Matlock is on the verge of returning to the 2026 TV schedule after a few weeks off, meaning that fans will finally find out what happens next after the cliffhanger reveal of Shae (Yael Grobglas) being arrested. The charge was that she’d bribed a juror on the case that Matty (Kathy Bates) and Olympia (Skye P. Marshall) had been working, and she was marched out of Jacobson Moore in handcuffs. The stars spoke with CinemaBlend about the first episode back, and what Shae’s arrest means for the whole team.
The new episode on April 2 is called “The Cavalry Isn’t Coming,” which really doesn’t bode well for the idea of everybody at Jacobson Moore rising up in support of Shae. The logline from CBS does preview that Matty will be on Shae’s side, so it seems that Olympia’s team won’t turn on the jury consultant. So, how much faith does Olympia have in Shae that she’s innocent?
I asked Skye P. Marshall that very question, especially considering that Olympia and Shae have a complicated past from Season 1. The actress, who also welcomes her husband, Edwin Hodges, to Season 2, shared:
Olympia wasn't there for that conversation when Senior told [Shae] to make sure she wins. She wasn't there for that. All she knows is that Shae is great at her job. Shae took accountability for sleeping with Julian. They both decided to move forward. They don't have a personal relationship anymore, but they both need each other. Shae has strong attributes that are an asset to Olympia when it comes to winning, and that's what Olympia is always striving for, is to win, and that's what she and Shae have in common.
The point was made when Matty and Olympia brought Julian into their secret that you don’t have to love everything about your colleagues to work with them, and Olympia has a professional respect for Shae. The human lie detector has been an inconvenience for Matty’s secret mission, but definitely helpful in winning cases. There are also more ways that Olympia and Shae can relate, as Marshall went on:
They're both very strong women who know that they're disposable, and that is something that Olympia, I don't believe is going to allow any space for, because she knows that bribing a juror is not something that Shae Banfield would do. And Olympia believes that that is the criminals that she's going up against in court. It's just another one of their trickeries. She's not thinking about Jacobson Moore. She's thinking about the table across from her in the courtroom.
It’s one of the hard truths of Jacobson Moore that being incredibly competent at one’s job doesn’t mean safety from being fired, either by people in positions of more power (i.e. Senior) or even the efficiency expert who has come in to make cuts to jobs ahead of the merger. They shouldn’t be disposable, but that’s not what we’ve seen from Jacobson Moore over the years.
For Shae, she doesn’t have the same legal background as Olympia, Matty, or the rest of the team to potentially mount her own defense, and I have to wonder how reliable the testimony of a jury consultant will be to group of jurors… if Shae has to go to trial, anyway. When I spoke with Yael Grobglas about “The Cavalry Isn’t Coming,” she opened up about Shae’s sense of loyalty to the people she works with at the firm:
One of my defining elements of Shae is she is incredibly loyal. You've seen a lot of the downsides of it almost up until now, where she doesn't tolerate lies or BS, and she's like, 'If you lie, I will take you down. I do not lie.' And it comes off as very direct to the point of sometimes borderline aggressive to most people who don't know Shae or understand where she's coming from. And now you really see how it shatters her in this episode, how the one person, really, or place she expected that in return… she did not expect to be dropped like a hot potato the moment things got hard.
If you recall from the previous episode (or revisit it streaming with a Paramount+ subscription), Shae wasn’t exactly being followed out of the building by a throng of coworkers promising to help her, and "dropped like a hot potato" seems like a fair description of the storyline from the start. Of course, that may have been different if Matty and/or Olympia were present at the time. Is now the time when she learns that the loyalties of her colleagues don’t lie with her as much as hers do with them?
That’s a painful potential direction for the show to take her, but the episode description also reveals that Matty will be representing her, which could add a fun new layer to their relationship. While the actress of course didn’t spoil everything while previewing the episode, Grobglas did allude to Shae having to “trust” a person she might not have under normal circumstances:
[It] forces her to trust someone that she didn't think she would. And it's also the most uncomfortable situation for her to be in, to be forced to rely on anyone else for anything, definitely on someone who she has caught her being nervous or lying, even if she doesn't know why. But I think this forces an entirely new dynamic, which is fascinating, between Matty and Shae.
It remains to be seen if Shae’s trial will end in a way that she can stick around at Jacobson Moore, but fans can at least be confident of one thing: the Season 2 finale coming up in just a few weeks won’t be the end, as Matlock was renewed for Season 3 months ago. So, if you need a refresher on what happened before the mini break, check out the video below:
Tune in to CBS on Thursday, April 2 at 9 p.m. ET for the “Cavalry Isn’t Coming”” episode of Matlock, ahead of an episode of Elsbeth that should be much funnier with a killer who’s obsessed with Anna Wintour, of all people. You can also catch up on any episodes you might have missed from the very beginning on Paramount+.
