Lethal Weapon made quite a few changes heading into Season 3. If you've kept tabs on the headlines over the past few months, you already know that Martin Riggs is out (killed off actually) and that Seann William Scott has been brought in as his replacement. You may also know that Avery is working in politics and that Paola Lázaro is being brought in to play a new character. Sadly, however, that means a fun side character is also out of the series moving forward. Bowman will not be back, but if it's any consolation, we know why the characters has been kicked off of the show.
During the Season 3 premiere of Lethal Weapon, we learned that Seann William Scott's Wesley Cole character is quite a bit different than Clayne Crawford's Martin Riggs. He has different motivations and a different backstory, of course. However, unlike Riggs, Wesley Cole doesn't have a drinking problem and he also doesn't really seem to have a death wish. He's getting over something that happened during his work with the FBI and he's highly competent in his fighting tactics, as well as caring, as is shown when he is trying to reinsert himself in his daughter and ex's lives after being gone for some time. Apparently, the writers on the series thought the characters shared enough similarities that they wanted to go in a different direction, with Matt Miller previously saying about Bowman:
He had a very enthusiastic persona, and our concern was that we're giving some of those characteristics to Cole. We didn't want to see too much overlap of that vibe.
Now, to be honest, I haven't personally seen a ton of similarities between Wesley Cole and Zack Bowman so far. Bowman's most notable characteristic was bringing soup to crime scenes, which was a fun quirk, to be sure. He's also upbeat, but Cole has only been in one episode so far and he's already far more fleshed out than Bowman ever was. In the coming weeks, maybe it will be clearer why Bowman is out and the new character is in.
This won't be the first time Sonya Bailey gets a new partner. In Season 1, she worked with Alex Cruz, who was a gang member who eventually became an LAPD officer. Then she worked with Bowman and moving forward she'll be with new partner "The Gute," who won't appear until Episode 6 of Season 3. There's no word on how Bowman will be written out of Lethal Weapon, but if I had to guess he won't get shot like Riggs. Hopefully we'll get a line in the script mentioning a transfer or something, and we'll keep all you Lethal Weapon fans updated as soon as we have more information.
In the meantime, Lethal Weapon, with all of its various retoolings, is back on TV and airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET, only on Fox. You can see when your other favorite shows will be returning with our fall TV premiere schedule.
