Legacy Before Watching Season 3

Summary

• Season 3 of Bosch: Legacy focuses on Harry’s moral dilemma surrounding Maddie’s kidnapper and Chandler’s exoneration.
• Key plot points include Chandler’s legal troubles, Maddie’s abduction, and Bosch’s vigilante justice.
• Season 3 ties up loose ends from previous seasons and explores Chandler’s political ambitions and Bosch’s detective work.

As Bosch: Legacy nears its unspecified Season 3 debut in fall 2024, all eyes turn to the personal and professional dynamic between retired detective Harry Bosch (Titus Welliver) and his daughter Maddie (Madison Lintz), a rookie LAPD officer making a name for herself. At last glance, Maddie discovers that her father may have murdered Screen Cutter, the man responsible for her kidnapping, setting up a fascinating moral quandary for Season 3 when the show returns to Amazon Freevee.

Apart from Maddie’s shocking kidnapping that left viewers on a Season 1 cliffhanger, a few other crucial plot points and character revelations occurred in the first 20 episodes of Bosch: Legacy that should be accounted for when tuning into Season 3. For instance, Bosch’s longtime associate Honey Chandler (Mimi Rogers) made a shrewd political move at the end of Season 2 that bears repeating. With roughly one year between the release of Seasons 2 and 3, here’s everything fans should remember and need to know heading into Bosch: Legacy Season 3.

The Background of Bosch: Legacy

Conceived as a spin-off to the hit police procedural Bosch, Bosch: Legacy is all about the title character passing his professional torch to his daughter, Maddie. The series begins with Harry Bosch’s retirement from the LAPD and his new practice as a private investigator. Meanwhile, his daughter Maddie follows in his footsteps by becoming an LAPD Patrol Officer. However, Maddie is green, naive, and has plenty to learn about what makes a great detective. Along the way, Bosch teaches her the tricks of the trade.

Aside from Harry and Maddy, the main Bosch: Legacy characters include Honey Chandler, a well-connected defense attorney with a complicated relationship with Bosch, Mo Bassi (Stephen Chang), Bosch’s tech expert, and LAPD Officer Reyna Vasquez, Maddie’s trainer. Other key figures that play prominent roles include Maddie’s partner and romantic interest, Rico Perez (Anthony Gonzales), corrupt city inspector Kurt Dockweiler (Will Chase, David Denman), and billionaire Whitney Vance (William DeVane), a client of Bosch’s that kickstarts the entire series.

In Season 1, Vance hires Bosch to find a missing woman Vance impregnated in college to discover if someone stands to inherit his fortune. Later in the season, Bosch investigates a shady business mogul named Carl Rogers, who ordered a hit on Chandler. The end of Season 1 left viewers on a dramatic cliffhanger when Maddie was kidnapped by a criminal known as the Screen Cutter for his breaking-and-entering MO. Season 2 picks up where the last left off, leaving Bosch, Maddie, and Honey to unmask and discipline the Screen Cutter.

What to Know For Bosch: Legacy Season 3

Before delving into the plot details, it’s worth noting that Bosch: Legacy Season 3 is inspired by acclaimed crime author Michael Connelly’s 1993 novel The Black Ice and the 2022 novel Desert Star. Season 3 will also explore the dangling plotline that concluded Season 2. The cliffhanger involved Harry skirting the law to serve vigilante justice to the man responsible for kidnapping Maddie at the end of Season 1. Along with Chandler, Bosch works to identify his daughter’s assailant.

Meanwhile, Bosch and Chandler try to clear Chandler’s name after being suspected of orchestrating Carl Rogers’ death by the FBI. The two main plot points in Season 1 and Season 2 converge, with Bosch balancing personal obligations to his daughter and professional duties to Chandler, blurring the line of morality in the process. The most important thing to know heading into Season 3 relates to the fates of the various principals involved.

What Happened to Carl Rogers?

Before Maddie’s kidnapping at the end of Season 1, the main conflict involved the FBI suspecting Chandler of murdering Carl Rogers. Or, at the very least, arranging his death. The truth is, Rogers hired someone to kill Chandler instead, prompting Bosch to investigate. The storyline continues in Season 2 of the popular police procedural, where Chandler is eventually absolved of guilt and Rogers’ fate is revealed.

Bosch and Chandler’s investigation leads them to shipping containers that Rogers plans to use to escape abroad. Upon finding the containers, Chandler witnesses Rogers murdered in cold blood by Russian mobsters. Members of the Ivanovich crime outfit lethally shoot Rogers four times. Therefore, it’s worth remembering that Rogers is no longer alive and his plan to kill and frame Chandler backfired.

Who Is the Screen Cutter?

Throughout Season 2, Bosch remains hot on the trail of the man who kidnapped Maddie. Along with Chandler’s help, the two determine that the serial rapist known as the Screen Cutter is none other than Kurt Dockweiler (revealed to viewers in a flashback), a former cop turned criminal. Dockweiler was also the corrupt city inspector who Maddie encountered in Bosch: Legacy Season 1 as an LAPD newbie.

At the end of Season 1, a masked Dockweiler snatches Maddie, places her in a bag, tosses her in his truck, and speeds toward the Mojave Desert. Dockweiler buries Maddie alive, prompting a tense ticking-clock rush to save her life. Maddie survives the harrowing ordeal after Bosch digs her up in the nick of time.

At the end of Season 2, Dockweiler is arrested and jailed for his crimes. However, viewers are told that Bosch may have crossed the legal line by hiring Preston Borders to kill Dockweiler while in prison. Maddie discovers her father’s unethical action at the end of Season 2, paving the way for Season 3. The cliffhanger makes Bosch’s involvement with Dockweiler’s murder somewhat ambiguous, with Maddie asking him what he’d done in the Season 2 finale. However, Borders appears to be framing Bosch out of revenge for a 1987 arrest that led to Borders’ imprisonment for murder.

What Happens to Honey Chandler?

At the end of Season 2, the DA drops the case against Chandler for murdering Rogers. It turns out that Matthew Ramirez (Alex Loynaz), a receptionist at Chandler’s law firm, betrayed his boss as a mole and implicated Chandler in the death of Rogers. After dealing with blackmailers, Chandler and Bosch prove her innocence, and she makes a bold political maneuver. With her name clear and her reputation upheld, Chandler tells the media that she plans on running to be Los Angeles’ next District Attorney.

Chandler’s promotion and expanded political influence will be explored in Season 3, allowing returning characters Chandler and Bosch to stretch their investigative jurisdiction and pursue more criminals. Meanwhile, Maddie will continue her LAPD duties as she mends from her abduction. According to the novel Black Ice, Bosch discovers a deadly new drug called Black Ice that he traces back to Mexican cartels. In Dessert Star, Bosch teams with an old partner to find a serial killer who murdered their entire family.

Apart from Chandler’s DA campaign, Maddie’s LAPD service, and Bosch clearing his name for murder, Bosch: Legacy Season 3 will converge these two literary storylines and give fans another 10 episodes of hard-boiled detective fiction in the fall of 2024.

Bosch: Legacy is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video & Amazon Freevee.