Warning: Some SPOILERS lie ahead for Bosch: Legacy season 3!Titus Welliver is closing the book on one of his most iconic roles for the second time withBosch: Legacyseason 3. The Prime Video/Freevee series has served as a sequel to the streamer’s adaptation of the Michael Connelly book character of the same name, with Welliver playing the former Los Angeles Police Department Detective as he becomes a private investigator. The show has also followed his daughter, Maddie, starting as an officer with the LAPD and learning of the moral gray areas to come from the job.
Bosch: Legacyseason 3picked up from the cliffhanger season 2 ending, in which Maddie inadvertently took a call from Preston Borders indicating that Harry had Dockweiler killed in prison after having kidnapped his daughter. The season also saw Bosch tackling one of his darkest cases yet, in which a woman flies from Dublin to hire him to find her daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren who’ve all gone missing. His investigation leads to the discovery they were killed by a sicario, putting him on a violent path of retribution.
Ahead of the series finale,ScreenRantinterviewed Titus Welliver to discussBosch: Legacyseason 3. The star/executive producer lamented the show’s early cancellation and why he won’t give up on playing the character again in the future, while also breaking down the dark rabbit hole Harry goes into due to his current case, how it impacts his relationship with Maddie, the changes made from the book and how the finale sets up Maggie Q’s Renée Ballard to lead her spinoff show.
Season 3’s Book Changes Were Essential For Upping The Stakes For Bosch
“…If He Were Ahab, This Case Is The White Whale”
As was the case with the show’s prior chapters,Bosch: Legacyseason 3’s story is a combination of Connelly’sDesert StarandThe Black Ice, the second and 24th novels featuring the character. The show did, however, make changes to the books, as Connelly and showrunners Eric Overmyer and Tom Bernardo made the case of the missing family take place far earlier in Harry’s life rather than in his older years.They also made it a current case for Bosch instead of an unsolved one, with Welliver comparing it to a classic novel.
“If he were Ahab, this case is the white whale,” Welliver explained. “But we had to change it, so you have this woman coming from Ireland, and hires Bosch as a private eye to investigate, because it seems like the case is sort of stalled. It’s dead ended in the cops' pursuit of trying to close it. All cases are personal with Harry, but this one in particular, I think, because it’s in his view of what he’s seeing.”
After denoting how Harry intently watches the missing family’s videos, which showcase “this love and everything that he did not have as a child”,Welliver also pointed out the case resonates with part of what inspired Bosch to become a cop in the first place. “He has a backlog of personal trauma which informed the man, and him becoming a cop and his pursuit for justice,” Welliver explained. “Any cop will tell you that all cases affect them. You have to look into the darkness, because we’re seeing the worst part of society’s actions. But the cases that really haunt murder cops are cases that involve children.”
With the discovery of the family’s murder, Welliver explains that “the darkness truly penetrates Bosch in a way that I don’t think that we’ve ever seen”. As the star/EP points out, this not only leads to audiences questioning his actions and the morality behind them,but is also going to affect his relationship with Maddie, creating “some of the highest stakes we’ve ever seen” in the show for them both, apart from her kidnapping.
“That’s where the audience and the people around Bosch are going to go, ‘Uh oh, will he cross an ethical line in order to [solve the case]?’,” Welliver explained. “Because there’s obtaining justice, and then in some way, is he avenging? And all that is revealed, which makes for some really, really great storytelling and very, very high stakes. Maybe some of the highest stakes we’ve ever seen, with the exception of when Maddie was abducted by Dockweiler. We saw Harry come right to the edge. And obviously, that gets addressed as he’s under investigation for the whole killing of Dockweiler.”
He goes on to reflect on the tense conversation between Harry and Maddie, in which she finally confronts her father to determine whether he had anything to do with Dockweiler’s death. Not only does Welliver confirm he’s “honest in that moment”, but is also"probably the most transparent that we’ve ever seen Harry":
He answers that question very directly, which doesn’t necessarily offer Maddie much comfort. She understands it intellectually, but with all the other things that are swirling around in her mind, and also the story that she’s heard about Harry’s experience in war in Afghanistan, it raises a lot of questions.
Welliver “Doesn’t Feel Good” About Bosch: Legacy’s Cancellation “At All”
He’s Also Very Open To Either A Series Or Movie Continuation
Despite the first two seasons garnering rave reviews from critics and being a popular IP for the streamer, it was announcedBosch: Legacywould be ending with season 3, though Welliver has since revealed there were early plans for season 4 in the works. When asked about how he felt leaving the show and the character in its current place should he not get the opportunity to revisit it again,Welliver was very candid in that he doesn’t “feel good about it all”.
