The Wellbrexa cover-up that kickstarted CBS‘s Matlock has now been exposed and its orchestrators arrested in the two-hour Season 2 finale on Thursday, April 23. In true Matlock fashion, the episode had twists that made the fight for justice seem dead in the water just before a flashback revealed Matty Matlock’s (Kathy Bates) winning moves.
Here, the creator of CBS’s Matlock, Jennie Snyder Urman, reveals when she figured out how the Wellbrexa storyline would end and teases the brand new mystery that will take its place in the Season 3 premiere in 2027 (the series is moving to midseason at Urman’s request). Warning: Matlock Season 2 finale spoilers ahead. The Matlock Season 2 finale saw Matty, Olympia (Skye P. Marshall), and Julian (Jason Ritter) finally beating Senior (Beau Bridges), but justice came at a cost. Julian didn’t end up getting immunity in the federal investigation led by Lida Gutierrez (Gina Rodriguez) after Matty’s anonymous tip. Going to prison was a price he was willing to pay to make sure that his father and all of the partners at Jacobson Moore were held accountable for their complicity in the Wellbrexa cover-up. As the finale revealed, it wasn’t just Senior and Julian and some assistants involved in the opioid study scandal.
All of the Jacobson Moore partners, except Olympia, knew what Senior did, and they did nothing about it. Matty and Olympia, with Julian and Lida’s help, took them all down in one fell swoop, and Julian accepted full responsibility for his part in burying the study, saying being arrested was “worth it” to bring his father to justice.
Were you trying to decide between whether it would be Senior and Julian?
In the first season, we were deciding between Senior and Julian, and then we were like, it’s got to be Julian who removed it, because it means more, and interrupts more, and is so much more dramatic. And then in the storytelling of this year, we wanted to activate Julian, have him know what was going on, then we wanted to start rebuilding that relationship unexpectedly between him and Matty in slow, slow pieces, so that she could get to the point where she’s saying, “Maybe we could lay down the sword,” you think it’s believable that he means something to her. And we knew that Olympia was going to want to pivot, that Matty was focused on justice, Olympia was going to want to save her husband, they would both focus on Senior. So, making certain choices in the first season necessitated certain decisions in the next one, and then it was just about how that would unfold and unfurl.
Were you trying to decide between whether it would be Senior and Julian?
In the first season, we were deciding between Senior and Julian, and then we were like, it’s got to be Julian who removed it, because it means more, and interrupts more, and is so much more dramatic. And then in the storytelling of this year, we wanted to activate Julian, have him know what was going on, then we wanted to start rebuilding that relationship unexpectedly between him and Matty in slow, slow pieces, so that she could get to the point where she’s saying, “Maybe we could lay down the sword,” you think it’s believable that he means something to her. And we knew that Olympia was going to want to pivot, that Matty was focused on justice, Olympia was going to want to save her husband, they would both focus on Senior. So, making certain choices in the first season necessitated certain decisions in the next one, and then it was just about how that would unfold and unfurl.
How did she like the twist?
Oh, yeah, she liked the twist. She was really, really happy with the finale, which makes me happy.
It’s pretty impressive how you make everything work out, and the touch that I really liked is that what gets Senior in the end is the recorder pen, just like in Season 1.
I’ve got to say, I resisted that. I was like, “Wait, no, we’re going back!” And they were like, “No, it will be good,” and so, thankfully, I had a great room of writers. But yeah, it’s the recording pen, you go back to that. I really I resisted that for a while. The hardest thing to figure out was how does she stay Matlock and making sure that was a choice that resonated, that came from an emotional place, not a story logistics place, because that was the only piece.
That piece, I had originally thought, oh, that’s the end of the show. But if that’s coming out, she would have to be part of it, so from there thinking about what would happen to her life was important, but then also rooting it in the friendship that you don’t have to come forward in Olympia saying that to her, and Matty realizing what Matty Matlock meant to her, and who it allowed her to be in the world, and how she interacted with people differently, and so people interacted with her differently.
We knew we had to solve it, we didn’t know how it would be solved. I was really proud of the work that the writers room did in getting that to be really the emotional crux of it, and really unpack what this living under this other name has done and meant to her, and not just a gimmick, but it’s given her something real emotional.