An edited image of The Lincoln Lawyer and Bosch

The Lincoln Lawyer writer, executive producer, and co-showrunner Dailyn Rodriguez just broke the news many of us kinda sorta already knew but had hoped wouldn’t be true. Mickey Haller and Harry Bosch won’t be meeting onscreen despite their coexistence in the same fictional universe — the books of Michael Connelly. In fact, Haller and Bosch are half-brothers, sharing a father, J. Michael Haller, and the two both work in LA (one as a detective, one as a defense attorney). So you would think that bringing them together would be inevitable, but as Rodriguez told MovieWeb, “As of right now, we don’t see any way that we can have a crossover.”

She went on to detail the more behind-the-scenes IP reasons for this:

“It’s just two platforms [Netflix and Amazon] owning two different properties, and it sucks. That being said, I mean, our version of Mickey Haller is maybe slightly lighter than the books, and I think we [could] figure out a way to bring Bosch, the Bosch that exists on Amazon, into our world, but they are totally different shows.”

That said, Rodriguez explains that to date the creative team has found ways to fulfill plot and story needs from the source books without requiring the crossover. “I think the best way we’ve been able to do it is by expanding the characters that we have, that we have created, by expanding Cisco and Izzy.” How then will they handle Bosch coming into the source material in even more significant ways down the road? Rodriguez explains:

In other books, like Resurrection Walk, where Bosch is very big, we will figure out a way to maybe create a character that would fill in for that character, so what happens in those books would be satisfying to the audience.

The Lincoln Lawyer Season 4 Will Bring Back Maggie in a Big Way

Despite not getting Bosch in The Lincoln Lawyer, Rodriguez did give us an update on the future of another beloved character, Maggie:

“She’s not big in season three because she’s not big in the book, so there was not too much for us to be able to use with her in season three. But if anyone’s familiar with The Law of Innocence , which is what the fourth season would be based on, she’s a much bigger character.”

The future of The Lincoln Lawyer and Mickey Haller seem to be in good hands, with a lot of exciting fan-favorite elements returning and expanding despite Bosch not making a future appearance. At least… not yet. The Lincoln Lawyer is streaming on Netflix.