Matlock is about to finish its second season on CBS — and fans will have to wait a little longer than usual for season 3.
The legal drama starring Kathy Bates has been moved to a midseason premiere for its next season, which means that it won’t debut new episodes until sometime in 2027, whereas the first two seasons bowed as part of the network’s fall lineup.
Fans shouldn’t panic over the move, however, because showrunner Jennie Snyder Urman says that she personally requested the scheduling shift.
“I asked for it with the network. We had a talk,” the executive producer told TV Insider. “I just feel like we had so much stuff to think about because we really landed the plane on this and we really thought that was important because we didn’t want to keep dragging out the same story and the characters have to get to someplace real emotionally.”
The showrunner explained that the Matlock season 2 finale, which airs on Thursday, will set a new status quo for the series by its conclusion, which means the creative team wants to take its time when shaping the next chapter of the show.
“When we took this two-hour finale and really paid a lot of things off, what came with that was I’m going to need time after that to really build the architecture so that we have it for the next seasons,” she said. “I’m excited about it, but I am also grateful because we needed a little bit of time.”
Urman recognized that the delay might be disappointing for the show’s fans. “Sad for audiences, but actually really good for me and the writers because I want us to plot this new mystery and make sure it’s airtight,” she explained. “We had a lot of pieces going in, so we really had to create this new piece of it. I feel lucky that the network’s giving us time to get it right because I don’t want the quality to drop.”
The writer reiterated that the narrative shift at the end of the season will require a lot of careful consideration from the creative team. “[It’s a] big reset, so we have an extra long writer’s room before we go to camera, and I really want to do it right,” she said. “The quality is everything to me.”
“The ending of the season really propels the third season — should we get one — into a very different area again,” she said last year.Matlock faced behind-the-scenes scrutiny this season after actor David Del Rio, who portrayed Billy Martinez on the show, was fired after CBS conducted an investigation into an incident involving him. The network later reopened the investigation and stood by its decision to dismiss him, prompting Del Rio to initiate arbitration against CBS shortly thereafter.