The Lincoln Lawyer Season 4 finale is nothing like we’re used to.
It completely breaks the “rules” established over the past three seasons: the main case ends without a courtroom verdict, and instead of setting up the case for the next season, it introduces a new character.
On The Lincoln Lawyer Season 4 Episode 10, “The Law of Innocence,” Mickey Haller gets the murder charge dropped and meets his sister, Allison.
Dropped charges are generally not what Mickey is about. Even one of his Lincoln’s number plates puts its out there: NTGLTY.
This has been the default legal position on all cases. The prosecution either proves the client is guilty, or the defense pokes enough holes to secure a not-guilty verdict.
But when the defense attorney is also the client, Haller knows one thing he’s never been sure of in all his past cases: the client is innocent.
He knows he didn’t kill Sam Scales, and the charge has ruined his life and the lives of those close to him. Hailey is having a bad time in school, and his firm is bleeding as clients abandon ship.
Mickey is simply not interested in the not-guilty verdict because the stigma always remains. He wants to prove his innocence by exposing the real killer. However, the FBI does not want that.
The second half of the season finale finds Mickey walking away a free man with his innocence intact.
The Lincoln Lawyer Season 4 Case Explained
This entire fiasco couldn’t have happened if the FBI were honest.
And if this were anyone else, they would have rotted in prison for a crime they never committed. But Mickey Haller didn’t get to where he is by letting himself be railroaded by every Tom, Dick, and Harry.
His insistence on innocence finds two willful giants deadlocked, unable to bridge the gap.
As the disadvantaged party, Mickey decides to prove his innocence by delivering the real suspect to the prosecution.
And so the deep dive into Sam begins. Now, Sam is not the ideal victim — the man scams for a living. Many people had the motivation to kill him.
However, Haller and his team learn that, before he was killed, Sam was in the middle of a major scam.
Known as “bleeding the beast,” it exploited weaknesses in government procedures, leaving organized crime to rake in millions from government subsidies in numerous green energy plants.
Whoever said there is no honor among thieves was quite right because Sam decides to scam the scam by skimming off the top.
The mob decides to kill him, and his death could have failed to touch Mickey if one of the mobsters, Alex Gazarian, had not had a grudge against Mickey for the thrashing he received in the Lisa Trammel case.
So he dumps Sam’s body in Mickey’s vehicle and sics the police on him.
The FBI is well aware of all this, but they have been working on a case to bring down the crime ring. If they interfered or testified in court, years of work would go down the drain.
On the one hand, we can see where they were coming from, but on the other hand, it’s total buffoonery.
An innocent man shouldn’t go to prison for years just because it’s convenient.
Prison changes people, their families, and their reputations. A guilty party might get something positive out of it. But if someone’s innocent, it decimates their life.
As the defendant, Mickey experiences everything in real time.
I am all for protecting the integrity of investigations, but where murder is involved, the rules change. Who cares about some green energy scam when a life is on the line and justice is at risk?
The FBI should have just come clean, taken that loss, and moved on. Who knows? Maybe they had enough to press charges.
And here’s another thing about criminals: they always commit more crimes.
A little (legal) surveillance would have revealed their next scam. Sure, it might have taken years to nail them, but everyone’s conscience would be free.
The FBI realizes they’re not winning this if Gazarian’s girlfriend, Jeanine, testifies, so they offer Mickey a deal: they’ll drop the charges in exchange for his silence.
Oh, but that’s no bueno!
Mickey protests, and rightly so. No one would ever know the conspiracy that nearly ruined his life. Hailey will never know that her father was innocent. Even worse, some people like Death Row Dana will forever believe Mickey killed Sam.
“I want my innocence,” Mickey insists in that tense chambers meeting. He demands exoneration, which the FBI agrees to because what other option do they have?
It’s incredibly satisfying to see justice served. Not paper justice made of deals and promises, but true, no-strings-attached justice.
The Sam Scales ordeal changes Mickey on a fundamental level. Once he’s back, it’s not business as usual. He’s not simply about to “WLK’EM;” he wants to resurrect ’em.
Mickey Enters His Resurrection Walk Era with a New Family Member
The lack of a courtroom verdict pales in comparison to what happens in the final six minutes of the episode.
Mickey goes to the store to get some ingredients for a home-cooked meal because Twin Tower food is like any other jail’s food: soulless and basic.
While shopping, a woman follows Mickey around, and since he’s used to women showing a lot of interest in him, Mickey doesn’t think much of it.
She later approaches him in the parking lot, and before much is spoken, she tackles him to the ground, saving him from a targeted gun hit.
It turns out the mob gets really angry when you cut off another one of their illicit revenue streams.
The woman introduces herself as Allison, Mickey’s sister. She is very important for the next chapter of Mickey’s story.
The Lincoln Lawyer will return for Season 5, which is based on Michael Connelly’s seventh book in The Lincoln Lawyer Series, The Resurrection Walk.
This chapter sees Mickey team up with his half-brother, Harry Bosch, to overturn wrongful convictions.
The problem is that rights to Bosch are owned by Prime Video, while Netflix owns the rights to Mickey’s story.
Since the family aspect is important and Netflix cannot secure Bosch, the workaround was to create a new Bosch-esque character to fill that gap.
Allison seems quite capable, given her sharp instincts, good eye, and physical prowess.
Showrunner Ted Humphrey teased this development to TV Fanatic during a Season 4 preview.
“We are certainly allowed to create new characters, and we can certainly expand the world. If we have an interesting idea for how to expand the world of Mickey’s family, we can look at how to do that,” he said.
In Connelly’s books, Haller and Bosch dive into Lucinda Sanz’s case, a woman accused of murdering her husband, but she has claimed innocence all the years she’s been in prison.
The Lincoln Lawyer takes some creative liberties in adapting Connelly’s books, so who knows what other changes might be made?
What other mysteries are on the horizon for Mickey & Co?
Fans will find out when The Lincoln Lawyer returns for its ten-episode fifth season.
Is Allison capable of replacing Bosch? Does Mickey’s current change pose a threat to the show?
Let’s keep the conversation going — it’s the only way the good stuff survives.
Say something in the comments, share if you’re moved to, and keep reading. Independent voices need readers like you.
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