Spoilers for Season 3 of The Lincoln Lawyer are ahead! If you aren’t caught up, you can stream the series with a Netflix subscription.
I was livid when Eddie died halfway through Season 3 of The Lincoln Lawyer. However, my dramatic reaction proves why that choice was such a good one. So, when I chatted with the Netflix hit’s co-showrunner Dailyn Rodriguez after the junior season premiered on the 2024 TV schedule, I had to ask about this monumental moment. And I have to admit, I agree with her comments about why they “nailed” this tragic storyline.
This story begins with Rodriguez telling me during an interview for CinemaBlend that they actually made a change from the book The Gods of Guilt, which Season 3 is based on, as they turned Mickey’s older driver from the novel into a younger guy. They did this for a bunch of reasons, as you’ll soon see. However, one of them stemmed from the idea of the character being connected to the lawyer and his family, as the showrunner told me:
We knew we didn't want to kill Izzy. And in the book, there is a driver that dies, and I came into the room one day with this idea for this character. I thought it would be interesting if there was a personal connection between the driver and Mickey and Maggie and Hayley to give us something, because what we needed to do is establish a character that we really liked and we really cared about in a very short period of time, and that's really hard to do.
Well, mission accomplished. The Lincoln Lawyer is one of Netflix’s best shows to binge because of its cliffhangers and its characters. In just five episodes, I grew to adore Eddie, and the fact that he died at the end of Episode 5 was so incredibly tragic.
Rodriguez went on to tell me that that’s exactly what they wanted. And they did it by crafting a character who was “sort of like a young, more innocent Mickey.” The showrunner also told me that they wanted Eddie to “upend stereotypes about Latinos” too. Explaining all this a bit further, she said:
So, I like the idea that he is masculine yet feminine in all the good ways. That he does crochet. To me, he feels very Gen Z. He's very like of a time and place, urban Gen Z, very in touch with his emotions and his feelings, and wants to be creative. Also wants to take care of this vessel that is his body… So there is a very masculine part about him, but there's something very modern to him. And I feel like you don't see – it's not an often thing that you see in Latino characters, male, Latin characters.
Eddie was so gosh darn lovable, however, he also really knew how to care for Mickey and those he loved. In that way, he’s a lot like the lawyer he drove around, and that commonality helped highlight the juxtaposition between the two characters, as Rodriguez explained:
So I thought it would be interesting to have that kind of character juxtapose against Mickey – who I think is sometimes a little bit of a bull in a china shop – and have those two characters have to interact all the time. And I think he brings out a lot of the sweetness in Mickey, and a lot of, sort of, the paternal parts of Mickey's personality, and he's a good comic foil.
This season of The Lincoln Lawyer that aired on Netflix’s 2024 schedule did show Mickey in a more vulnerable place. His daughter wasn’t talking to him, his case this season really challenged him emotionally and mentally, and the death of Eddie really took a toll, because he was such a genuine, pure and kind character.
Mickey and audiences alike fell in love with Eddie so fast, and that’s truly what made his storyline and death work so well. To that point, Dailyn Rodriguez told me why she thinks they really “nailed” this storyline:
And I felt like if we could accomplish that, if we could do that in five episodes, and really have us care about this character, then it would resonate when he dies. And I feel like we've gotten so much feedback. So I think we actually, I'm very proud of this, because I think we did a really good job – the writers, Ted [Humphrey] and I really like -- I think we may have nailed that one.
I must say, I agree with her. By the time I got to the end of The Lincoln Lawyer’s third season, I was still so sad about Eddie. While I don’t like that feeling, and I take a bit of issue with how he was grieved on the show, it does show the success of this storyline as they managed to make us care about this guy in a matter of episodes.
Now, as we wait to see if The Lincoln Lawyer gets picked up for a fourth season, I’ll be contemplating this shocking yet brilliant decision to kill off Eddie even more. While I’m upset about it, yes, I also understand that that’s the desired reaction to a plot twist like this. So, I’d be reminisce to not admit that, yeah, Dailyn Rodriguez and her team really did nail this arc.
