Matlock threw viewers for a loop with that shocking premiere plot twist — but what comes next?
Kathy Bates‘ character, Madeline “Matty” Matlock, was introduced during the sneak peek of the series, which aired on Sunday, September 22. Despite sharing the same last name as the iconic Matlock series from the ’80s, Matty appeared to be a former lawyer hoping to get hired at a prestigious law firm after falling on hard times.
The ending, however, revealed that it was all an act. Matty is actually the wealthy Madeline Kingston, who has gone undercover at the firm to track down who is responsible for her daughter’s death. The current suspects on Matty’s list include Olympia (Skye P. Marshall), Julian (Jason Ritter) or Senior (Beau Bridges) — all of whom could have had access to documents that would have taken opioids off the streets before her daughter died from an overdose.
Showrunner Jennie Snyder Urman later reassured fans that the show won’t continue to hit them with narrative shake-ups.
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“It’s not that suddenly the whole show is going to flip and what you thought was true is no longer true. It’s not that, certainly not,” she told TV Insider on Sunday. “It’s more just, we continue to reveal things and hopefully you’ll get a sense of surprises. And the case has its own reveals in what she knows and how she knows. But the person that she tells us she is at the end of the pilot is the person she is.”
Bates has also hinted at the trajectory of Matty’s journey.
“Certainly, I think that there’s a level of guilt, which is in the deep marrow of Matty. The fact that she feels tremendously guilty that she failed her child, and was unable to win the battle between the drugs and her child’s future, no matter what she did,” the actress told Entertainment Weekly on Sunday. “And also the level of, she’s been grieving for 10 years and I think she spent the last couple of years with her grandson Alfie cooking up this plan and using their wits. And I think all of that level of excitement and joy of working with him and finding that he was very passionate about bringing those people to justice that killed his mother.”
New episodes of Matlock air Thursdays starting October 17 at 9 p.m. ET during CBS’ official premiere week. Keep scrolling for answers to the biggest questions about where Matlock goes from here:
Are More Plot Twists Coming?
“You will continually learn more and more about Matty, about what her life was like before, about her past, about how she got into this, about why we continue to deepen the reveals as we go in terms of character revelations. But also the show is structured so that there is a surprise at the end of every episode,” Urman teased to TV Insider. “Some will be bigger, some will be smaller. I have plans for achieving ones that are hopefully as shocking as the pilot, but they’re not all going to be. But they all will have a secret and there will always be a twist.”
She continued: “There’s always a sense in the writers room of, here are the cards that we’re showing the audience, and here are the cards that we’re keeping down and waiting to reveal at the end. That gives it an exciting energy.”
Will Matty’s Cover Be Blown?
According to Urman, there will always be obstacles thrown in Matty’s way.
“She was a lawyer, and she’s in a totally different area of the law. She was sort of at the end of her career, so she’s coming in under the radar. She has a totally different name. She is counting on the fact that she won’t be recognized,” the executive producer hinted to TV Insider. “And who knows if that holds true.”
Urman specifically cited Yael Grobglas‘ yet-to-be-seen character, adding, “[She] plays this human lie detector, this jury consultant who can sniff out the truth. [She is] definitely somebody who comes into the office and throws Matty off a little bit early on.”
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Who Could Be the 1st Person to Uncover Matty’s Secret?
During an exclusive interview with Us Weekly, Leah Lewis, who plays Sarah, speculated whether Matty could keep the lie going at work.
“I would love it if Sarah got to debunk Maddie. Because I think out of everyone sniffing around, it would be her. It’s so funny because Sarah always calls out the thing that no one wants to say,” Lewis shared with Us. “She struggles a bit with the age gap and she’s very like, ‘OK, who is this older person that is just doing all the assignments that Sarah’s worked her whole life to do?’ So she kind of cops this attitude about her. But if Sarah were to say something, people would probably think she’s just competitive and anxious.”
Despite having confidence in Sarah’s deduction skills, Lewis isn’t sure anyone would believe her.
“If Sarah was like, ‘Hey, check out all this information,’ then she would just get told, ‘Oh, that’s Sarah being Sarah again,’” she noted. “She overanalyzes everything and that’s also part of what makes her feel different at the job.”
How Will the Show Balance Matty’s Arc With the Cases of the Week?
“I really wanted the show to have these moments of espionage. There’s always going to be a little mission that she’s got to accomplish within the episode,” Urman explained to TV Insider. “There’s the larger legal case, there are the emotional stories, and then there’s going to be the mission of the episode, which is the spy element of what she has to get, what piece of information she’s trying to uncover on her way to solving the larger mystery.”
She continued: “And sometimes she wins and gets it, and sometimes she doesn’t. Sometimes she’s almost caught, and sometimes she is and has to talk her way out of it. All of that is a fun tension that we get to play with now that the audience is let into the twist.”
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How Long Will the Secret Play Out on the Show?
It remains unclear how long Matty will be undercover before her deception is revealed.
“Matty does not want to get exposed, I’ll say that. I wanted the mystery that we’re setting out with to be 100 percent resolved by the end of the season,” Urman told Deadline. “It will leave us with new problems.”
In a separate interview with The Wrap, Urman teased what would happen when those around Matty find out the truth, saying, “Once you finish this [undercover mission], she’s not going to still be your friend. You’ve been lying the show time. That emotion is something she did not expect to have, or a calculation she made before she started this.”