“When you play a character for as long as I’ve played Bosch, despite the fact this is a fictional character, you can’t help but form a bond with that character,” Welliver lamented. “It becomes deeply personal. And I’ve been saying of late to people, ‘I miss Harry.’ He’s a guy I would want to hang out with and have a meal with. There’s a depth to that character. I find him a very interesting person. So, in that regard, I miss him, and miss playing him.”
While Welliver andtheBosch: Legacycast and crew"all remain close" with one another and hopes to continue working with them, he expresses he will miss the “day-in, day-out creative process and collaboration”, whichhe describes as being “the most rewarding of my career thus far.““It’s kind of like an all-you-can-eat ice cream buffet, right,” Welliver chuckled. “You don’t want that to go away.”
In the time since the show’s cancellation, Welliver has expressed his hope to continue playing the character in spinoff movies, much in the wayJohn Krasinski’sJack Ryanis returning with a film. When asked whether he would prefer to have a film or a full series to continue playing the character,the star said he didn’t have a preference of how to keep playing the character, as he would relish “any opportunity to realize or re-realize this character”:
I think it works both ways. Initially, when Connelly had scripts, and they were shopped around to studios, nobody seemed to be able to figure out how to make a proper film of it. What Michael came to the realization of is that to serialize it made it work really well. So I think it’s either or. And now, after 10 years of doing the show and all the creatives, Michael Connelly, Eric Overmyer, Thomas Bernardo, and the cast, we all know how it works and how to make that machine run. So it really works in both ways. And if you consider the scope of the show, Bosch doesn’t feel like episodic television, even though it’s serialized that way. We had the liberty and the grace to be able to shoot that show like you would shoot a 50-minute film, and that was my experience as an actor. It was very, very different than shooting the regular format of episodic TV. We would still shoot the same amount of pages, but we would pace ourselves to a certain degree, and allow stuff to happen organically, which occurs when you’re shooting a film.
Ballard & Bosch Don’t Start Off On The Best Of Terms
“I Can Tell You With 100% Confidence That The Audience Is Going To Be Extremely Pleased…”
ThoughWelliver is bringing his time leading the charge to an end for the time being, theBosch: Legacyfinale does lay the foundation for aspinoff centered on Maggie Q’s Renée Ballard. Introduced as being on the trail of a cold case Bosch has ties to, with Welliver pointing out “Harry had pictures of three different young women on his desk”,the two seasoned detectives find themselves at odds over their approaches to the job.
“There’s a lot of mistrust and, of course, trepidation on both sides,” Welliver explained. “But they ultimately have to set aside their differences, because they have the same purpose. They are not dissimilar, and I think, in the process, he recognizes a kindred spirit in her to a certain degree, in her work ethic and her relentless nature. She also recognizes that in Bosch, but it’s not a love fest. They kind of have to set aside their differences to do this.”
Welliver went on to praise Maggie Q for her work as Ballard,praising the star as being “fantastic as the character”. Also acknowledging that he and other fans of the books “form our certain level of prejudice” when reading as they “see and hear what we think the character will be” and “how it would be realized from the books”, the star/EP beamed with excitement over what the future holds for her:
I can tell you with 100% confidence that the audience is going to be extremely pleased with her interpretation of Ballard. She nails it. Nails it completely. I think her show is going to be a great continuation of the Bosch canon.
More About Bosch: Legacy Season 3
Season 3 of Bosch: Legacy is based on Michael Connelly’s best-selling novels Desert Star (2022) and The Black Ice (1993). The murder investigation of Kurt Dockweiler brings dangerous secrets to light and threatens to ruin the lives of our three principal characters. The disappearance of a family haunts Harry Bosch and forces him to confront the limits of justice. In a hotly contested race, Honey “Money” Chandler is poised to become the next District Attorney of Los Angeles. And Maddie Bosch gets entangled in a series of violent follow-home robberies.
All three seasons ofBosch: Legacyare available to stream in their entirety on Prime Video.
Bosch: Legacy
Cast
Bosch: Legacy follows former LAPD detective Harry Bosch, now a private investigator navigating new challenges alongside attorney Honey Chandler. Set two years after his departure from the police force, the series also explores Bosch’s daughter Maddie’s entry into her career with the LAPD.
