Suits season finale recap: Saying Good-Bye to Mike and Rachel

The Suits season finale sent off Mike Ross and Rachel Zane in style, plus Jessica returned. Here’s what happened in Suits season 7, episodes 15 and 16.

Wednesday’s Suits season finale was the end of an era for the USA series. It was the last episode for Patrick J. Adams and Meghan Markle, the first introduction to Gina Torres’ new spinoff series, and the conclusion to a hectic season — all in two hours.

So how did it all conclude, and where is TV’s best-written series going next?

The first hour is called “Tiny Violin” and, perhaps fittingly, opens with a semi-normal morning in the life of Mike Ross. He just wants to finish breakfast but his old boss Nathan (guest star Peter Cambor) turns up at his front door to ask for help.

Seems Nathan is wrestling with a class-action lawsuit against a power company, and he needs help to keep it alive and keep the legal clinic in business. While Mike ponders how to help, back at the office Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht) and Donna Paulsen (Sarah Rafferty) confirm that things are “back to normal” between them.

But they have an unexpected visitor too: Stanley Gordon (guest star Bruce McGill), who slaps them with a lawsuit from all the partners who quit once Mike went to prison. They’re all claiming that they’ve become damaged goods as a result, and want their money back from the firm. Good law is expensive business.

Suits fans can probably see where this is leading already.

When Mike finds out about Gordon’s lawsuit, he is understandably annoyed. But he tells Donna about the clinic’s situation, asking if he can work on the class action and save all those kids with lead poisoning. Donna easily gives her blessing, saying “Go get ’em.”

Harvey starts looking into the past partners, starting with Jack Soloff (John Pyper-Ferguson). Soloff tells Harvey he’s only a party to the lawsuit to cover up the fact that Jessica had previously bought him out, and Harvey wants him to convince the rest of the partners to drop the suit before it drops the firm. Soloff is cagey, saying he’ll help but only if it doesn’t hurt him.

Mike reports to duty at the clinic, which means Oliver (guest star Jordan Johnson-Hinds) is not happy to see him again after their last encounter. But it’s clear he and Nathan need Mike’s help. Nathan has to plead for mercy in front of a judge after making a paperwork mistake, and Mike convinces the judge to let the case go to trial anyway.

The opposing counsel brings up Mike’s criminal history in a confrontation outside of the courtroom, and suggests that they should negotiate a settlement. Mike agrees to a meeting, but he isn’t thrilled about it. Mike Ross doesn’t settle with the bad guys.

Elsewhere, Suits has Harvey, Louis Litt (Rick Hoffman) and Gordon in front of another judge arguing the merits of their case. Gordon shocks Harvey when he brings out a statement from Harvey’s ex-girlfriend Dana Scott (Timeless star Abigail Spencer). That’s his smoking gun, and the judge tells Harvey he has to get her to go back on her word or the case will go to trial. That means another conversation between the exes.

It also means another conversation between Donna and Harvey about his screwed-up love life. He doesn’t want to talk to Scottie; Donna is there to talk some sense into him. She points out that it’s his romantic history with the other woman that put the firm on the brink in the first place. Which is petty, but hey.

When Mike returns to Specter Litt, he’s met in the lobby by a man who wants to hire him as a partner in a firm in Seattle, and is willing to bring Rachel with him. Again, you see where this is going, don’t you? Mike tells Rachel about the job offer when he gets home, and she surprises him when she says she’d consider it.

"Rachel: We’re going to have children someday and I don’t want them to live in a world where things like this happen."

At least they have a decent conversation. Harvey finds Scottie at her new office and asks her why she made the comments that she did. She refuses to “put my career on the line to get you out of it,” and the two part on bad terms one more time.

But there’s a Plan B: rebut the lawsuit by proving that the partners are not failing because of their association with Specter Litt, but because of their own faults. And Harvey has someone in mind for that, too: Robert Zane (recurring guest star Wendell Pierce). Zane doesn’t want to turn over the performance reviews of the former Pearson Specter associates he’s hired — until Harvey makes clear how bleak the situation is, and then he reluctantly has an idea.

