Mickey’s in a dark place, which Manuel Garcia-Rulfo says was an “exciting” challenge after playing an unflappable version of the Los Angeles lawyer for three seasons. “I had already played the Mickey Haller that can do everything,” he tells Tudum. “In this season, he really feels down. He’s trying not to show it … but deep inside, he knows that most likely this is it.”

In addition to vengeful figures from former seasons, Mickey’s closest confidants, including Maggie McPherson (Neve Campbell), Lorna Crane (Becki Newton), Izzy Letts (Jazz Raycole), Dennis “Cisco” Wojciechowski (Angus Sampson), and David “Legal” Siegel (Elliott Gould), also return in Season 4 to help him prove his innocence and restore his reputation. But do they succeed?

Keep reading as we cross-examine all the details of The Lincoln Lawyer Season 4 with help from Humphrey and Garcia-Rulfo, as well as co-showrunner and executive producer Dailyn Rodriguez and guest star Constance Zimmer.

Why is Mickey Haller on trial?

Season 3 ends on a cliffhanger: Mickey’s pulled over by the police, and Sam Scales’s (Christopher Thornton) dead boy is found in the trunk of the lawyer’s Lincoln Continental. This season starts with Mickey behind bars, awaiting trial for Sam’s murder. “We don’t pick up directly with the aftermath of Mickey getting arrested,” Humphrey and Rodriguez say. “But we do immediately plunge the audience into the reality of what his arrest means for Mickey — and for all of our characters.”

But who is Sam Scales? A con man with many identities, he’s been a Lincoln Lawyer side character since Season 1 and has been represented by Haller and Associates many times. However, like a true swindler, he’s long dodged paying his legal fees. In Season 3, Episode 7, Mickey offhandedly tells Sam, “If you don’t pay us, you’re dead.” So, yeah, it’s not a good look for Mickey when his former client turns up dead.

Who is Dana Berg?

“She’s one of the fiercest antagonists in the Mickey Haller universe,” says Humphrey. Dana Berg (Constance Zimmer) is prosecuting Mickey for the murder. He has history with Berg, having won a case against her before, but that only makes the cutthroat attorney hungrier to win. As both defendant and counsel for the defense, Mickey’s got his work cut out for him. “We knew that we needed a powerhouse actor to play this part, and we definitely got that with Constance,” Humphrey adds. “She really knocks the role out of the park.”

As a fellow prosecutor, Maggie is also familiar with Berg’s ruthlessness, which ramps up the tension once Mickey’s ex comes on as his co-counsel. “We gave Maggie and Dana Berg more of a backstory than is present in the book in order to flesh that relationship out,” says Humphrey. “Going into this season, we were really excited to just see the scenes between Neve and Constance — and they did not disappoint. They were great scenes, both in the courtroom and out of the courtroom.” Zimmer adds that those are definitely some of her favorite scenes. “It’s very rare that you get to have two strong, driven women go head-to-head in a scene with their whole heart and their whole mind but on totally different sides,” she tells Tudum.

Despite Dana’s run-ins with Mickey and Maggie, Zimmer says those experiences aren’t all that’s driving her to win the case. “Her motivation is truth,” she explains. “In her mind, she believes this is what happened, and so her drive is about making sure that the right person is found guilty. That’s her job. And yes, there are some secondary past relationships, but she doesn’t play that game.”

Over the course of the trial, Mickey and Maggie suspect the prosecution is employing some dirty tactics, including violating the rules of discovery by suppressing evidence and witness testimony. These kinds of tricks have earned Berg a reputation as a tough adversary, as well as many nicknames, including Death Row Dana, and Iceberg. Lorna adds Dead-eyed Dana and Beige Berg.

Many of those were lifted directly from The Law of Innocence. “Michael [Connelly] loves nicknames,” says Humphrey. Adds Rodriguez, “We just played with them a little bit through Lorna’s fascination with this woman’s nicknames.” But the running bit also reflects real-world research the team did for the series. “We interviewed a US attorney, and he said that they have nicknames for all the judges,” Rodriguez adds. For Zimmer, the name-calling was a reminder of just how icy her character was supposed to be. “Those nicknames helped to keep me in line,” she says.

Do Mickey and Maggie get back together in Season 4?

Death Row Dana isn’t the only one in LA’s legal community with a clever moniker. This season, Mickey’s ex is able to showcase why she’s been dubbed “Maggie McFierce” when she joins his defense team in Episode 5. “For four seasons now, Neve has played this fierce lawyer — it’s literally in her nickname — and yet we’ve never really seen that side of her, because those largely haven’t been the stories we’ve told,” says Humphrey. “So it was exciting for us to finally do that.”

