[This story contains spoilers from the midseason finale of Matlock, “Call It a Christmas Gift.”]
Oscar winner Kathy Bates’ return to acting in a re-engineering of the classic procedural Matlock has been a triumphant success. Her recent Emmy nomination for best lead actress in a drama series at age 77 made her the oldest nominee ever ever in that category. As fans of the new Matlock know, Bates’ role was never as it appeared. “I’m Madeline Matlock. I’m a lawyer. Yes, Matlock. Like the old TV show,” is how the character was introduced.
But from the very beginning, the audience knew what Skye P. Marshall’s legal ace character Olympia on the partner track at Jacobson Moore didn’t: Matty was no jilted old woman whose gambling husband forced her back to work to care for her tween grandson, Alfie, after her daughter Ellie’s death. Instead, the actually very wealthy Madeline Kingston lived in a mansion with her husband Edwin (Sam Anderson), and her real reason for working at Jacobson Moore was to hold them accountable for protecting the pharmaceutical firm Wellbrexa she blames for her daughter’s opioid overdose.
By season’s one end, Olympia figured out Matty’s huge lie and not only did it blow up their friendship, but it also put Olympia in a position of whether to protect her ex Julian (Jason Ritter), her children’s father, and get Matty to go after his father Senior (Beau Bridges) who runs Jacobson Moore instead. “Everybody is in a really, really difficult situation at the top of the next season,” showrunner Jennie Snyder Urman, who pulled off the unexpected reboot, had teased to The Hollywood Reporter.
Unfortunately, ahead of the season two premiere, castmember David Del Rio, who plays Billy, was fired from the show amid allegations of sexual assault from co-star Leah Lewis, whose character Sarah was the on-screen yin to his yang. Fans naturally wondered how the season would play out with that fan-favorite duo no longer in play and some of the season already shot. The last two episodes, which include this midseason finale, “Call It a Christmas Gift,” revealed that Del Rio and Billy are no longer a part of Matlock. How that works out in the story occurs naturally, with his longtime girlfriend/fiancé having a miscarriage, prompting him to take time off, and presumably, never return.
Urman now speaks with The Hollywood Reporter about the December ender focusing on Julian being back in the fire amid the unexpected twist of Senior’s stroke, moving Julian from innocent bystander and favorite Senior’ punching bag to an active participant in the cover-up, and forcing Olympia to once again choose between her children’s father and Matty, the person who became her friend under false pretenses. The Matlock boss also discussed Alfie’s father, Sarah’s betrayal and teased new characters when season two returns Feb. 26, 2026 — and how Senior’s fate will impact the show.
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This midseason finale ends with such a bang for season two. Just when we think Julian really is the good guy — bam!
Bam, bam! Because then we we get Matty and Olympia back together. We really wanted the first half of the season to be honest about where they would be. There was a huge lie, and they’d worked so hard for this friendship. They’d gotten through and it was real, and it was deep and all that stuff, and then Olympia realized [Matty] was lying the whole time. So we wanted to calibrate in the first half of the season that friendship and how you get over such a big betrayal.
We wanted it to be that two steps forward, one step back thing that is true to life. What makes me so excited about the second half is that you see the gift she gives her at the end. I compare it to when in a romantic comedy someone proposes — we’re back together. This is the biggest gift I could give you, and the biggest sign that we are in it together. What that allows is for them to be on the same side and for the friendship to get back into being deep and meaningful and fun. Even in episode seven, getting to hear them talk on the phone together and joke? I’ve been waiting for that. In the writers room, we’ve been waiting for that. We just wanted to make sure it was earned. The end of episode eight is the final piece that forges them back together. We get to watch them really enjoy each other as they put the final pieces into place in the back half of the season.
It’s bittersweet because she was getting to a really good place with the father of her children, and while she doesn’t know it yet, we, as the audience, are afraid for her and her heart.
We are. He is the father of her children. That’s why in that last episode, our case of the week was about: how do we hold heroes accountable? You could do all these good things and be all these wonderful things to me, but still do something bad somewhere else, and that shouldn’t change the math in terms of justice. It’s going to be hard for Olympia. Bbut she believes that Matty is not out to get Julian. The same way that Olympia gave her document, Matty saved her ex-husband. Those are two giant sacrifices that are deep and meaningful. And it’s not to say in the second half of the season there aren’t big moral dilemmas, because there are certainly. But the two of them get to go through it together and talk and lean on each other. That’s always the heart of the show — this love story, and I’m looking forward to watching as they get through it together.
