This article contains spoilers for the two-part Matlock season 1 finale, “Tricks of the Trade.”
Matlock has dropped its biggest bombshell to date.
The CBS legal drama finally revealed the identity of its big bad — or, at least, the closest thing it has to a big bad — in its season 1 finale, “Tricks of the Trade.”
After a full season of Kathy Bates‘ Madeline “Matty” Matlock secretly investigating the Jacobson Moore law firm to uncover which key attorney willfully collaborated with the drug company WellBrexa to continue the opioid epidemic, Olympia Lawrence (Skye P. Marshall) finally located the smoking gun: documentation proving that her soon-to-be-ex-husband, Julian Markston (Jason Ritter), helped the corporation keep opioids on the market.
During the episode’s climax, Olympia comes face-to-face with her ex with the documents in hand in a tense confrontation at the bank, and Julian tearfully admits his guilt, explaining that he acted on the orders of his father, Howard “Senior” (Beau Bridges), in order to prove his worth at the firm.
Kathy Bates, David Del Rio, Leah Lewis, and Skye P. Marshall in the ‘Matlock’ season 1 finale. Sonja Flemming/CBS
In a conversation with Entertainment Weekly, Ritter says that he had a “flood of emotions” when showrunner Jennie Snyder Urman told him that Julian was the WellBrexa collaborator about two-thirds of the way through the season.
“It was definitely a mixed response,” Ritter says. “I was excited for what that means for my character. It means there’s some juicy stuff going forward. But I was also sort of sad for him. I was like, ‘Oh no, not Julian!’ He is doing better, and he’s slowly getting through the tough times, but it looks like there’s tough times ahead. But as an actor, that’s always fun.”
Urman tells EW that Julian wasn’t always envisioned as the guilty party from the show’s inception, though that decision did come fairly early in the season. “I was unsure. I knew some things after the pilot and I knew the long-term story, and I knew the arc of Olympia and Matty and how so much of the series would hinge on their love story,” the showrunner says. “We debated and debated and landed on Julian, even though we were all pained by it.”
Urman says that Ritter was eager to discuss Julian’s motivations once he learned about the big reveal.
“We talked about the reasons why he would’ve done it — specifically the pressure Julian was under. We wanted to hit it from the human point of view and not frame him as a villain,” she says. “He’s such a warm person and character, so that’s going to be what makes the scene sing: his vulnerability and the guilt that it was the worst thing he ever did. He feels so terrible about it. And I think that’s what makes the ending complicated, that you’re not unmasking a villain. You’re unmasking a human being who made a really bad mistake.”
Jason Ritter and Skye P. Marshall in the ‘Matlock’ season 1 finale. Robert Voets/CBS
Ritter says that Julian’s “worst nightmare” is Olympia finding the hidden documents.
“He’s basically pleading for his life,” the actor says. “He knows that everything could be destroyed if this information got out. I essentially just tried to get into that headspace of what it would feel like to have something that I feel is so shameful and horrible come to light, and then see the person that I care about the most — who I also have a complicated relationship with — holding the keys to my future.”
Ritter explains that although he didn’t know for sure that Julian was the WellBrexa collaborator, he’d been making conscious decisions suggesting his character’s guilt from the very first episode. “It could have been any one of us from the beginning, so I made a choice that Julian is a person who puts things in little boxes,” the actor says.
“I know from my life, in getting sober and things like that, that I go, ‘This is my new chapter, and so maybe if I work really hard and I try to do good in the world, maybe it will offset the things that I feel embarrassed about,'” he continues. “And so I made that choice for Julian that he has focused on being a father and focused on doing his work and making money for his family. I’m sure late at night, it pops into his mind and he’s haunted by it, but in his general day-to-day life, he’s not carrying it around. He’s looking forward and trying not to think about all of that as much as possible.”
David Del Rio in the ‘Matlock’ season 1 finale. Sonja Flemming/CBS
The finale also leaves Billy Martinez (David Del Rio) on a major cliffhanger: after his heart-wrenching breakup with longtime girlfriend Claudia (Bella Ortiz) and his subsequent entanglement with Simone (Andrea Londo), the young lawyer discovers that Claudia is pregnant with her (and, presumably, his) first child.
“David has two young babies under two, so I’ve been observing him as a new father, and thinking that is a great thing we could bring to Billy that destabilizes everything,” Urman says. “It changes your whole life. And David makes me remember what that time was in my life, and it just felt like the right combination of things to happen to this person who finally got free of Claudia, really got over the hurt and the rejection, and finally was looking to the future.”
Urman also teases that the storyline prompts “so many questions” about Billy and Claudia’s trajectory. “Is she having a baby? Is she not having the baby? And he’s the ultimate people pleaser, so what is he going to do and what does he want? All of that. But just in terms of putting your characters in a brand new headspace at the top of the next season, that’s as big as it gets, and it feels like an exciting, fun area that has a lot of both comedy and drama, which David plays both of so well, so I can’t wait.”
If that’s not enough, the episode also features a third cliffhanger: a mysterious stranger (Niko Nicotera) knocks on Matty’s front door and announces himself as the father of Matty’s grandson, Alfie (Aaron Harris), who has lived with the protagonist and her husband since his mother’s overdose.
Urman says that casting Nicotera was “easy” because Bates recommended him for the role. “She had worked with Niko on Richard Jewell, and just believed in him as an actor and knew how great he was,” the showrunner explains. “She told me about him early on — I think at the pilot stage — and I’m definitely going to take casting advice from Kathy Bates — pretty good taste! I’m really excited to get into their story and what he brings to the show and how he complicates Matty’s most sacred place, which is her home.”
Kathy Bates and Skye P. Marshall in the ‘Matlock’ season 1 finale. Robert Voets/CBS
Matlock was renewed for a full second season at CBS, and Ritter is thrilled to see where Julian ends up next.
“I am excited that he’s going to have a front row seat to whatever’s going on, and the one thing that I have learned from this season of working with Jennie is that whatever idea I’ve created in my mind of what might happen, Jennie’s ideas, unsurprisingly, are always so much better than anything I could have come up with,” the actor says. “As Julian’s actor, I’m like his little lawyer. So I get to figure out how to make this guy who did this horrible thing sympathetic, how we can still see his humanity through this completely awful act that he did.”
Urman already has tons of ideas ready for season 2.
“I’m really excited for new pairings,” she says. “Unexpectedly, we have really fun material for Billy and Julian together, and that has led us into interesting places.”
She also notes that the show’s central relationship still has lots of room to transform.
“We get to continue to explore this epic love story between Olympia and Matty, and any epic love story is going to have twists and turns: will they or won’t they, and can they find their way back to each other?” Urman says. “But the friendship that they built in this first season, despite the lie at the center of it, was real and deep and rare and meaningful and life-affirming for both of them.”
“I think they felt it. Hopefully, the audience felt it,” she continues. “The secret was revealed. They’re separated again, and I think in all epic love stories, you’re going to want them to find their way back to each other, and I’m excited to keep writing toward that.”
Season 1 of Matlock is now streaming on Paramount+.
