The Lincoln Lawyer has returned to Netflix right on time, and Season 3 is worth the wait. The third go-around in Mickey Haller’s world is the most compelling one, because of the season’s increased emotional stakes and its further look into what made Mickey the man audiences have come to root for. if there was somehow still any doubt that the TV show is better than the Matthew McConaughey movie, this season quashes it.

The Season 3 premiere, “La Culebra,” drops two new cases in Mickey’s lap — both of which have a personal connection to him. The first is a continuation of the Season 2 finale, as Mickey learns that Glory Days has been killed, after she helped him in his previous trial. The second is intended as comic relief, but it still winds up being kind of poignant, because there’s a sense from the off that showrunners Ted Humphrey and Dailyn Rodriguez are holding nothing back.

The Lincoln Lawyer Season 3 Feels Like a Culmination

Season 3, Episode 1 Establishes Mickey’s Emotional Crisis

The Lincoln Lawyer Season 3 is based upon Michael Connelly’s 2013 novel The Gods of Guilt, which directly follows The Fifth Witness in the Mickey Haller book series. Anyone who watched Season 2 knew that this would have to be the basis for Season 3, and the premiere pays off that extra anticipation. Connelly’s novel did a wonderful job of making one of the oldest crime plots — someone the hero knows is killed — feel fresh, and the TV show is able to do that again.

That’s largely down to the performance of Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, who is able to toggle back and forth between the usually cocksure, witty version of Mickey to a more vulnerable and even blindsided Mickey in a way that never seems jarring. For the story to succeed, Garcia-Rulfo has to be capable of conveying Mickey at his emotionally weakest, and that includes not waiting for dialogue or action to get him there. The actor almost communicates more in his reactions and expressions than he does in his lines, save an important moment in which Mickey reluctantly agrees to defend Julian La Cosse — the man charged with Glory’s murder. The entire episode orbits around whether or not Mickey will take Julian’s case, so that scene has to sing, and it does. Audiences can see and hear in Garcia-Rulfo’s performance an incredible amount of self-doubt and self-loathing that isn’t expressed.

Mickey Haller: This one’s personal.

Lorna Crane: Because that always works out well.

But “La Culebra” includes a few flashbacks to formative moments in Mickey’s life that happened 15 years earlier, and it’s also impressive that there are some differences in Garcia-Rulfo’s work in those scenes. Even some of the best flashback scenes on TV can feel like the actors doing the same things with different hair. In The Lincoln Lawyer, there’s a greater lightness to Mickey, and even a bittersweet feeling in the scene where he and future ex-wife Maggie talk about their future. These scenes send a clear message to viewers: that the case of the season may be “who killed Glory Days,” but the true question of Season 3 is “Who is Mickey Haller?”

The Lincoln Lawyer Gets a Huge Boost From Holt McCallany

The Mindhunter Star Joins the Show for Season 3

Netflix viewers will get a kick out of seeing Holt McCallany, who previously starred in the streamer’s fantastic series Mindhunter and is set as the lead in an upcoming Netflix show called Waterfront. At this point, Netflix should probably just give him some stock in the company. McCallany is as close to a bankable talent as it gets, and his character Bishop is the lightning rod that sends shockwaves through what would otherwise be a pretty dour affair. One of the flashbacks reveals that Mickey undermined Bishop’s testimony on a previous case, causing the then-detective to suffer humiliation and career blowback. Bishop resurfaces as the District Attorney’s investigator handling Glory’s murder, in a true “oh, shit” moment in the Lincoln Lawyer premiere.

That’s because audiences know from Mindhunter, Lights Out and other shows how talented McCallany is, and how he’s absolutely going to bring it to Garcia-Rulfo across the season. He takes the incredibly tired “tough guy cop” character archetype and actually does something with it. Viewers get the point that Bishop hates Mickey and that he’s likely not a lot of fun at parties. But the actor gives Bishop a dose of righteous indignation. He’s not just upset because Mickey torpedoed his career; he’s angry because he represents the double-edged sword of being a defense attorney. The eternal question is always “what if” after every acquittal. Through Bishop, The Lincoln Lawyer has a mouthpiece for that moral dilemma, and one that deserves to be taken seriously.

Bishop: These tricks you play, Haller? Somebody’s gonna end up dead because of you.

Bishop essentially acts as the devil on Mickey’s shoulder. He’s another way to illustrate what Mickey’s going through, while also giving him a formidable opponent — because as charming as he is, the show doesn’t work if he’s always getting one over. That’s illustrated in the other, self-contained case in The Lincoln Lawyer Season 3, Episode 1, when Mickey answers a distress call from his daughter Hayley. What unfolds next is funny and entertaining, but it doesn’t have the same kind of staying power.

The Season 3 Premiere’s Humor Is Its Weak Spot

Ironically, What Sets the Series Apart Gets Overshadowed

Both The Lincoln Lawyer and fellow Connelly series Bosch have a dry wit that they use as comic relief. It works particularly well on Bosch because of actor Titus Welliver’s own sharp sense of humor. The Lincoln Lawyer has found success with it, too, but the funnier part of the Season 3 premiere falls flat simply because the dramatic parts of it are so good. When there’s so much tension between Mickey and Bishop, and so much going on in Mickey’s head, the case of Eddie Rojas unintentionally feels like an extraneous detour.

Eddie was Hayley’s babysitter growing up, and so when he gets charged with carjacking and saddled with a terrible (unseen) public defender, she asks her parents to help. With Maggie in San Diego, it’s up to Mickey to step in on short notice. There’s the predictable beat where he finds out Eddie didn’t tell him the whole truth about what he did with a rich guy’s Lamborghini, and once Eddie also reveals the woman he saw in the car wasn’t the complainant’s wife, audiences also know where that’s going. Mickey indirectly exposes the man’s infidelity, leading his wife to have an understandable outburst in open court, and Eddie’s charges are dismissed.

Hayley Haller: Don’t you want to do something good for a change?

“La Culebra” subsequently introduces Eddie as Mickey’s new driver, and his being overeager and high-strung wears on viewers even more than it does on Mickey. He’s painted with the same broad brush as the “quirky tech geek” stereotype, except his expertise is in fitness instead of any computer knowledge. But the idea of having someone to diffuse the emotional drama is a good one, because by its end, The Lincoln Lawyer Season 3 premiere is both breathtakingly exciting and emotionally draining. Audiences want to know what Mickey is going to do next, but they’re also afraid and heartbroken for him, too. This is the season that will change everything.

The Lincoln Lawyer Season 3 is now streaming on Netflix.