But they have a big problem coming up, and that problem is the end of episode eight when Julian has found out everything and feels like, “holy shit. I was gaslit. I was made to think I was wrong. [Doubt] my confidence, everything. My ex-wife has been lying the whole time and working with this woman in the law firm.” He has no idea who Matty is [so he’s like], “Why would you trust her, you’ve known her a year, over me, and how did she get involved?’ All of those questions come out in episode nine when we return.
Does Julian now have a right to feel betrayed because he’s also not being honest and hasn’t been?
Do I think everyone feels how they feel [and] Julian feels that he’s been betrayed by Olympia. The whole time Olympia has been like somebody else out there knows, and that’s why we can’t close this down. She hasn’t been telling him the truth, right? There’s another version of this story where Olympia could say, “Julian, I’m going to tell you something. You cannot breathe a word of it. Matty Matlock is not who she seems. She is holding the cards to all of this, and I’m aligning myself with you because we have to get out from under her.”
But she did not choose that because justice is important to her, too. She also does not want this criminal act to go unanswered. So there are two ways it could go, and the way that she did was, “I’m going to try to keep Julian safe, and I’m going to try to advance this other thing.” But she didn’t betray Matty. She didn’t go to her ex and say, “I trust you more than her.” So there are a lot of complications that come up that Julian has every right to feel betrayed, and then Olympia has every right to feel like, “You got us into this situation. I am dealing with it as best I can and trying to get us out of something that you created, not me. You know this is on you and so you don’t get to handle the way that justice is dealt. You should be lucky that you’re not in jail, because [Matty] would have put you in jail.” It’s complicated.
The last few episodes have gotten really personal. Let’s talk about how and Senior falling ill is such a big game changer for Julian and Senior’s relationship, especially since most of the season up to this point is how alienated Julian has felt from his father, how horrible a father Senior has been throughout his life, but now Julian’s loyalty is divided again because his father needs him.
Exactly. And not only his loyalty. But what the stroke does is asks, “What if he doesn’t wake up, then who do they go after?” Especially with Matty and Olympia. They’ve reached this great point where they’re able to work together because they’ve changed focus and said, “It’s not Julian, we’re going to go after Senior.” And they can both agree on that. If he’s taken out of the game, what happens to them? What happens to their friendship? Is it going to pivot? That question is at the heart of this. If Senior doesn’t wake up, then what? The answer at the end [for Olympia] is, “Then you, Matty, get to decide what we do, and I hope you don’t go after Julian, but this is your choice. I can’t take that away from you because justice is not about personal feelings. It’s about right and wrong.”
That’s a huge tension sitting there at the center of things for them. Everyone is acting out of what they think is right. So everyone has a right to feel betrayed, hurt, all those things, and the more complicated it is the more human we can make our characters [and] the better it is for our drama and our conflicts and our humor and everything. So we’re really trying to dig in to make sure everybody’s points are valid and justified, and then we get good drama from that place.
And Julian at by Senior’s side in the hospital, doing the thing that a lot of people do which is when a person is healthy, especially a parent, you concentrate on all the bad things, but then in a moment of crisis when you might lose them and you reflect, you realize it hasn’t all been bad.
Exactly. Does he want his father to spend the last part of his life in jail? And is his father going to be okay after having a stroke? There’s a range of how you can come back from this. If and when and how he wakes up is at stake. [And if you’re Julian] you start to think about the things you loved and that it wasn’t all bad, and you start to see all of the gray things that you sort of push to the side because Julian has been [so consistent that] “my dad’s a bad guy, and the reason that my life is hard is because of who he is” and he has to get unstuck from that mindset as well.
What Julian is going through [by the end of] this episode too is “my dad’s not all bad, and Olympia is not all good.” Olympia is the one that betrayed him. In his mind, she’s always been this beacon of morality and person who does the right thing, whereas his dad does the wrong thing. In this episode, the fact that she’s betrayed him so significantly, allows him to say, “not all people are all one thing.” So “she’s not all one thing, and neither is my dad. He also gave me something.’ The dimensionalizing [sic] of Olympia also dimensionalizes [sic] his experience with his father.