Maggie steps up after Lorna reaches her breaking point, trying to keep the firm afloat by taking on new cases while also serving as Mickey’s co-counsel. The decision reflects not only how Maggie’s relationship with Mickey has evolved over the series but also how much her dynamic with Lorna has changed. In “Season 1, Lorna’s kind of intimidated by Maggie, and they have this very fraught relationship that you might imagine two ex-wives of the same man might have,” says Humphrey. “By this season, they’ve been forced to develop this working relationship. They’ve got to find a way to get along and work together, and you really feel like they’re beginning to develop a friendship that is nice to watch.”

Throughout the season, Maggie serves as her ex’s primary support — first as his friend and then as his lawyer. “They were trying to get space from each other, and her moving to San Diego created the distance that they needed,” Rodriguez says. But filling this role “brings her back into his orbit and his life in a very heightened, emotional way.”

Humphrey saw this season as an opportunity to “get back under the hood” of the series’ most important and complex relationship. “Mickey and Maggie are the emotional beating heart of the show and of Mickey’s life. That relationship is the thing the audience will [always] track and root for,” he says. “It’s in the book that she’s a big part of this story, and we wanted to honor that. But also, we knew, in the life of the show, it was time to bring Maggie back in a bigger way.”

By working with Mickey, Maggie is also able to see him in a new light, especially as their conflicting views of the legal system have gotten in the way of their relationship. “It gives Maggie a feeling for the first time in her life of what it’s like to be on the other side, and that enables her to understand Mickey a little bit more.”

Does Mickey’s mentor, Legal, die in Season 4 of The Lincoln Lawyer?

One person who’s always been able to understand Mickey — perhaps even better than he understands himself — is his longtime mentor, David “Legal” Siegel. The former partner of Mickey’s late attorney father, Legal has been a steadying presence throughout the series, always there to share his appreciation for the law and offer irreverent humor and thoughtful guidance. But, in Episode 6, the stakes of this already emotionally charged season are further heightened when Legal unexpectedly dies.

After uncovering that Sam Scales owed Mickey legal fees, the prosecution files a new indictment for first-degree murder with special circumstances for financial gain. Judge Lionel Stone (Scott Lawrence) gives the defense two options: to continue with Mickey’s current bail and waive his right to a speedy trial or have bail revoked and return him to jail but keep his speedy trial in place. For Mickey, this choice isn’t a difficult one — he wants this trial over with — until he receives the tragic news of Legal’s heart attack and sudden death. Now, going back to jail means missing his beloved friend’s funeral, but even in his devastation, Mickey is determined to stick with the speedy trial. “When I read that episode, it brought me to tears,” says Garcia-Rulfo.

Episode 7 opens with Legal visiting Mickey in a dream. In Gould’s final scene, the wise character offers the same brand of amusing encouragement he always gave in life. Mickey asks, “What am I gonna do without you, Legal?” He answers, “Same thing you did with me. Figure it out.” According to Rodriguez, who directed the episode, the death was “very fitting” for the story of this season. “The loss is so hard for Mickey because Legal’s basically a surrogate father to him, and [Mickey has] always gone to him for advice to help him work out a case,” she explains. “Now, he has to rely on himself and his team.”

Humphrey shares that working with Gould throughout the series was an “honor and thrill,” especially since the legendary actor has deep and direct ties to the genre that inspired The Lincoln Lawyer. “The look and feel of our show has been heavily influenced by the great California noir films. One of those films is The Long Goodbye, which Elliott [Gould] was the star of,” he says. “So there’s this kind of meta thing of having an older Elliott now in our show in a different part. It’s a living, breathing connection to that time and that visual feel.”

Though there were a lot of tears, hugs, and applause as the team filmed Gould’s goodbye, Rodriguez points out that Legal’s appearance in Mickey’s dream so soon after his death shows that the character could be back in some form next season. “Look, you never say never on The Lincoln Lawyer,” she says. “I mean, we’ve proven that we have ghosts and flashbacks.” Adds Humphrey, “There’s no reason necessarily that we might not see him again someday.”

What does biofuel have to do with Mickey’s case?

While trying to prove his innocence, Mickey and his team discover that Sam Scales — under the name Kirk Lennon — had recently gotten his commercial driver’s license and established an LLC called AirKing Trucking. The LLC has one client, BioGreen, a company that allegedly converts bio waste into biofuel. As Mickey explains in Episode 4, “There’s big money in green energy. Where there’s money, there’s scams. And where there’s a scam …” “… There’s Sam,” Izzy says. And they’re right! Sam’s latest — and last — con involved scamming the government out of biofuel subsidies, but this time, he was working with someone else from Mickey’s past.

