‘Matlock’ Season 3 Won’t Premiere in the Fall

Matlock fans will have to wait a little longer than expected for Season 3.

The Kathy Bates-led CBS legal drama, which is set to conclude its second season with a two-hour finale on Thursday, is moving to a midseason premiere for Season 3 in the network’s 2026-2027 broadcast schedule.

Series creator and executive producer Jennie Snyder Urman told TV Insider on Tuesday that the shifted schedule isn’t a cause for concern, and that she specifically requested the move from a fall premiere after the Season 2 finale will act as a complete “reset” for the series.

The Matlock Season 2 finale logline teases, “The team confronts an unexpected final hurdle they need to overcome to bring Senior to justice for his role in the Wellbrexa cover up. Meanwhile, they defend an airport ramp operator accused of safety negligence in the death of a passenger.”

With the Wellbrexa storyline set to conclude ahead of Season 2, Urman said a new mystery will be introduced for Season 3, which requires plenty of time for the writers to map out, and prompted the midseason move.

“I just feel like we had so much stuff to think about because we really landed the plane on this, and we really thought that was important because we didn’t want to keep dragging out the same story, and the characters have to get to someplace real emotionally,” Urman told TV Insider. “So we really, when we took this two-hour finale and really paid a lot of things off, what came with that was I’m going to need time after that to really build the architecture so that we have it for the next seasons.”

She added, “I’m excited about it, but I am also grateful because we needed a little bit of time.”

While it’s “sad for audiences” to have to wait a little longer for Season 3, it will allow the writers to make sure the new mystery is “airtight,” with Urman explaining, “We had a lot of pieces going in, so we really had to create this new piece of it. I feel lucky that the network’s giving us time to get it right because I don’t want the quality to drop.”

“[It’s a] big reset, so we have an extra long writer’s room before we go to camera, and I really want to do it right,” she added. “The quality is everything to me.”

Matlock‘s two-hour Season 2 finale airs Thursday, April 23, at 9 p.m. ET on CBS.