(Warning: The following text contains spoilers for the series premiere of Matlock on CBS. Read at your own risk!)

Until the last minutes of the Matlock Season premiere, there is no doubt in my mind that the majority of viewers thought something like, “Well, that was nice, but why?” I am sure the sentence “Kathy Bates is very good, but do we really need a Matlock Remake?” came out of the mouth of more than one person. Yes, there is a certain pleasure in watching Bates Matlock — the original legal drama starring Andy Griffith that premiered in 1986 and ran for nine seasons — and turns it into a story about the foolishness of overlooking and underestimating women of a certain age. How can you not be entertained as Bates uses her Southern charm to disarm suspects, witnesses and colleagues to get what she wants? And who doesn’t love a big courtroom reveal? But in a landscape full of more legal and crime dramas than you could ever really need, it’s just plain entertaining to see the gender of Matlock The formula seems a little disappointing.

And then comes the twist.

Most of the pilot plays out as you’d expect. We see Bates cheat and surreptitiously glean key details about a high-stakes negotiation, then bypass security to get a seat at a partner meeting at Jacobson Moore, a massive corporate law firm run by “Senior” (Beau Bridges), his son Julian (Jason Ritter), and Julian’s soon-to-be ex-wife Olympia (Skye P. Marshall). She interrupts the meeting to introduce herself: She’s Madeline “Matty” Matlock; yes, she’s a lawyer, and yes, her name is Matlock, just like the famous TV lawyer; and she wants a job at her firm. She’s broke, she’s raising her grandson, and she’s spent most of her life as a lawyer doing the right thing—now she wants the money. Or rather, she wants to “make it rain,” as she tells the room. She uses the above-mentioned important details of a high-stakes negotiation to secure a two-week trial for a permanent position with the company and is accepted into Olympia’s team.

Olympia is an excellent lawyer, so it is not Exactly the rejected team, but Matty is definitely being pushed aside for the moment. Fed up of big pharma cases and corporate law, Olympia wants to prove to Senior that they can actually take on cases that help people who need it and make money while doing it. She’s underestimated, too. So they work the case (the case in the season premiere involves a wrongfully imprisoned man suing the police), Matty uses her “harmless old lady” act to get some leads, and they win the case for her client. It’s good old-fashioned harmless fun. Bates and Marshall are a super convincing on-screen duo, and within the first few minutes of their interaction, you know there’s a lot to be gained from their characters’ relationship. The other junior associates on the team — Billy (David Del Rio), the empathetic and patient one; and Sarah (Leah Lewis), who is neither — are also great additions to the mix. The first episode sets up the workplace dynamics lightly, and of course Matlock could well continue to be a harmless legal drama with sympathetic characters for the foreseeable future.

But the last few minutes change everything. Surprise: After work, Matty says goodbye to her new colleagues and gets on the bus. One stop later, she gets off the bus and into a limousine. Matty has been lying to everyone from the start, including us. She is not Madeline Matlock – she is Madeline Kingston. She is definitely not broke – she lives in a mansion with her very lively and lovable husband (Sam Anderson) and, yes, her grandson Alfie (Aaron D. Harris). She didn’t force her way into the Jacobson Moore conference room because she needs a job; no, she has a much more interesting motive.

Matty’s daughter died of an opioid overdose, and they know that not only was Jacobson Moore representing the drug company, but someone at the company hid documents that could have incriminated the drug company, which would have gotten the drug taken off the market – and potentially saved not only Matty’s daughter, but countless other addicts. Matty – with the help of her husband and Alfie, both of whom are very much in on her plan – wants to find out who threw those documents away, uncover the truth, and send whoever it was to prison. The three suspects she has on her handy crime board? Senior, Julian, and Olympia. Matty is willing to do whatever it takes to get justice for her daughter.

Let’s be honest: Matlock is still a made-for-TV legal drama and isn’t reinventing anything here, but this twist certainly adds some edge to the show. It definitely gives Kathy Bates a whole lot more to play with. Suddenly, the tricks Matty uses have multiple layers: She’s not just playing the “harmless old lady” role to solve cases—her entire role in the office is an act. And now this seemingly harmless woman is living in a moral gray area. We’re rooting for her to find justice for her daughter, but we’re also seeing her lie to literally every other character around her.

That riveting back-and-forth between Matty and Olympia that I mentioned earlier? Now it only gets more interesting. It’s clear that the two women, both on guard (for very different reasons, of course), are heading toward common ground and perhaps a real friendship. What happens if Olympia is the culprit? How will Olympia react when she learns she’s been lied to so deeply? From this point on, we get to look at every relationship, every budding friendship that Matty forms through a completely different lens than we would have otherwise. We’ll also no doubt watch how this lie and this personal mission take their toll on Matty – not only will it be exhausting practically speaking to keep up the deception, but it’s sure to have emotional consequences as those faces on her wall become real, living people that she interacts with and gets to know better every day. With this one twist, Matty becomes an exponentially more interesting character.

ALSO READ: MatlockKathy Bates reveals the biggest flaw in Matty’s master plan

Although some may feel deceived, it is wise to use this twist at the very end of the premiere. As if you were coming from a show with Jane, the VirginJennie Snyder Urman at the helm – she took on the telenovelas, both celebrating and satirizing them, and Urman’s CW series was nothing more than a twist-a-palooza. It is wise to Matlock This twist unfolds this way for two main reasons. First, this is a daunting task for Matty—but we already know she can pull it off pretty well. Why? Because she outsmarted us all. When Matty tells the room full of lawyers that she managed to get past security because “this weird thing happens when women get older: We become invisible. Nobody sees us coming,” she’s also speaking to the audience. Second, this twist at the end of the episode means we spend 43 minutes growing fond of (mostly) this group of people who we now learn are villains in Matty’s eyes. This starting point makes things much more complicated than if we were to view them as the bad guys from the start, meaning we’re already setting up a whole host of moral dilemmas and looming confrontations for later in the series. The best twists on TV aren’t just funny or surprising—they also raise the stakes. This one does just that.

Of course, with a premise-altering twist like this, there are also some major pitfalls. Let’s be honest: How long are we going to think it’s cool — or care — to watch Matty lie to everyone? This scenario has both an emotional and practical shelf life. While Matty certainly seems capable of maintaining the deception, it wouldn’t be plausible that she never makes a slip-up. The point at which audiences start rolling their eyes and suspending their disbelief will come sooner rather than later. Knowing my Jennie Snyder Urman, there will certainly be some additional twists and turns along the way to Matty’s justice, but there’s no way her secret can believably stay secret for long. And once Matty’s truth is out, what happens next? Are we going back to a typical legal drama? Matlock is risking a lot with a twist that is inherently unsustainable, and yet if anyone has a chance to make this work in the long run, it’s probably Urman and Bates. At the very least, it’ll be fun to watch them try.

Matlock returns to its regular time slot with a repeat of the series premiere on Thursday, October 10, at 9/8c on CBS. Episode 2 will air on Thursday, October 17, at 9/8c, with new episodes available to stream the next day on Paramount+. For more information on MatlockWatch our interview with Kathy Bates.