From quick lunch stops at local spots and food trucks, to secret rooftop rendezvous overlooking the iconic skyline, each iteration of Bosch has remained firm in its commitment to showcasing the best and worst of Los Angeles. The final season of Bosch: Legacy continues to feature a grounded look at the city’s iconic landmarks, and its crime. The series stays the course, featuring a mix of realistic cases pursued by P.I. Harry Bosch (Titus Welliver, The Town) and his LAPD daughter Maddie (Madison Lintz, The Walking Dead). While the Legacy spinoff came to an end in April, it won’t be long before we hear the name Bosch again.
Welliver continues to portray the character with distinctive intensity, with writing that gifts him the opportunity to show how much he’s come to live within him. From stopping a threat on DA Honey Chandler’s (Mimi Rogers, Ginger Snaps) life, investigating the disappearance of a family of four, clearing his own name, and then pursuing justice for a colleague, Harry stays busy in his final season. The show even introduces the cartel as an adversary late, ratcheting up the scale of the series, but nothing feels forced, “it goes where it goes.” He’s aided as always by the incomparable Mo (Stephen A. Chang, Artificial), a character that, when he first appeared on Legacy, felt like a cliche tech genius, but broke through that stereotype almost immediately to become a complimentary necessity.
As always, there are plenty of B and C plots playing out simultaneously, allowing the rest of the ensemble cast a final chance to sit with their characters in case this is the end of the road for them. Some of those narratives are more interesting than others, and there are storylines that don’t reach a resolution – likely a product of the show’s announced cancellation just ahead of the season’s premiere. Just like with real detective work, there will always be loose ends and cases you can’t wrap up in a neat bow – it doesn’t detract from the legacy of the series.
Speaking on that legacy tag from the title, it’s always lent itself to Harry cementing his own in service to LA and the people he’s helped, but it’s also been as much about his daughter Maddie carrying on the name and forging her own path. Lintz has seen tremendous growth as an actor and earned her expanded role. It’s been rewarding watching the character find her way, learning from the mentorship and example her father set, and then drawing her own lines. While she still operates from a moral high ground that Harry has gradually seen crumble beneath him, we’ve seen cracks form, and it’d be interesting to see where we would find her late in her career.
Along with her partner Vasquez (Denise G. Sanchez, The Good Place), she spends a good portion of the season investigating a series of follow-home robberies, which get complicated when they hit close to home. Sanchez gives a great performance and it’s interesting watching their partner dynamic continue to develop amidst difficult circumstances.
While the penultimate episode is a strong conclusion to the events of this season, the finale itself felt like something almost entirely new. Almost, because it ties back to Bosch’s cold cases which have fueled his mantra, “everybody counts, or nobody counts” from the beginning. It’s also the reason for the introduction of RHD detective Renee Ballard (Maggie Q, Divergent), who shows up in the finale ahead starring in her own spinoff series coming July 9 to Prime. The conclusion finds them working together – begrudgingly, at first – to solve a long-standing cold case and while it feels a bit unearned in the swiftness of its resolution, it does lighten the emotional load for a character who’s earned that in spades.
Bosch, at its core, has always been a character study, surrounded by a grounded detective procedural and the bureaucracy that accompanies it. For the last decade, in all its forms, we have been privileged to watch Titus Welliver masterfully bring this Michael Connelly created character to life. It’s been a journey, certainly for viewers but for Welliver as well. Through grief, anguish, triumph and everything in between, he’s flourished as its anchor and all that’s left to say is…thanks, brother.
