With Julian La Cosse’s trial in the Glory Days case still some time away, Mickey Haller and his team are fixated on using the advance hearings on allowable witnesses to construct their framework, specifically designed to implicate bent DEA agent James DeMarco. The footage from the sting set up by Cisco and Izzy in The Lincoln Lawyer Episode 7, which caught DeMarco and Neil Bishop breaking into a house and planting drugs inside, is definitely an inadmissible “time bomb.” Mickey says it’s no game-changer at all if he and Lorna, as his now-official second attorney, can’t get Judge Turner to “un-nix” DeMarco’s potential testimony. Which is how we enter another contentious meeting in the judge’s chambers between them and DA Forsythe. If they can illustrate how Neil Bishop is relevant as a witness, then the next domino to fall would likely be DeMarco. Leave it to Lorna! Fresh from passing the bar exam, the newly-minted attorney makes acres of case law smoke that ultimately helps persuade Judge Turner.

In that terrific scene, Mickey Haller barely says a thing. He looks between Forsythe and Lorna as they trade barbs before the judge, but he looks mostly at Lorna, and he’s beaming. It’s not like she wasn’t extremely competent before, but as a fully-vested attorney, she’s become truly formidable. A further nice touch: last episode, we saw Lorna working through her draft of this very argument, which pivots on the verb form “to thwart.” 

We’re only two episodes from the conclusion of Lincoln Lawyer Season 3. There will be some kind of resolution in the twisty, turny Glory Days murder case – there’s another twist of the knife on that front, so to speak, which we’ll get to that in a second – but in the meantime, this is a good place to highlight this season’s increased comfort level, and the confidence and chemistry displayed by its core cast. For all his charm and magic-making in the courtroom, Mickey Haller knows he’d be nowhere without Lorna, Cisco, and Izzy. (Well, and Eddie Rojas, too. Remember him in your comments on Crochet TikTok.) And this season, we’ve loved how that understanding from Mickey has manifested in the team’s actions. Like with Lorna, running things in the judge’s chambers. Or another moment here in episode 9, when Cisco knows he only has to plant the seed that will get someone to speak. Angus Sampson plays this moment perfectly, with just Cisco’s features and temperament.

And assuming there is a Lincoln Lawyer Season 4, the Lincoln Lawyer himself will need a new full-time driver. Because while Izzy Letts is happy to fill in at her old job, she’s proven to be an incredible office manager at the always chaotic Haller & Associates. When the television production subletting her dance studio offers her a position as their full-time choreographer, she brings her feelings to Mickey. As fellow former addicts, they have a bond. But as season 3 has shown, it’s also become much bigger than that. “You’re my family, too,” Iz says. “You, Lorna, Cisco. And I wanna fully commit, but I’m not a lawyer and I can’t drive you around forever.” Mickey officially offers Izzy the role of office manager, which is a relief, because we really thought she was going to depart and pursue dance full-time. Lincoln Lawyer: locking down all of its most important moving parts, except for any new cast who it almost immediately kills. 

Remember the “Man in the Hat” quandary from the Roosevelt Hotel security footage? Not only do we know that was Neil Bishop, but now the Glory Days jury does, too, thanks to a wily court maneuver Lorna calls their “Trojan horse.” By putting the hotel manager on the stand, Mickey gets him to point out Bishop in the footage, how he was clearly following Glory, and how Forsythe and the prosecution never admitted any of this into evidence. The DA is furious with his investigator, Mickey and Lorna point and laugh at them in the lobby, and it’s a big win for affecting how the jury perceives Julian La Cosse. Not only that, but with Mickey’s further questioning of Detective Mark Whitten, he proves that Glory Days called the DEA in the hours before her murder. Whitten’s inability to explain this informs Judge Turner’s decision to allow DeMarco’s testimony at Julian’s trial. The only question left for the team is whether they can get him to actually show up.   

Well, not the only question. Remember that twisty knife? While Mickey announces Izzy’s promotion to the staff, and they celebrate their successful day in court, they also tuck into takeout from Din Tai Fung and raise a round of matcha milk teas to the memory of Eddie Rojas. “To those we lost along the way.” Which is crazy, because at that exact moment, their client, Julian La Cosse, is attacked by another inmate during a prison transfer. The guy who was wasting away in custody so much that he didn’t want his partner David to visit him, who required Mickey’s tailor to take in his suits, is shivved repeatedly in the gut by someone who we’re certain to learn was put up to the attack by crooked DEA agent James DeMarco.

He was already wasting away in jail physically and emotionally. Can Julian survive after being stabbed in the abdomen with a homemade blade? That’s unclear as we move to Episode 9 of The Lincoln Lawyer, which has always loved to insert significant twists like this into its late inning moments. Julian’s life will hang in the balance while the Glory Days murder case continues to manufacture twists of its own.   

Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.