A Cut Suits Plot Almost Killed Off One Of The Show's Most Beloved Characters
"Suits" is one of the unlikeliest TV hits of 2023 — mostly, because it ended its original run back in 2019. Given new life on Netflix, it's a show that has captivated audiences like no other, in part due to its episodic storytelling, and hundreds of episodes. The cast of "Suits" included the likes of Meghan Markle, Wendell Pierce and Gina Torres, and was known for shocking twists and turns that helped sustain the story for over so many episodes.
While "Suits" wasn't the kind of show to start suddenly killing off characters, there were a few big name departures, — like Markle, who departed for royal reasons, and Gina Torres, who made her departure from the show after season 7 due to her busy schedule. Torres played Jessica Pearson, who started out as a diversity hire at Gordon Schmidt Van Dyke before eventually becoming the managing partner of Pearson Specter Litt. In her final episode on the show she decides to step down from the law to pursuit another career.
Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, creator and showrunner Aaron Korsh revealed Pearson's fate was almost much, much darker.
"In my mind, Jessica was going to make this decision to go off into the sunset with Jeff Malone, and that father Larry Marsden (Colin Glazer), who was a little bit crazy and accosted Rachel and got broken on the stand, was going to bring a gun and go nuts and kill her. "
What is even more interesting is that Korsh says they were not even going to show the death scene — they'd just say it happened. "It was going to shatter everyone and we were going to do a two-year time jump afterwards."
Saved from the dead
The inspiration for an off-screen death scene came from "M*A*S*H*," particularly the devastating departure of McLean Stevenson's character. In his final episode, we see Stevenson's Colonel Henry Blake have an emotional goodbye as he boards a helicopter on his way to finally reunite with his family. And then, barely 10 minutes later, the show's surgeons earn that Henry's plane got shot down, and there were no survivors.
According to Korsh, the personal impact of that scene influenced his proposed death scene for Torres' Jessica Pearson. "It was so emotional; you never forgot that. I thought that would be a twist you wouldn't see coming," he said. "You might have seen that Jessica was going to choose to leave, but not her death on top of it. It would have been baked into the show — this guy already went nuts on Rachel and he'd paid off a witness ... he was an unstable character."
Unsurprisingly, the network didn't want that to happen, and instead she had a regular happy ending with no deadly punchline. While that would have been a cool twist for the character, star Patrick J. Adams is glad it never happened. As Adams told Esquire, "I don't think people can die on 'Suits.' It's still, at its heart, an aspirational show, and it would be so hard to watch these people wrestle with that."
Torres' character didn't just survive, she went on to get her own spin-off show titled "Pearson." That series leaves behind the world of the law, instead following Jessica Pearson as she enters the world of politics and becomes the right-hand fixer for the mayor of Chicago. It was canceled after one season, but you can catch that season on Peacock once you're done binge-watching "Suits" on Netflix.