“Who the Hell Are You?”: ‘Matlock’ Creator Answers Key Questions From Finale, Teasing Season 2

[This story contains major spoilers from the two-episode season one finale of Matlock, “The Johnson Case” and “I Was That, Too.”]

Madeline “Matty” Matlock introduced herself as an essentially invisible septuagenarian attorney with a brilliant scheme to score a job at top NYC firm Jacobson Moore. By the end of the Matlock pilot, however, audiences were clued into her real goal, which was to infiltrate Jacobson Moore to find the hidden document that could have taken opioids from a Big Pharma client off the market and possibly saved her only child daughter Ellie from her life-ending opioid overdose.

Over the course of 19 episodes, the surprise CBS hit series delivered a ride with Oscar and Emmy winner Kathy Bates in the driver’s seat. And now, with the last two episodes combining for an epic two-hour finale, the season one ending blew up the main premise that has driven the drama.

In episodes sixteen and seventeen, “The Johnson Case” and “I Was That, Too,” Skye Marshall’s Olympia, Jacobson Moore’s badass partner-track attorney who takes on cases fighting for the underdog pro bono instead of representing the big-money clients, confronts Matty where last week left off, at the end of her fake bus ride to her awaiting limo with the question of, “Who the hell are you?”

The follow-up episode is about the fallout with Olympia locking Matty, whom she now knows to be Madeline Kingston, into a room at Jacobson Moore demanding her to come clean about every lie she’s told her and everyone else. It’s an intense episode with a delightful but quick Easter egg of “I felt like a prisoner in a horror movie” (referencing her Oscar-winning role in Misery) when her curious co-workers Billy (David Del Rio) and Sarah (Leah Lewis) find her.

By finale’s end, Olympia and Matty’s severely damaged relationship shows signs of possible repair, but Olympia experiences another blow when she catches her now ex-husband and father of her two kids Julian (Jason Ritter), the tortured son of the law firm’s influential managing partner Senior (Beau Bridges), red-handed with the Wellbrexa documents that are the cornerstone of Matty’s claim.

What does the future hold in this interesting triangle? The Hollywood Reporter caught up with Matlock creator and showrunner Jennie Snyder Urman once again to discuss the interesting developments and questions in the season finale, as well as the show overall, and especially what’s in store for the already renewed season two.

Top of mind is the obvious cliffhanger and the ins and outs of the love affair between Olympia and Matty, a rare TV example of genuine cross-generational, interracial friendship, followed by: the state of Edwin (Sam Anderson) and Matty’s union; the significance of her sister Bitsy (Julie Hagerty), particularly in broaching the open door topic of their grandson Alfie’s (Aaron Harris) guardianship should they die, and the appearance of his biological father; Sarah and Billy’s development and future; Matty threatening Belvin’s (Patricia Belcher) dog Barry Manilow and more. Like with her orchestration of the show’s success, Urman shares just enough to let viewers in on her master plan.

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Why did you have Olympia bust Matty over her lie so early? Why wasn’t that the season cliffhanger?

I think it would be expected that would be the cliffhanger, so that’s one reason. I really like surprising the audience. I’ve been dying and waiting for this episode to have the two of them in a room together so that all this emotion and truth can come out in a way in which they can hear each other. That episode [17] is what I wanted in this season, because I wanted that truth and that relationship to feel what’s going to happen. I also wanted to solve the crime this season, and I wanted to tease what is next with the women. I wanted to put everybody in the most difficult situation. I just felt like going a little bit past the discovery would do that, and we thought it would clear the runway for the second season.

There was a social media tweet that said “it’s about time” regarding Olympia finding Matty out, because they felt that Olympia was too smart for Matty’s con to continue.

I agree with that. And she has known for a while, so she’d been putting together her pieces. That’s something we’re constantly weighing in the writers room. We know this person is really smart. “Olympia is really smart. Wait, Matty is really smart. We have to make the clue better. We have to make ‘the tell’ more hidden.” Taking these women very seriously as very smart people in control of the moves on their side of the chessboard was important to us. And Olympia has been smart. She’s been picking clues, putting them together, slowly and methodically, until she can build enough of a case to talk to Matty.

Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Skye praised the writers because they had the audience rooting for a con.

That’s why that Olympia episode was so important, because they’re rooting for Matty. Every episode you’re like: Can she fulfill her goal? Can she achieve this? Is she going to get caught? And you’re feeling like, “Oh, no, don’t get caught!” But Olympia is the personification of all the damage she’s caused. We wanted the audience to kind of forget because they’re rooting for Matty until that moment.

At the end of episode 16, when Olympia unmasks her, we go into 17 and suddenly we see a totally different perspective, all the collateral damage that Matty caused. [We see] the scenes we weren’t privileged enough to see of Olympia by herself, crying, opening pens, feeling like she’s going crazy, and, are there listening devices in her home? Spiraling like that is painful. How her kids found her in the morning and were like, “Are you okay, Mommy?” Having a kid ask if you’re okay when you’re supposed to be their strength was terrible for her. We wanted to suddenly switch the point of view and say: you were rooting for her, but let us remind you and show you this is who she hurt, and she hurt her in real ways. She said she loved her, is it worth it?

We wanted that to be put to the audience too, as it’s being put to Matty, as she’s being confronted by all the pain that her plan has caused to this person whom she says she loves. That perspective shift was really important to the storytelling so that the audience is complicit in the same way in the pilot that the audience, too, underestimated Matty, even though she was telling us she’s smarter than she seems. They weren’t expecting the surprise. It’s the same way with this, where you’re rooting for Matty and then suddenly you realize, ‘Oh, we have been rooting for her at the cost of this other woman whose life she has really, really hurt.” That should feel complicated and painful and dramatic and all those things.

It was devastating when her daughter says, “Mommy, play Grandpa’s message, that always makes you feel better,” and she didn’t have it.

Exactly. It’s [a message] back to the audience that Matty has really hurt this woman profoundly.

At the end of episode sixteen, “The Johnson Case,” when Olympia confronts Matty after she steps off her bus, she asks Matty, “Who the hell are you?” Now at the end of season one, who the hell is Matty to Olympia and who the hell is Olympia to Matty?

At the end of the finale, who are they to each other?

Yes.

During the finale, in order to prove Matty wrong, Olympia had to operate the same way that Matty’s been operating. You saw her manipulate her mother-in-law. You saw that it was painful for her because she went to manipulate Julian and she aimed at where he is tender and, all of a sudden, he’s opening up to her, and he’s saying, “I’m so glad I have you,” and she’s like feeling like a really shitty person, right? But she still does it. What Matty’s saying is, “If the need is big enough, you do what you have to do.” And what Matty is really hoping is that, because Olympia has done some of these things and they work together, she can find forgiveness for all the ways Matty manipulated her. Because she sees that when you’re faced with an impossible situation, sometimes you do intolerable things. And Matty wants the relationship back.

That scene of the two of them in the hallway [near the end of the finale], where Olympia [essentially] says, “Let me go to the bank and you stay here with Sarah.” We’ve always talked about that as the ultimate “if you ever loved me, show me now” scene, if it was in the the language of a romantic relationship and Matty let her go to the bank alone. So that does warm Olympia to her a little, because she knows what that costs Matty. Matty, at that moment, is not sure if Olympia is manipulating her because she knows she loves her, and she’s just aiming where it’s tender, which is what Matty taught her, or if it’s real. So there’s a lot of hope, there’s a lot of love, there’s a lot of hurt and a lot of distrust at the beginning, and that’s where we pick them up.

Was it a conscious decision also to wear Olympia down through the motherhood connection? When Matty’s talking to Olympia after the birth of the daughter in episode 17, she speaks to the bond between mother and daughter and how she would do anything for her daughter.

Exactly. They’re both trying to fight for their kids, for their families. The problem is that it puts them against each other in terms of what they think is best for their respective families.

