"Suits" has captured the hearts of fans since its debut on USA in 2011, and its availability on Netflix in recent years sparked a major resurgence, inspiring countless binge-watching sessions. However, despite this momentum, the new spin-off, "Suits LA," was canceled after just one season, as announced with NBC's fall schedule. The decision to pull the plug on the series was explained by Jeff Bader, NBC's president of program planning strategy.
"It's so hard to talk about shows and which ones you bring back, and Suits had a very short run, but it really just has not resonated the way we thought it would," Bader shared with Variety after the fall schedule was made public. "There can be many, many reasons why, people are speculating why it hasn't resonated, but it's just not really showing the potential to grow for us in the future, unfortunately."
Bader elaborated on the tough choices they had to make: "And it's those decisions we had to make. We had to look at the performance of the shows, both on linear and on digital. We had to see the ones that looked like they had growth potential in the future. So we're looking at how stable they are on their linear performance, how stable they are on digital, which ones are growing and which ones are declining. And we had to make some hard decisions."
He also mentioned that NBCUniversal considers the potential for transferring canceled shows to Peacock, but "Suits LA" did not receive the green light for such a move.
When it comes to the shows that survived the cut, Bader outlined the criteria that made them appealing to the network, especially with the need to accommodate more sports programming, such as the NBA taking over Tuesday nights. "We looked at what their performance was week-to-week, episode-to-episode, on both linear and digital, to just try and glean which ones we thought had the best ratings story," Bader explained. "And then on the creative side, the creative teams did the same thing. Which ones have the most potential, or the best potential, to capture a new audience? And these were the two shows that made their way to the top."
"Suits" originally ran for nine seasons from 2011 to 2019. The revival series, "Suits LA," premiered in February and featured stars like Stephen Amell, Lex Scott Davis, Josh McDermitt, and Bryan Greenberg. Additionally, original "Suits" cast members such as Rick Hoffman, David Costabile, and leading man Gabriel Macht made appearances on the new show. Aaron Korsh, the creator of "Suits," also served as the creator and executive producer of the spinoff, which aired its final episode on May 11, 2025.
