After 4 Years, Netflix's Thriller Series With Near-Perfect Rotten Tomatoes Score Keeps Getting Better With 2026 Return

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Published Feb 9, 2026, 3:29 PM EST

Felipe Rangel is a Superheroes Lead Writer and Reviewer at ScreenRant. He has been writing about movies and TV since 2021, with a focus on superhero projects. Felipe joined ScreenRant in 2022, working across different teams, covering everything from breaking news to features to reviews and more. Since the launch of the Superheroes vertical in 2023, he has focused his efforts on coming up with insightful analyses of Marvel and DC's projects.

Felipe is a writer who is an avid film and TV fan, with superhero movies and series being his biggest passion. He graduated from college in 2019, having studied Journalism. Before college, he spent a month studying at the Oxford English Centre. His superhero knowledge expands to the comics, with his undergraduate thesis being "Politics Reflected In American Comics."

A Netflix series has recently returned, and its new 2026 chapter adds to the trend of how the show has only gotten better as the years passed. The streaming age has made the binge format extremely popular. After all, viewers can instantly get the answers to new mysteries and find out how a show ends all in one sitting. Netflix made that so popular.

The binge format is perfect for thriller TV shows, as their cliffhangers can be quickly devoured by the audience, who do not have to wait weeks for major reveals and can stay in a show's tense atmosphere for all of its duration. It helps with the immersion in a show's world, and Netflix's thriller series know that well. Now that one of those shows has returned, its improvement is clear.

A Netflix Thriller Series Returns In 2026 Amid Many Genre Comebacks

Mickey looks over his shoulder smiling in The Lincoln Lawyer season 4

Many of Netflix's best TV shows are thrillers, and among those, multiple come back in 2026 with new seasons. That is the case with releases like The Night Agent, which returns with season 3 on February 19, and shows like Beef, The Diplomat, and more. One of those Netflix thriller series that returns in 2026 is The Lincoln Lawyer.

The Lincoln Lawyer season 4 was released on Netflix on February 5. According to FlixPatrol, the legal thriller series is currently the 3rd most-watched TV show on Netflix, only behind Unfamiliar, a new original spy thriller series, and Bridgerton, one of Netflix's most popular TV shows of all time. The Lincoln Lawyer season 4 follows Mickey as he fights for his freedom and to find out who killed Sam Scales.

How The Lincoln Lawyer Keeps Getting Better 4 Years Later

The Lincoln Lawyer season 1 was released on Netflix on May 13, 2022. The series started with lower stakes than defense attorney Mickey Haller having to find a way out of prison for a crime he did not commit. Back then, Mickey was a recovering addict who inherited a series of cases and restarted his life and career from there.

As can be seen by the more urgent plot in season 4, it is clear that The Lincoln Lawyer keeps evolving with every new season, with the Netflix legal thriller series upping the stakes every time it comes back. Another, more quantifiable way in which the show has improved is through its critical reception. Season 1 holds an 80% critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes.

Season 2 received a significant bump, standing at a 91% critics' score, whereas The Lincoln Lawyer season 3 trumps the Netflix series' first two seasons with a rare perfect 100%. At the time of writing, season 4's critics' score has yet to emerge, but the show's audience score is positive for its 2026 return, at 83%. After four years, The Lincoln Lawyer remains a consistent hit.