So, let’s go to where Matty and Edwin are. When we first chatted about these two, this relationship was so nice to see. But now that we have gotten to know them better, it’s true that no relationship is really what it seems, and any long-term relationship has its issues, be it resentment or guilt. That relationship between Matty and Edwin, what was it at the beginning and what has it evolved to at this point?

It’s an almost 50-year marriage, so it’s seen lots of joy and lots of deep, deep pain. It’s seen conflict. It’s a lifetime. So you’re seeing underneath it. It can’t be always on the same page. They’re going to have differences of opinion. You’re seeing how they work it out. When they come to an impasse, which is I’m interested in, then what? Because he wants her to stop working; she wants to work. It’s two opposites. It’s a 50-year marriage: you’re not leaving. It might seem they might be unhappy, but are they going to give that up? I don’t want that marriage at stake, but what I want to know is: how do you work through the impossible situations in a long-term marriage, and what does that lead to dramatically? And it leads to some surprising new fun areas in their marriage. But they have to figure it out, and figuring out hard problems leads to interesting, new, dramatic avenues.

It also shows that, especially in this day and age, what you think retirement will look like is not what retirement will look like.

It changes. And what you want might change. That’s true of us as people. I might want something today and tomorrow. I wake up and I’m like, “Oh my gosh,” and I see a different path I could want to follow. Matty has had at this life-changing year with Olympia, where she’s felt valuable and she’s felt seen, and she’s realized she loves litigation, which was never something she did, and the joy of finding something new that lights you up when you’re thinking that you know all of the things that you’re good at and that bring you joy like that’s exciting for her, and it’s opened a new area. Now they have to figure out how to evolve with that dream.

Now, speaking of marriage. In light of this new information, is Olympia thinking she and Julian didn’t have to end their marriage?

The fact that he had the document reinforced that they cannot be married. I think she loves him. He’s kind. He’s a great dad. He wants to do great things and to be a great person in the world, but, when pressure comes down on him, he often chooses the easier rather than the right way. And I think that is something that gets in between him and Olympia, [like] the affair.  He just messes up, and she just loves him as the father of her children, but she needs something different.

Let’s talk about that moment. For this span of two to three minutes, we’re like, “Oh, thank God it wasn’t Julian.” And then, damn, it was Julian.

I know. I know. We’re all rooting for it not to be him. The performance of Jason [Ritter] in that bank was so epic and really vulnerable and really humanizing and he made us understand why he did it, even though it’s this horrible thing. I find myself watching and being like, “He made a mistake!” Jason brought such depth into his performance, and I love that. I think it complicates everything because the more you’re also rooting for Julian, the harder all the dilemmas are.

When Olympia becomes partner. Is she partner only because she earned it, or is Senior catching on? Or is it just a great, complicated coincidence?

Let me think of what I want to say. Olympia is a great lawyer, and she deserved and got that position. Are there other things underneath it? You’ll have to wait and see.

How is becoming partner going to complicate her? She wanted to be partner, she wanted to be in this club, but sometimes you don’t know all that you were signing up for.

That’s exactly right. She wanted to be in the club. Now, that she’s in the club she has different access points, which is going to be interesting in terms of what she is trying to figure out in the second season. But, yeah, she’s part of the inner circle now, and she has a different stake in the firm, but she’s still the same person.

Let’s talk about Matty’s sister, Bitsy. Why was it important to bring her in?

I wanted to show who Matty based this character on. That it wasn’t just a random person, that it was someone in her life. I just thought that if you get to meet her, that will suddenly complicate everything you thought you knew about Matty. We’re just trying to always expand what you know about her, and the sort of depth of who she is as a character, who she is in the world. Meeting more of her family felt important. And then that sister relationship is really seminal to Matty. The thing with Matty is that she thinks she knows a lot. She thinks she knows it all. And she is surprised a few times this season.

She was surprised in the third episode when her views of sexual harassment ended up evolving. She was like, “Oh, I don’t know everything.” With Bitsy, she realized she was wrong about this thing that was central to her family, which is that Bitsy wanted to stay home with her mother and never had any other aspirations. She realizes, “Oh, Bitsy did that so that I could go off?” Constantly letting the character learn things is interesting because it changes them. I think it’s amazing to watch people evolve, and especially older people because we’re still living and learning and becoming.

