A Painful Ending in Two Different Ways

The following contains major spoilers from Bosch: Legacy Season 3, Episodes 9 & 10, “Badlands” & “Dig Down,” now streaming on Prime Video. It also contains a brief mention of suicide.

The Bosch: Legacy series finale is like watching two different shows — both of which want to punch viewers in the gut. Season 3, Episode 9, “Badlands” and Season 3, Episode 10, “Dig Down” are two separate stories, far less unified than the installments that have come before them. But both of them achieve a common goal: they provide Harry Bosch closure, so that he can rest and so that Prime Video fans feel comfortable saying goodbye to the iconic ex-detective.

“Badlands” follows Bosch’s pursuit of Finbar McShane and Humberto Zorrillo, so that he can hold them accountable for the deaths of the Gallagher family and the murder of Jimmy Robertson, respectively. In contrast, “Dig Down” goes back further into Bosch’s past to resolve the one case that he’s still been holding onto — and introduce Michael Connelly’s other protagonist Renee Ballard. There’s very little connective tissue between the two hours, yet fans will get what they came for.

Bosch: Legacy Season 3, Episode 9 Ties up the Season’s Stories Neatly

Audiences May Be Surprised at How Quickly It All Comes Together

Bosch: Legacy Season 3, Episode 9 is the sole part of the finale devoted to this season’s plotlines, and so it moves to resolve them at a fairly quick speed. It has to; it only has less than an hour to get through multiple storylines. These quicker developments may come as a shock to the audience members who are used to the show’s deliberate pacing. But for the time it has, “Badlands” does a fine job of putting periods on the end of all the necessary sentences.

Zorrillo is arrested for Robertson’s murder — but not by Bosch, by a joint LAPD and DEA task force put together by Chief Hughes, after she’s learned that new District Attorney Honey Chandler isn’t committed to seeking the death penalty. With the DEA involved, Zorrillo’s case becomes the property of federal prosecutors instead. Bosch instead gets his middle finger moment by confronting corrupt sheriff’s deputy Jack Garrity in Garrity’s home. The shot of him standing in the dark waiting for Garrity is positively spine-tingling, and the spiel he gives the other man is every bit as tense and vengeful as the viewers expect it to be. It’s enough, even if it would have been nice to see Perry Lopez back to get his own closure about the death of his partner, especially after the great contributions he made in Episodes 7 & 8.

More notably, Bosch travels with Mo Bassi and his old friend Gubicz to Tecate, Mexico, where Finbar McShane is hiding out under an assumed name. It is relatively easy for them to get that information from a young man whom McShane short-changed earlier. However, that lack of suspense allows for more screen time to be spent on the confrontation between Bosch and McShane that everyone has been waiting for. The bad guy attempts “suicide by soldier” by provoking Bosch with detials of the Gallagher family’s murders — but Bosch honors his word to Maddie and leaves McShane alive. Gubiczs, however, has made no such promise and shoots McShane in the back of the head. Viewers get to see Season 3’s bad guy face consequences in a different way, but that sequence is really about Bosch and who he is and what’s important to him. He makes an important choice, even if it’s not one that others agree with. He stares into the abyss and he comes back.

Meanwhile, Reina Vasquez has two major scenes that wrap up her storyline about her nephew being involved in the follow-home robberies. One is visiting him in jail and encouraging him to take a plea deal, while the other is a conversation with her sister, in which the other woman is still furious at her. That’s as much closure as that plot can get given when the episode takes place. Viewers have enough to understand what will happen in the story; they just don’t get to see it. And that’s where some viewers might be disappointed, as the actual last episode of Bosch: Legacy is equally an early taste of Ballard.

Harry Bosch looking into camera wearing a brown jacket on blurry Bosch: Legacy TV show poster art

‘I’d Play Him for Another 10’: Titus Welliver Opens up About Bosch: Legacy Ending

Bosch: Legacy star Titus Welliver talks to CBR about the final season of the Prime Video show – and why he’d be happy to keep portraying Harry Bosch.

