The two-hour “Matlock” Season 2 finale wrapped up the mystery at the heart of the Kathy Bates-led drama series by finally seeing those who concealed the Wellbrexa study be brought to justice — while Bates’ Matty kept her identity as Matlock intact.
As Matty, Olympia (Skye P. Marshall) and Julian (Jason Ritter) inched closer to exposing Senior (Beau Bridges), the finale threw the crew a couple curveballs as they learned that Senior had been faking his dementia and that multiple members of the board — including Senior’s ex-wife Eva (Justina Machado) — shared the blame for the cover-up.
While the trio teetered on whether to expose Senior, the turn of events cemented their mission to bring Senior and anyone else involved in the decision down, leading to an FBI raid of Jacobson Moore that arrested everyone from Senior, Eva, the Wolf and even Julian — a twist creator Jennie Snyder Urman hopes will provide a satisfying conclusion to the show’s overarching mystery.
“The way that you’re capable, at an older age, of living beautiful, new adventures, you also have to be held responsible for what you did in your life,” Snyder Urman told TheWrap. “That’s what Matty came in wanting, and that is what she gets now. Along the way, so many other things changed, her life opened up, and she realized how much she loves being a lawyer again, and her relationship with Olympia has been life-changing and sustaining.”
With Julian stepping up to expose the crime in place of Matty, he’s implicated himself, though Matty and Olympia shrug his arrest away with the hopes that he’ll either score a deal with the FBI or that they’ll help with his defense.
Snyder Urman identifies the moment as Julian’s “hero arc,” noting that he’s always wanted to be a good person, but has previously chosen to protect himself rather than doing the right thing. “This is a big moment for him, and it’s the moment when he finally defines and distinguishes himself as a different person than his father is, and proves it by making a selfless gesture in the name of justice and a greater good,” Snyder Urman said. “He’s going to have to live with those in the next suit.”
Julian’s act of selflessness ensures that Matty can remain Matlock, avoiding she and Edwin (Sam Anderson) being sprawled across the media and ensuring she can keep practicing law alongside Olympia. That twist ensures the CBS drama keeps its title as “Matlock,” and also provides some emotional satisfaction as Matty embraces the upsides of her double life.
“We really wanted to dig into what Matty Matlock has meant to Madeline Kingston, and what that persona has allowed her to do and let go of who it’s allowed her to be, what it’s allowed her to access inside herself, and really understanding that she has grown and changed,” Snyder Urman told TheWrap. “There’s a lot that she loves about how she was as Matlock that she’s not able to be as Kingston, and that felt really moving to us. And really like a great place for the character to land emotionally — that she doesn’t want to give up this alter ego, because this alter ego has really taught her a lot about herself — and she interacts with the world differently, so the world interacts with her differently.”
With the Wellbrexa mystery wrapped up with Season 2, Snyder Urman confirmed Season 3 will contain a “brand new mystery” when it returns on CBS’ midseason slate in 2027. There will also be a “little bit of a time jump, whether it’s six months or a year,” picking up with the central characters in slightly different places.
“There’ll be the same impulse as Wellbrexa but it will be a totally different, new, contained mystery, and will come in sort of this organic way, so that we can still have a mystery and have all surprises and all that but we’re really in a different storytelling place when we come in, and I want to really honor that,” Snyder Urman said. “You’ll have all of the things that you like about ‘Matlock,’ but they will have accomplished this one big, big thing, and they’ll be in different places.”
The new mystery won’t surround Matty’s unresolved guilt about Ellie’s death, with Snyder Urman saying “she will never come to terms or be at peace with her daughter’s death, but she has metabolized it in a deeper way and forgiven herself.”
From gearing up to make fewer episodes to queuing up several more years of “Matlock,” Snyder Urman breaks down what the new season entails below. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.