Posted in: Amazon Studios, TV | Tagged: ballard, bosch: legacy

Ballard Series Guest Appearances Had Us Missing Bosch: Legacy

The cast of Bosch: Legacy make guest appearances throughout this season of Ballard, which only makes us miss the original shows even more.

Published Sun, 13 Jul 2025 10:37:03 -0500

by Adi Tantimedh

Comments

The new Michael Connelly series, Ballard, which spun off from Bosch: Legacy, is as solid as the mothership show, but it has one big flaw, which is that it makes you miss the original show more and more as the first season progresses. This is due to the fact that the cast of Bosch: Legacy, with the exception of Madison Lintz as Maddie Bosch, make guest appearances throughout the season. (Warning: spoilers ahead)

We already knew Titus Welliver would show up in Ballard as a guest star and to pass the torch to Maggie Q as the new lead of the TV universe, and he appears at least four times during the 10-episode season. Then Ballard enlists Bosch to help her with hacking a phone, and Mo Bassie (Stephen Chang), Bosch's hipster hacking sidekick, shows up (though he doesn't get any lines). Retired cops, Crate and Barrell (Gregory Scott Cummins and Troy Evans) from Bosch's Hollywood Station days, showed up at the funeral of a cop who was Ballard's former partner. Ballard runs into Bosch's old partner Jerry Edgar (Jamie Hector) twice, and the two turn out to be on friendly terms. Honey Chandler (Mimi Rogers) appears in the finale as the current District Attorney when Ballard confronts her about letting a corrupt cop that Ballard brought down free.

Bosch shows up as Ballard's sounding board and mentor, but mostly to comment on things she's been to. These guest appearances might be welcome to fans, but they keep reminding us of the original Bosch series and keep Ballard from being an independent show from the mothership, especially when Bosch's shows were more edgy. In contrast, the new show feels more like a conventional police procedural. They're callbacks to the mothership series and show that the characters are still out there with their own stories, but they only make us want to follow their stories, sometimes more than the slightly rote plots Ballard has to chase.

Harry Bosch's sporadic appearances on Ballard feel like his half of the show is missing, that it really should be Bosch and Ballard like the current books. Maggie Q has talked about including the cast from Bosch: Legacy. The downside is that they make viewers wish the show were closer to the current books, where they work closely together and each has their own storylines.

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!