Over at the clinic, Mike is not impressed by the settlement offer, especially when he implies that the power company’s executives knew what was happening. He’s playing hardball here, and he gets even angrier when Nathan is more interested in the settlement money than the cause.

But if Mike’s wrong, the clinic will close and those families are in trouble anyway, as proven that very night when the power company convinces the clinic’s investors to pull their funding. Nathan is going to take the settlement, and kicks Mike off the case besides.

Suits cuts back to Rachel, as Harvey tells her that he’s going to go to her family dinner, as her father has given her under-the-table permission to go through those performance reviews and relay that information to Harvey.

It’s probably good that Rachel is at dinner, because Mike immediately suspects that his would-be new boss did the deed as a way of convincing him to take his job offer. He confronts him and tells him to take a hike.

The next day, Mike tells Nathan what happened and that maybe he should start a firm instead of a non-profit clinic so that there won’t be any financial limitations anymore. He even says he’ll find a way to get Nathan the half a million dollars he needs. But from where?

Harvey likewise has a face-to-face with Jack Soloff, since he’s seen Soloff’s poor performance review and is using it to once again pressure him to sway the other parties in the suit. When he gets back to his office, Scottie is waiting there to apologize, but also to try and rekindle their romantic relationship. At least until she deduces that Donna was involved in his last breakup.

This whole conversation is nonsensical and awkward, so luckily Harvey and Louis have to go to a meeting with Gordon, who offers to drop the lawsuit if Specter Litt hires back all the partners who quit.

"Gordon: I’m not like Jessica. I actually care about the people I left behind."

Mike comes back into the office in the middle of the night, because he’s going to ask Donna if the firm will loan Nathan his seed money. Donna points out that it would look terrible for business, if they’re handing over a half million dollars to a non-profit when they’re trying to keep the lights on.

She then walks into Harvey and Louis’s get-together, and tells them that Zane’s firm is expanding, so why would the partners want to leave Zane for Specter Litt? Louis realizes that the truth is they are looking for a merger, and that Robert Zane would obviously have had to know about that the whole time.

Harvey goes straight to Zane’s office and brings the accusation directly to him, which gives us another great Suits scene between Gabriel Macht and Wendell Pierce. Zane says he would’ve told Harvey to his face — and when Harvey slaps him with the paperwork, he realizes that his own two partners have forged his signature. He’s being duped just as much as Harvey is.

What would Rachel say to all this? She’d rather talk to Mike about working in Seattle, so he has to inform her that the whole thing was a ploy and what happened because of it. But Louis strolls in, after some more words with Donna, and hands Mike a half-million dollar check. He’s giving the clinic a half-million dollars out of his own pocket as an anonymous gift. We’re not crying, you’re crying. And maybe Mike is crying.

"Louis: You’ve been doing the right thing ever since you got here. The world could use a lot more people like you."

With all the talk about Jessica, it’s no surprise that Suits has her turn up in her old office to look for Harvey. She says she’s lost her law license and wants him to take over her case because now “you owe me.” She wants the last case she ever handles to be with “the best partner I’ve ever had.” It’s the band getting back together, kind of, at the worst possible time.

She’s also called everyone else to be at Harvey’s apartment and agree that he can go to Chicago, and they’ll finish the firm’s lawsuit on their own.

So Harvey gets on a plane and winds up in the Windy City, where he promptly walks into a tough guy in the airport. This is Simon Kassianides from Agents of SHIELD, and he’s playing the first character we’re meeting from the upcoming spinoff show.

We’re not impressed, but hey, at least DB Woodside had time to take off from Lucifer to remind us that Jeff Malone still exists, and he and Jessica are still a couple. Never mind the huge thing that she’s been through. Jessica meets Harvey, who tells her about his altercation with Pat, but she thinks that’s just par for the course when people are trying to run you out of town.

They meet City Attorney Keri Allen (Rebecca Rittenhouse from The Mindy Project, also cast as a series regular in the spinoff). Needless to say, the meeting is icy at best, and she tells Jessica that she’ll have to go through McGann.