So then talk about Matty and Edwin’s relationship with Alfie’s father and what that brings up.
I’ve been really excited to get into this because it’s just like when Matty came into the law firm. She saw these people like chess pieces she was going to move and then they became real, and then her mission became more complicated. We’re playing that also in a different note, but with Alfie’s father, Joey. He’s a problem to her and he’s an addict. And what episode seven [“Prior Bad Acts”] was really about was how who he was to her is not who he is. In just opening up a little bit her point of view and her black-and-white thinking and allowing her to get to know him, she suddenly got something that she didn’t expect, which was a new memory of her daughter [Ellie] who’s gone, who she misses every single day.
Suddenly she realizes, “oh, I’m not just doing this for Alfie, bringing him in. There’s something real in here for me, too. There are parts of my daughter I didn’t know.” He tells her how much she meant to Ellie, and how Ellie always said she should have listened to her mom, which could have knocked Matty over with a feather in terms of what she thinks about their relationship. It starts to really help her on her journey because Matty’s journey is about healing and forgiving herself for all the perceived things she didn’t do for her daughter. That’s what she’s put into raising Alfie. She’s so hard on herself for what she didn’t do, what she didn’t see, what she couldn’t prevent, and getting to know Joey and opening herself up to him, and seeing different ways of looking at addiction and having more not just fear, but also like what did Ellie love about this guy? Did they laugh together? It really opened something up for her and gives her something unexpected, too.
So then talk about Sarah’s messiness and her turncoat behavior as a spy for Senior.
What do you do when somebody in power asks you to do something really bad? He is the boss, the boss of the boss. What we wanted to get into is, number one, Sarah’s always been a character whose [mindset has] been “achieve, achieve, achieve.” So Senior puts her in a really bad position. She doesn’t tell anyone because she doesn’t want to pass on that bad position to other people. She tries to do it, and then the guilt is eating her away. We explored a little bit about her family, and there’s going to be more of that. Now she gets fired from Olympia’s team, and her mom is getting remarried, and now we have a character that suddenly feels unmoored. She’s been somebody who’s always known exactly what track she’s on. She was like, “I am going to be a lawyer, and I’m going to get into this law school, and then I’m going to work for this firm.” And suddenly, all these things she’s sort of cut off from, and it makes her life a little bit more difficult, but she finds unexpected joy in a new opportunity that comes up.
We see how much she relied on Billy, and how now she must grow up and be on her own.
Yeah, she has to grow up. She relied on that whole family. She’s realizing what Olympia and Billy and Matty and working on that team has provided for her. So when those things are cut off and she’s no longer on the team and she’s on the outside, it brings up big things for the character that takes us in a good direction. My headline for the back half of our season is joy. Because I’ve got Olympia and Matty back together, and I want good comedy [from that move]. I also want those cards flipping constantly so the audience gets answers, answers, answers. Sarah is coming out of a period of feeling cut off [in the second half] and she’s looking into new areas. There’s a whole bunch of things that open up for Sarah in the back half that is really fun and exciting to watch. Let’s let Leah play all the different notes she can play so well.
What can you tease about what to expect when season two of Matlock resumes?
Oh, I’m so excited. I really like the joy we have. We get Justina Machado back as Eva. We get Shae coming back in for a big run that is, I think, very fun. We get to bring in Sarah Wright Olsen, who comes in [as new lawyer Gwen] with some authority vis-à-vis the merger that’s happening [that brings both] problems and comedy. I really wanted someone [in that role] who could ground the drama but also be fun, and Sarah’s crushed that.
We have another fun associate who comes in and out. His name is Henry Haber and he’s going to be bringing a totally different dynamic [as new associate Hunter] because he’s a bro, and Olympia and Matty don’t have many bros around them. That changes up their work environment. We have all the pieces that we were setting up in the first half of the season really clicking together. We just had a table read that was just so fun. If I’m teasing anything, I’m teasing joy. I’m teasing answers. We will get our final sort of answer vis-à-vis Wellbrexa that will be wrapped up this year. So I’m excited about that.
Is Senior going to make it?
I can tease that he makes it, but what capacity that’ll be is TBD.
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Stream all available episodes of Matlock on Paramount Plus until season two’s return Feb. 26, 2026 on CBS.
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