And it opened the door to for another major plot foreshadowing, which is Alfie’s father (Niko Nicotera).

Yeah exactly. We had introduced the idea of Alfie’s father, and then we wanted to bring up guardianship again towards the end of the season to remind the audience of that, while also seemingly shutting it down, that we think we found the solution in Bitsy, her younger sister, taking Alfie. But we still put that into the air, and that is the impetus then for Alfie to look [for his father]. It’s like a plot point or character to open the door to service like five things at once.

Matty got a little dark and unlikable in the whole exchange over Barry Manilow. What was the point of that?

She’s trying to figure out how to get leverage on this woman and this woman gave her greatest piece of leverage.  . . I don’t think she was ever going to do anything bad to the dog. She just needed information. I wouldn’t classify it as dark and evil. She’s mad at Belvin too. She thinks Belvin was a coward. Why did she do the right thing? Why did she hide and do this? And then Matty realizes what power structures feel like and where different people are on them, and how hard it is to come forward against a giant corporation. And she realizes she was approaching Belvin with not enough empathy, and she changes there too and evolves. [But] she’s enjoying it until she realizes, “Oh, my God, I’ve been wrong. I’ve been expecting this woman to act in a certain way and not everyone can.”

That’s a good point. Matty and Edwin are rich, but even Matty being rich doesn’t shield her from certain things as an older woman.

Yes. Exactly. There’s so many different power structures in our society, and each one has its own specific pull in shaping of your experience in the world. And it’s hard to move through a landscape with any of them. You can be rich, but you’re older and you’re a woman and you’re marginalized in certain ways. If you’re older and a woman and Black, you’re marginalized in different ways. If you’re older and a woman and poor, you’re marginalized in different ways. There’s just so many different iterations of what we deal with in society.

So what did we see from Sarah and Billy? Billy is in an interesting position for next season.

Billy finally felt like he was free from this romantic relationship that defined his entire early adult life. He finally got over it, and then Claudia showed up and said she’s pregnant. So his life could potentially look very, very different suddenly and unexpectedly. And we have to sort of see what happens there.

Then Sarah finally, finally got this case and this victory, and she’s been waiting for it all season. It was taken away from her by Matty in the middle of the season. One thing that Matty has felt really terrible about also, is that she feels like she took this person who was all the confidence and then really just smashed it in order to keep her secret. So seeing Sarah succeed is important to her, and then it brings the group together. I think we’re all just rooting for Sarah to do it. Then, of course, you realize that she did something . If the firm finds out that she took the case without going through the proper channels, her job could be a danger. So it’s not a great position. She’s riding high, but there is danger just over the horizon.

Going into the next season, Billy and Sarah still don’t know about Matty. Olympia’s not the only one caught up in this. What can we expect for season two? Where do you want to go?

Where we’re going to go is: What happens with this document is the first question; what happens to the relationship; what happens in the law firm? Everyone’s futures are in flux. Olympia and Matty is an epic love story, so there’s going to be twists and turns. They’re just going to be coming back together and pulling apart. We’re going to be hoping they find their way back to each other or can get past the massive betrayal that was Matty lying for all this time. Everybody is in a really, really difficult situation at the top of the next season.

Will we see more of Senior?

Yes, you will see more of Senior.

Did this season go the way that you hoped, or did it exceed your expectations?

It exceeded my expectations. We did it in a bubble. We started airing when we were shooting episode 17. We had a blissful bubble where we loved all of the work, and the studio and the network was happy, and we loved working all together, but you don’t know how it’s going to be received. So having the audience like it as well was sort of that final piece that is out of my control. But I’m really gratified,

You got Kathy Bates another award with her CCA win, and you got another awards season coming up.

That’s awesome. I have gotten to work with such incredible people this season. It’s been a dream for me.

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All episodes of season one of Matlock are streaming on Paramount+.