Netflix The Lincoln Lawyer season 2 recap guide: All episodes explained

The Lincoln Lawyer season 2 episode 9 recap: The Fifth Witness

The penultimate episode of The Lincoln Lawyer season 2 begins with Lisa taking the stand as the defense begins presenting their case. She tells her side of the story well and appeals to the jury’s emotions. Lisa admits she hated Bondurant but only wanted to do right by her community. After, she and Mickey spend the weekend preparing her for cross-examination.

Their next witness is one of Lisa’s employees, René, who has nothing but nice things to say about Lisa. During cross, Andy brings up an old social media post she found. In the post, René ranted about how he had gotten sick of Lisa and wanted to quit his job. René says it was a one-time incident, but his comments on the post say otherwise, and ultimately, he does what Andy wants: he admits Lisa had a temper and could be hard to work with at times.

Next is a doctor who brings in a big mannequin to show the size difference between Lisa and Bondurant. Based on the physical demonstration, with Lorna acting as a stand-in for Lisa, there is no way that Lisa could have bludgeoned Bondurant with enough force to kill him from behind because she isn’t tall enough to reach him. But then Andy steps up and swiftly proves that if Bondurant was looking up at the ceiling with his head tilted back, Lisa could have done it.

But Mickey’s most significant play comes when Alex Grant finally takes the stand. Mickey gets him to admit to changing his last name from Kazarian to Grant and draws the connections between him and his crime syndicate family. His father and uncle are, or have, served time in prison.

Mickey then brings out the big guns, proof showing that Alex regularly visits his dad in jail and then would always go straight to his uncle’s bakery right after, insinuating that Alex is spreading information to and from his father in jail. Ultimately, Mickey asks Alex Grant if he is a participant in the Kazarian criminal organization.

Since Mickey had gotten Alex off-guard by having Henry tell him they had nothing, Alex is very off-balance on the stand and has to plead the fifth. It’s a big deal because now the jury will believe Alex is hiding something and stew on it until closing. It could make them feel there is enough reasonable doubt in the case to find Lisa not guilty.

The judge calls both attorneys into her office after. Andy is pissed since if a lawyer thinks a witness could plead the fifth, they’re not supposed to let them on the stand. The testimony will be stricken, but it’s too late to unring that particular bell. The jury heard it, and they will wonder. Mickey is adamant that he didn’t know, or at least there’s nothing to prove it was his plan even though we know it was his goal all along.

Then Mickey follows up with the real kicker by putting Cisco on the stand so he can testify to a photo he took that shows an Eagle Couriers truck parked outside Bondurant’s parking garage during the same timeframe the murder reportedly occurred. Alex Grant is one of Eagle Couriers’ leading investors. Mickey has done his job of painting Grant as a possible alternate suspect. Now we have to see if the jury agrees.

Andy can’t do anything about it, but she can give the jury something else to think about. Instead of waiting, she interjects that she’s ready for her closing argument now and delivers an excellent one, so the jury leaves with her closing argument as the last thing on their minds rather than Grant pleading the fifth. Mickey will have to pull out all of the stops for his closing.

But that evening, Mickey gets a surprising new break in the case. René, the employee from Lisa’s restaurant, stops by with some food. He notices a photo of Walter Kim on the table and asks Mickey about his connection to the case. René claims Walter is a health inspector and stopped by the restaurant the day before Lisa was arrested.

He would have had access to Lisa’s garage, too. Mickey rushes to look at the files on The Terrazzo and sees Kim signed off on them. So Walter’s real job is being a building inspector, but he masqueraded as a health inspector to get into Lisa’s garage and frame her for Bondurant’s murder.

Alex Grant was paying bribes to Walter Kim, and when Bondurant sent that threatening email, he was threatening Walter Kim, too. Walter also took a picture of Lisa at the protest, so he knew Lisa was the perfect person to frame. Walter might not have killed Bondurant of his own accord, but maybe Grant put him up to it. Either way, it’s an important discovery.

And unlike Alex Grant, Walter didn’t have any protections, so he would have lost everything if the feds got involved. That’s the motive right there! Mickey tells Cisco to go and find Walter; they might have a shot at reopening the case.

Unfortunately, it won’t be that easy. Cisco says Walter’s wife reported him missing two days ago when he never came home from work. The defense and prosecution have already rested their cases, so they have no hope of reopening anything without Walter. Cisco promises to keep looking and to find out what he can.

Written by Maddy Lennon