The Season 3 premiere of The Lincoln Lawyer confirmed there’s a clear threat to Mickey Haller’s life. Audiences expected events to escalate but were still blindsided by the ending of Episode 5.

Showrunner Ted Humphrey said they considered extending Eddie Rojas’ storyline in The Lincoln Lawyer. Eddie (played by Allyn Moriyon) was introduced in Season 3 as Hayley Haller’s old babysitter, now her father Mickey’s new driver. Eddie became a fan favorite despite his undeveloped arc, fueling hope he would become a recurring (or mainstay) character in the series. That was dashed in Episode 5’s shocking ending, however. Eddie’s death came out of the blue, and Humphrey said the audience response was warranted. Humphrey told Screen Rant they chose to play out Eddie’s death and its outcome.

“We love the character and we love the performance, but, you know, in part, that was why it made sense to do what we did,” he asserted. “I think it was [executive producer] John Wells who used to talk about audience testing of shows, and he was like, you know, the studio would complain that all the dials went down when the kid died. And it’s like, well, yeah, they’re supposed to go down. You’re supposed to feel sad when the kid dies. That’s how you know that it worked, right?”

You’re supposed to feel sad when the kid dies.

He added, “So, yeah, I love that you loved him, and I love in a weird, twisted way, that you were devastated. That means it worked.”

Eddie Rojas Was Based On A Character From The Lincoln Lawyer Novel

Humphrey said Eddie was loosely based on Earl Briggs, a character from Michael Connelly’s namesake novel. In that story, Earl paid off his legal fees by working as Mickey’s driver. Earl also died in a car crash in The Gods of Guilt. “…We never had [Earl Briggs] in our show, because we had created Izzy, and we had done some other things,” Humphrey explained. “And so we thought it was a great opportunity to create a new character, give him a backstory where he was meaningful to Mickey, meaningful to Hayley, and hopefully meaningful to the audience, and then, you know, be able to have that same moment with him that would have the same effect on the audience.”

Eddie’s impactful death could also be credited to Moriyon’s performance. Speaking with Tudum, the actor confirmed Eddie’s death helped deepen Mickey’s arc. “I think Eddie’s death is a huge, huge scar on Mickey,” he said. “We were able to accomplish this wonderful connection between them, and for Mickey to feel so blatantly responsible after feeling responsible for another death? All of that is starting to pile up. He has so much going on, but at some point it’s going to hit him hard because you’ve got to grieve it. I think it’s going to stay with him for quite some time.”

That guilt did haunt Mickey in the aftermath. In subsequent episodes, he saw Eddie join Mickey Sr. and Gloria’s “ghosts” in hallucinations. The tragedy also caused a brief rift between Mickey and his daughter Hayley, but that was reconciled in the final episode.

The Lincoln Lawyer is streaming on Netflix.