In Season 2, Mickey defended Lisa Trammell (Lana Parrilla), a chef and restaurateur who was accused of murdering a wealthy developer, Mitchell Bondurant. Mickey won her case, arguing that Lisa was framed by a shady construction company owner named Alex Grant (Michael A. Goorjian), who was being investigated by the FBI for ties to the Armenian mob. When he was brought to testify, Alex pled the fifth, which made him look guilty and lost him a major construction deal.

Three years later, after discovering that Sam’s biofuel subsidies scam had been under investigation by the FBI, Mickey gets a court order to obtain any information the bureau had collected. But that doesn’t go over well with the feds. At the end of Episode 4, two FBI agents show up at Mickey’s home and threaten him. One of those agents is Felix Vasquez (Hemky Madera), whom Mickey recognizes as the same agent that had been building a case against Alex in Season 2.

From there, the team figures out that Grant, now known as Alex Gazarian, was running the con with Sam. Izzy and Cisco piece together that BioGreen is owned by Jeanine Ferrigno (Emmanuelle Chriqui), who just happens to be Gazarian’s longtime girlfriend. “Classic mob shit,” Mickey says. As he later explains to his mentor, Legal, Mickey believes that Gazarian was out for revenge — against himself and against Sam. “I can’t prove it yet, but I think Sam might have been talking to the FBI,” he says. “What if Gazarian found out?”

So Sam Scales was working with the FBI?

Yes! At the start of the season finale, Mickey is kidnapped by his court-assigned police escort and taken to an abandoned train yard. There, Agent Dawn Ruth (Sasha Alexander), who had once tried to intimidate Mickey, confirms his suspicions. Sam was an informant for the FBI in their investigation of Gazarian’s sham operation. But if the feds were to testify to that in court (thereby exonerating Mickey by suggesting Gazarian had a motive to murder Sam), it would compromise their investigation.

“It’s not a one-off scam. It’s happening all over the country,” Agent Ruth explains. “The players behind the scam are all the same, too. Some of the biggest organized crime groups in America, taking in millions.” So the FBI wants Mickey to keep his mouth shut, even if it means he ends up in jail for a crime he didn’t commit.

OK, so who actually murdered Sam Scales?

Mickey was correct: Gazarian had Sam whacked and framed Mickey. But the murder wasn’t carried out for the reason Mickey thought. After Gazarian is killed — some fellow mobsters throw him out a hotel window because they don’t like all the attention Sam’s murder is getting — his girlfriend, Jeanine, goes on the run with Cisco, who hopes to get her to help in Mickey’s case. While in hiding, Jeanine tells Maggie exactly why Gazarian killed Sam. He actually had no idea Sam had been talking to the FBI. Instead, he was angry because he found out that Sam had been skimming money off the top of their biofuel operation. In other words, as Maggie puts it, “Sam was scamming the scammers.” One of his cons finally caught up to him.

Does Mickey win his trial?

Not exactly. But don’t worry, the Lincoln lawyer’s name is cleared. With Gazarian dead, Mickey’s only hope to prove his innocence in court is to get Jeanine to testify. But that’s a nonstarter. She’s worried about retaliation from the mobsters who killed her boyfriend, and Mickey and Maggie can’t really protect her in exchange for her testimony. So, with help from Lorna and Izzy’s new girlfriend, Grace (Gigi Zumbado), Mickey bluffs his way into securing Jeanine protection from the district attorney’s office by convincing the FBI that she’s going to take the stand, which would blow up their investigation.

In the finale, while waiting for Mickey to call Jeanine as a witness, Judge Stone receives a note, which prompts him to call a recess and ask counsel to join him in chambers. District Attorney Adam Suarez (Philip Anthony-Rodriguez), Steven Tremblay (Larry Poindexter), the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office, and Agent Ruth are there. Tremblay explains that Jeanine can’t testify, because her life is in danger due to her ties to their investigation. In order to ensure her testimony is no longer necessary, the DA’s office is willing to drop the charges against Mickey if he agrees to stay silent until the federal case is closed — but who knows when that could be?

This, of course, gets an intense reaction out of Dana Berg, who has been working hard to make sure Mickey Haller doesn’t go free. “You have to give these characters vulnerability and insecurity. They are this way for a reason, and if you are never allowed to show these characters being vulnerable, you cannot relate to them,” Zimmer says of the moment Dana lets everyone in Judge Stone’s chambers see that the DA’s offer has gotten to her. “I was constantly looking for ways to show that she’s a human being. She’s really good at her job, but it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t affect her.”

