In any type of dramatic detective show, you have to have the one guy who’s all about the law and order of it all, juxtaposed with another guy who likes to go rogue and do things his own way. It’s a perfect formula! In the rapidly expanding Bosch universe, the main character was always budding heads with Chief of Police Irvin Irving, who had to put up with a lot.
Sure enough, the last one delivered, making fans of the showing all emotional over the posthumous cameo and cuss word.
Star Titus Welliver, who plays the titular detective Bosch, said that the relationship between Bosch and Irving was “complex,” which, yeah, there was a lot of cursing involved. Welliver told Collider “Well, I think the relationship between Irving and Bosch was a very complex one. Irving’s character was more of a political animal and he would not do a workaround necessarily, but there was the conflict in the Preston Borders case where Bosch discovered that evidence had been manipulated despite the fact that Borders was definitely guilty of these heinous crimes, It’s very difficult and I don’t know how we’ll attack that, him not being there any longer,” Welliver explained. “It’s a huge hole in our hearts.”
While Irving’s storyline was wrapped up when he left the police department in Bosch, executive producer Tom Bernardo says the team is grateful they got one more scene with him. “[O]ne of the great gifts we had was bringing [Lance] back for one more scene,” exec Bernardo told TVInsider “We had that devastating news hit, but we still have that last moment together. We’re thankful for it.”