Posted by As it happened with the first season, also in Season 2, The Lincoln Lawyer proved to be one of those series that keep you on your toes until the final scene. You always look for something you didn’t see, and the truth is never the one you feel is apparent. One of the reasons is that Michael Connelly’s mastery is behind the series, but that’s not the only one: the TV show can take the initiative and expose facts a little differently, which is what happened in Season 2. Did Lisa Trammel kill Bondurant in the TV show? How can the ending be explained? Let’s clarify everything in the most straightforward way.
You can watch the trailer for The Lincoln Lawyer Season 2 Part 2 here on Youtube.
The Lincoln Lawyer Season 2 ending explained: did Lisa kill Bondurant?
What happened in The Lincoln Lawyer Season 2 Part 1 (the first five episodes) was clear, and we explained its plot in this article: Lisa Trammel is accused of murdering Mitchell Bondurant, a real estate businessman that was operating in the area where Lika has her restaurant. The Lincoln Lawyer Mickey Haller (who was romantically involved with Lisa before her arrest) defends her. The evidence against Lisa is strong: Bondurant’s blood is on her gardening gloves, and Lisa had the motive for the murder. So the question was already valid in Part 1: Did Lisa kill Bondurant in The Lincoln Lawyer?
As Mickey Haller repeatedly explains, it doesn’t matter what he believes (he’s the first to have doubts since the beginning). What matters is a strong defense line. And for this case, Mickey decides their best chance is to create a reasonable doubt that someone planted the evidence against Lisa. For this reason, The Lincoln Lawyer manages to find another person who can have strong reasons to kill Bondurant: Alex Grant, aka Alex Kazarian, another businessman involved with the local criminality, who became FBI’s person of interest just a few days after Bondurant threatened him via email.
Mickey Haller is great at that, and his defense line is ultimately successful. In The Lincoln Lawyer, the strategy was quite advanced: Mickey calls Alex Grant to testify and brings him into such dangerous fields that he’s forced to invoke the Fifth Amendment. This way, the defense cannot question him, and the jury will believe he has something big to hide. All this would generate the necessary “reasonable doubt” that will lead the jury to declare Lisa innocent of the murder charge.
But is Lisa Trammel really innocent, and who killed Mitchell Bondurant? The answers to these questions represent a slight difference between Season 2 of the TV show The Lincoln Lawyer and Michael Connelly’s book The Fifth Witness, on which the series is based. In the series, what we see after the verdict seems to imply that the person who killed Mitchell Bondurant is Walter Kim, who saw Bondurant as a threat because he could uncover that he was a bribed inspector. In the TV show, Lisa didn’t kill Bondurant. She killed her husband, though, and that’s what Mickey discovers after the trial. Lorna will also suspect Lisa was the one who sent the guys to Mickey’s parking lot. Therefore, similarly to what happens in Season 1, the ending of The Lincoln Lawyer S2 has explained that Mickey’s client wasn’t a good character, although she’s declared innocent.
For those curious about what happens in Michael Connelly’s book, The Fifth Witness: in the book, Mickey Haller discovers that Lisa really killed Mitchell Bondurant (and her husband, too). This becomes a turning point in his career: from that moment on, the Lincoln Lawyer will express his intention to become a district attorney to avoid being again in the position of defending real criminals who lie to him.
The little difference we see at the ending of The Lincoln Lawyer Season 2 is easily explained: the TV show didn’t want to depict a story too similar to the first season, so at least this time, Mickey’s client was really innocent of the accuse she received at the trial. The show is open to a possible Season 3 involving the death of Glory Days and Mickey’s new job defending the guy accused of her murder. Will we have the chance to see him again in action?