Back in New York, Mike delivers his opening statement in his trial against the power company as Louis vents about not being able to convince Zane to help save both of them. He needs help, and so enter Alex Williams (Dule Hill, in his last episode before he becomes a series regular). Alex says he can use his leverage at Bratton Gould to get the suing partners new jobs, but is only able to get his former firm to take on 15 of the 25.

Slowly, all the pieces of Suits‘ future and the spinoff show are coming together as we move into the second episode, “Good-Bye.”

Jessica visits high-powered developer Patrick McGann to try and strike a deal, but he doesn’t want to play ball, and says he’s “the one that makes the decisions here.” Yes, he’s saying he’s given a ton of money to Chicago’s mayor Bobby Novak, and thus he does not care about her lawsuit.

What’s Harvey doing during this? He’s meeting with Jessica’s best witness, Lillian Cook, and trying to win her over. Hey, he’s right — there’s no denying Gabriel Macht is pretty.

Suits brings us back to Specter Litt where Stanley Gordon confirms the takeover plan to Louis, but he also undercuts Alex’s achievement by saying he also has Bratton Gould in his pocket as well. So what’s Plan C again?

Mike gets a late-night call from Oliver, and it becomes clear to them both that the power company has been burying the evidence and doing all it can to cover things up. Rachel arrives, saying she did her own digging into the guy that offered Mike a job, and it turns out Andy wasn’t a lying schemer after all. He actually did want to start a firm in Seattle. Oops. But that also means Mike has to find out who’s really been pulling the strings.

Harvey puts Lillian on the stand, where it comes out that she’s Jessica’s aunt. Well, that would be something that we should’ve known a long time ago, especially since it was Jessica who reached out to Lillian and not the other way around. Jessica gets thrown out of the courtroom, and Harvey wants to know why he was left in the dark.

"Harvey: I put my firm in jeopardy for you. You’re playing me, and I’m done with it."

Jessica breaks down, telling him that she grew up in Chicago and that her father died two months ago, while still being estranged from Lillian. She decided to do something about the situation. The truth convinces Harvey not to abandon her. He goes to McGann and tells him that he wants him to support Jessica when she runs for city council using Jessica’s own money. Both sides can play dirty here.

Alex confirms what Louis learned from Gordon, and suggests that if Louis and Harvey’s names are so bad with these ex-partners, maybe he’ll have more credibility. He wants to be named managing partner temporarily just to do the deal. Louis does not concur; in fact, Louis explodes, so Donna tells Mike that he needs to come back in, now.

While Mike leaves Rachel to handle the clinic case, Suits has Jessica confront Keri about how she’s been working behind her back. Keri admits that she was the person who went after Jessica’s law license, and smugly says “I do what it takes without having to be asked.” She’s like Kathleen Robertson in Boss, only a lot less likeable.

Jessica retorts that she has someone better than the mayor in her pocket, except she doesn’t yet. She tells Harvey to get McGann onboard. But no sooner has she made that call, then the same fixer who bumped into Harvey is now approaching her.

While she ponders that, Mike suggests to Louis that they bring Robert Zane — and 20 of his friends — into the firm to outvote those who would take them over, and thus save the firm. Zane did, after all, once offer Jessica a merger not so long ago. And now he’s in a much weaker spot than he was then.

Zane bristles at the thought of leaving the firm he built, and Rachel uses the situation to suggest that Mike consider going to Seattle. She says she’s gotten Andy to offer him the job again, and it turns into them moving up their much-delayed wedding to, y’know, now.

The next morning Rachel breaks the news to Donna and enlists her as her wedding coordinator, because she’s Donna. Rachel doesn’t want Harvey or Jessica to know, so it doesn’t ruin their case, but do you really think Harvey is going to miss Mike’s wedding? Nah.

We return to Chicago where Jessica has another meeting with McGann. He’s not interested in doing business with her, and furthermore he’s gone after Harvey’s license to practice law in the state of Illinois as well. Do these people only know one tactic? But Jessica orders Harvey onto the plane anyway, because she refuses to let him miss the wedding.