The article contains spoilers for The Lincoln Lawyer season 2.

The Lincoln Lawyer showrunner and author discuss the significant book changes in season 2. Throughout The Lincoln Lawyer season 2's ten episodes, the focus is on Lisa Trammell. Both a love interest to the lead character Mickey Haller and the center of Mickey's big case, Trammell is presented differently than she is in the books. For instance, her name is spelled differently. And, far more crucially, she doesn't have a relationship with Mickey, and the details of her case are also significantly altered.

In an interview with The New York Times, showrunner Ted Humphrey and author Michael Connelly talk about the changes in The Lincoln Lawyer season 2 adaptation. Humphrey begins by candidly discussing some of the motives behind the changes, whether it's updating the story to feel more relevant in 2023 or making alterations to make the television series less claustrophobic. Connelly adds his thoughts, praising the shifts that Humphrey has made. Read their quotes below:

Humphrey: "In “The Fifth Witness,” the client is a woman who is having her home foreclosed upon by a mortgage banker in the wake of the 2008 mortgage crisis. We updated that to something that felt more relevant to Los Angeles in 2023, which was, first of all, the ongoing gentrification debates and then the world of foodie culture and celebrity chefs."

He still spends at least half his time in that car. For him to have an office was an important thing for the show: You need places to have scenes, places for other characters to be when he is not there.

The other thing is the car itself. While we love it and it is literally like a mobile set that goes around L.A., after a while it gets a bit claustrophobic to shoot in.

In part because we did not want Season 2 to feel too much like Season 1 — the ending felt a little too similar. The moral quandary of whether your client is guilty or not is a quandary that every defense lawyer faces, but at the same time every defense lawyer will tell you it doesn’t matter — you just have to defend to the best of your ability. That kind of goes out the window when it’s somebody you have a relationship with. So it was all in the furtherance of thickening this stew and making this as juicy and as interesting as possible."

Connelly: “What I am most pleased and proud of with ‘The Lincoln Lawyer’ is that Ted has overseen the updating of 10-to-15-year-old novels to very contemporary stories without sacrificing one bit of the character of Mickey Haller and his cohorts."

Related: The Lincoln Lawyer Season 2 - 14 Biggest Changes To The Fifth Witness Book

The Changes Impact Lincoln Lawyer Season 2's Ending

Lisa is found not guilty in her trial at the end of The Lincoln Lawyer season 2, but there's the suggestion that she's still not as innocent as the verdict suggests. She could have been involved in both the murder she's accused of and the brutal attack that Mickey suffers at the end of season 2, episode 5, "Suspicious Minds." It also turns out that Lisa is guilty of killing her husband, which leads to a tense confrontation with Mickey.

That confrontation would not have worked as well outside the personal relationship established between the two characters. It's common for courtroom dramas, especially on television, to introduce the trope of a protagonist that wrestles with defending their client because of a pre-existing relationship. Mickey experiences that with Lisa, and he'll go through another version of the dilemma if The Lincoln Lawyer season 3 happens.

At the end of The Lincoln Lawyer season 2, Mickey discovers that he's been tasked with defending the person accused of murdering a sex worker named Giselle Dallinger, whom Mickey knew well. It makes for a potentially darker third installment, which will likely follow Connelly's books in some ways but deviate in others.

Source: The New York Times