Bosch: Legacy Season 3, Episode 10 Is More About Renee Ballard

Bosch’s Future Partner Gets a Big Introduction

Renee Ballard in a black top looking at Harry Bosch, whose back is to camera, in Bosch: Legacy — Image via Prime Video

Bosch: Legacy Season 3, Episode 10, “Dig Down” completely shifts gears to another painful case for Bosch: the “flower girl” murders that have been on his mind since his tenure with Robbery Homicide Division. (A brief flashback to establish this is bittersweet, because it also provides one last glimpse of Paul Calderon as Robertson.) The move to a totally different story, leaving everything else Season 3 worked on behind, is a bit jarring. But it ensures that Harry Bosch’s story doesn’t end without being actually finished — which shows an incredible respect for both the character and the fans. And that’s not surprising, since author Michael Connelly co-wrote the episode with Mitzi Roberts.

In the same way that Bosch came to an end with Harry turning the page to a different part of his life to make room for Bosch:: Legacy, this episode winds up with Harry being able to turn the page to make room for Ballard. He engages in some gamesmanship with Ballard — who is played note-perfectly by Nikita and Designated Survivor star Maggie Q — before the two join forces to close the case. It’s Bosch and his team who are relatively efficient in identifying the killer as paramedic Jeremy McKee (portrayed by The Mentalist‘s Owain Yeoman), so they still get the proverbial win. And it’s Bosch who has the moment with McKee on the floor and his gun pointed at him, having to once again make the choice about whether or not the bad guy lives or dies. Bosch gets emotional closure on this case in the same way he was given it with Finbar McShane. He gets those two major demons off his back, so viewers can feel like the character’s work is done enough for now.

Some audiences will be frustrated that Season 3, Episode 10 features Ballard so prominently. It’s reminiscent of how the Suits Season 7 finale felt more like setup for the short-lived spinoff Pearson than an ending for the Suits characters. Maddie, Vasquez and Honey play roles in the action, but nowhere as significantly as viewers will want. On one hand, it would have been nice to make this the pilot for Ballard and have the ending of Bosch: Legacy be concentrated on the existing characters. Yet for this universe, the decision to flow right into the next story makes sense, because that’s what this franchise has done before.

Bosch Author Michael Connelly Brings Wonderland Murders From Podcast to Television

Michael Connelly, author of the Bosch novels, tells CBR about being front and center in The Wonderland Massacre & The Secret History of Hollywood.

The Bosch: Legacy Series Finale Does What It Needs to Do

The Show Passes the Torch Onto the Next Series

Harry Bosch wearing a white shirt, sitting in his car in the TV show Bosch: Legacy — Image via Prime Video

Readers of Connelly’s novels know that Bosch and Ballard are now a team, and “Dig Down” moves Bosch into that era with an open ending, in which he tells Ballard that they might get to work together again, before walking away to parts unknown. The extended overhead shot of Bosch moving through a light crowd is an interesting choice for a final image. It becomes about the city of Los Angeles rather than Harry Bosch, but it’s also a reminder that Bosch is Los Angeles, and that this is just the second chapter in a larger story. Using the end of Bosch: Legacy to make room for Renee Ballard is also making room for the version of Bosch that currently exists in the books, so even though it means less screen time for his plotlines and the people in his life, it’s still about Bosch.

The ending of Bosch: Legacy reflects the character in spirit and tone, too. These final two episodes are emotionally intense, but plot-wise, they are relatively unassuming. It’s business as usual for Harry Bosch; there’s no added degree of sensationalism or extra drama because this is the end. The tension comes from within Bosch himself, making choices between what he wants and what he knows to be true. The journey is about Bosch getting closure not only on two very personal cases, but closure on who he is. Ballard makes a comment about darkness in him, but he makes two specific decisions not to go there.

Titus Welliver is once again brilliant in portraying Bosch as a man who is able to breathe in the end, yet has to fight to get there. Bosch: Legacy ends with the idea that Harry Bosch’s legacy is the kind of person he is, not just the cases he’s closed — and that’s a better note to end on than any cliffhanger or massive plot development. Bosch wouldn’t want a big sendoff, anyway.

All three seasons of Bosch: Legacy are now streaming on Prime Video.

Bosch: Legacy Season 3, Episodes 9 & 10

Release Date: 2022 – 2025
Network: Prime Video, Amazon Freevee
Showrunner: Eric Overmyer
Directors: Patrick Cady, Alex Zakrzewski, Sharat Raju, Ernest R. Dickerson, Adam Davidson, Kate Woods, Leslie Libman, Tawnia McKiernan, Hagar Ben-Asher, Haifaa al-Mansour
Writers: Chris Wu, Osokwe Vasquez, Benjamin Pitts, Chris Downey, Barbara Curry