Like in all his cases, though, Mickey is driven by a sense of justice. Having the charges dropped in exchange for his silence isn’t enough, especially with his livelihood on the line. Instead, he tells DA Suarez that Berg must publicly exonerate him. “He’s one of those characters that will compromise anything for the truth,” says Garcia-Rulfo. Mickey needs to make sure there’s no doubt that he’s innocent. “He’d prefer to go down than to have that ghost [hanging] over his life,” the actor adds. “He always takes chances, he always jumps into the abyss in the pursuit of righteousness.”

To Dana’s horror, the district attorney agrees. Jeanine is taken into protective custody, and Mickey’s record is cleared. As he walks through the courthouse, he realizes this nightmare is finally over for him and his family, and Mickey breaks down in Maggie’s arms. “The whole season’s building to that,” says Humphrey. “It’s a very simple moment. It’s not a big, drawn out scene, and neither of them say very much. It’s almost more powerful the less words there are.”

“It’s his realization that he was this close to going to prison,” Rodriguez adds. “I really loved how Liz [Friedlander] shot it too, with people going about their regular day, and nobody has any idea that this terrible thing had just transpired, and his life had almost completely changed forever. The lack of words is the best part of it.” Garcia-Ruflo believes that this “powerful” moment of true vulnerability is one that Mickey could only have with his ex-wife. “The scenes with Maggie are the most raw,” he says. “Every scene that I have through the whole series with Maggie is where you see the real Mickey.”

How does The Lincoln Lawyer Season 4 end?

As LA’s hottest defense attorney, Mickey Haller has long understood that the US justice system is flawed, but by the end of Season 4, he’s more acutely aware of that than ever before. “Being wrongfully accused of something, spending time in jail, and having to fight for your very life or your freedom is just fundamentally different from doing that on behalf of clients that you represent. It can’t not change you,” says Humphrey. “What that change means to Mickey or how that change manifests itself in his life is something we’re excited to explore going forward.”

In the meantime, Mickey’s thrilled to enjoy some pozole at home with his daughter, Hayley (Krista Warner), and Maggie, who has allowed herself to begin rebuilding a deep connection with her ex. In the finale, as the mother and daughter head back to San Diego, Maggie shares that she misses living in LA and misses Mickey. “The scene at the end of the season with Hayley is really important,” says Humphrey. “When they’re driving away, you’re getting a sense of what Maggie does really feel about this, and maybe it’s not what she thought.” Still, Maggie insists to Hayley, “It’s complicated. It’s always been complicated with your father and me. But my life is in San Diego right now, and I have to make that work.”

So, for now, the answer to “what’s next for Maggie and Mickey?” remains unanswered, even for Garcia-Rulfo. “A lot of people stop me in the street, and they’re like, ‘When are they going to get together?’ Honestly, I don’t know. All I know for sure is that she’s the love of his life.” But, with Season 5 already in the works, he’s as eager as anyone to find out how this relationship unfolds. “We’ll see,” he says. “I’m excited to start reading the scripts.”

As the dust settles after his exoneration, Mickey takes his powder blue Lincoln Continental for a spin and, uncharacteristically, stops at a store for some groceries to make a home-cooked meal. There, he notices a woman, played by Cobie Smulders, staring at him. On his walk back to his car, she catches up to him, and just as she’s about to introduce herself, shots are fired. The woman pushes Mickey down, saving his life, and Agent Ruth appears to tell him the Armenian mob was still targeting him. After arrests are made, Mickey asks the woman who she is, and she shockingly says, “Actually, I’m your sister.” In true The Lincoln Lawyer fashion, the season ends with an epic cliffhanger.

According to Humphrey and Rodriguez, introducing this new character will allow them to explore the Harry Bosch–Mickey Haller crossover that fans love from the books in a way that’s unique to the series. “The desire to expand Mickey’s universe in terms of his family connections was always there. … We just thought it was something that maybe our show was missing,” Humphrey explains. “That all inspired inventing a character who, in some ways, is similar to what’s in the books. But it’s a completely different person, a completely different character, with a completely different backstory.”

Plus, that final scene sets up a lot of possibilities. “Well, first of all, the obvious question: Is she telling the truth? Is she his sister? And if so, what does that mean?” Humphrey adds. “Mickey has these very set ideas about who he is and about his past. What if there’s more to the story than he thought?”

(Re-)watch Seasons 1 to 4 of The Lincoln Lawyer now.