Suits season 8 was the season fans didn’t know they needed

Suits season 8 was the season no one expected, but find out how the USA drama gave fans the season they needed in this week’s Deeper Cut column.

When Suits season 8 arrived, the general sense was one of “How are they going to go on?” Now TV fans should ask ourselves, “How couldn’t they go on?”

The USA drama underwent a massive creative overhaul between seasons. It was already headed for its eighth year, when many shows were already off the air; it was trying to establish a spin-off series starring former lead Gina Torres; and two of its other stars, Patrick J. Adams and Meghan Markle, had also decided to head for the door. How was the series going to navigate all of these issues and continue to remain the best show on television?

It was the kind of pressure that would crumble other series. But Suits creator Aaron Korsh once told me in 2016 that, “At the end of every year, I have tried to do something that scares me.” So for them, this was Tuesday.

Suits season 8 is being talked about for everything it isn’t—it isn’t with Mike, it isn’t with Rachel, it doesn’t have this relationship or that dynamic anymore, it isn’t the same show it used to be. But it is time to look at it for what it is—a sophisticated reinvention of an outstanding drama.

The addition of Robert Zane as a partner will go down as one of the series’ best moves. Robert has been around Suits for years, as Rachel Zane’s iron-fisted father and a rival for the firm, sometimes both. Bringing him into the fold for season 8 forced the show to expand upon his character beyond those two functions.

Robert was a satisfying antagonist when he came in to push someone’s buttons or to occasionally act as a reluctant ally. But so much of his character remained unexplored, because of the inherent limitations on his storytelling. When Suits brought him in, he was part of someone else’s story; in this season he’s getting to tell his story. And that story is a poignant one.

Audiences now have a richer understanding of what makes Robert Zane who he is. They grasp that the source of his pride and stubbornness is a man who has had to fight for everything he has, not once but multiple times.

The midseason finale “Managing Partner” revealed that Robert had discovered financial improprieties at his firm, and the guilty parties attempted to bribe him to keep him quiet; when he refused, they left him holding the bribe money anyway—which nearly made him look like he was in on the scheme. Only some quick thinking from Samantha Wheeler (Katherine Heigl) saved the both of them from losing their careers and potential prison time.

Those scenes showed a vulnerable side to Robert Zane that Suits had never explored to that degree. It stripped away the ego of a powerful name partner to reveal an attorney who had finally earned his piece, who had just welcomed a daughter into the world, and was scared of not only losing it all but damaging his family’s future.

When Robert tells Samantha how it will look when Rachel goes to the bar and her father is a criminal, Suits fans understand the poignance of that statement because that’s the exact same sentiment he and others expressed about Mike. And they also know that years in the future, he will be betrayed again when the other two-thirds of Rand Kaldor Zane start operating behind his back.

Robert Zane was always difficult, but Suits season 8 has showed us that his difficulties come from a very human place. How much his actions have been informed by his past experiences, and how far he’s come since then. How far he is still coming, because this season is providing him the room to grow.

That opportunity would not have existed if not for the change in Suits‘ status quo. There would have been no reason for it. And Wendell Pierce, so brilliant for years in everything from The Wire to Confirmation to his current role in Amazon‘s Jack Ryan, has continued to excel. His presence has added something new and intense to the show’s internal dynamic that makes it different from the shakeups fans have seen before.

A running joke in Suits history is that this firm can’t keep its stuff together. They’ve gone through so many name changes that the new opening credits poke fun at it. There’s always somebody in the office trying to start something. But most of those people have been clear-cut adversaries: former managing partner Daniel Hardman (David Costabile), the self-righteous Edward Darby (Conleth Hill), Hardman’s pseudo-ally Jack Soloff (John Pyper-Ferguson). We dislike them, and we know we’re supposed to, because they won’t be around long.

The dynamic between Robert, Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht) and Louis Litt (Rick Hoffman) is different. Pierce is still billed as a recurring guest star, but he was in most of the first 10 episodes. Not only that, but Robert was named managing partner. That makes him someone that the audience has to root for, because he’s on the team now. He was leading the team. And so as an audience, we give him the same respect, and watching Wendell Pierce square off with Gabriel Macht becomes a conflict of equals—not only in terms of their characters’ positions, but in that they’re two of TV’s brilliant actors now on common ground.

Suits is made for the long game. Its character arcs are designed to grow over an extended period of time, not be wrapped up in an episode or a few weeks. Macht and Pierce are getting to work with each other for longer and in closer quarters than they ever have before, and they’re bringing the best out of each other.

So, too, are Suits season 8’s two primary litigators: Alex Williams (Dule Hill, promoted after being a recurring character last season) and Samantha. A large chunk of screen time has gone to the Alex vs. Samantha battle for partnership, and how their conflict serves as a mirror for—and is influenced by—the Harvey vs. Zane battle. Each one has an ally in the race; each ally wants to win.

If there’s a criticism to be had with Suits this season, it’s how Samantha doesn’t fit in the picture. She’s stuck out like a sore thumb, aggressively asserting herself all over the place, coming off like Katherine Heigl’s past characters if they’d all woken up on the wrong side of the bed. But as the season goes on, the audience realizes that’s the point the show is trying to make: Samantha isn’t supposed to fit in. She is running roughshod over everyone else, and she needs to be stopped. It’s not condoning that behavior; it’s writing it as a hurdle for her to overcome.

That’s a sneaky moment of brilliance by the writers; they have to devote a certain amount of time to Samantha, to establishing her and making the audience interested, so why not make that extra attention part of her character? And then for her, the arc becomes about fitting in, about learning to change and becoming part of a team.

That’s the entire lesson to be learned from Suits season 8. The first seven seasons presented a firm that was, generally, a united front. Even when they were pulled apart—with Mike leaving to go into investment banking, when Mike went to jail—the audience never stopped feeling like they were fundamentally connected. That they were all part of the same story, and would find their way back to each other.

Even when Jessica left, she was never really out of the picture; Gina Torres has made multiple guest appearances since and is now getting her own spinoff. When Mike and Rachel departed, it was quite clear that chapter was closing and a new one was beginning; in fact, that was the only way to interpret it. Suits was never just Mike’s story; Mike’s arrival at the firm was the catalyst for everyone’s stories. The other characters were a unit before him, and they remained one after him; now the show is exploring what they’re like after the fact.

Suits season 8 is what happens when two sides that are completely different have to come together, and what that creates. Just as Mike’s meeting Harvey created something new at the firm, Zane’s partnership with Harvey and Louis is fulfilling that same theme, creating another new entity. However, the two sides don’t have any common ground but necessity. They were built to clash and the appeal comes from the characters—and the writers—now having to walk paths they never expected to take.

That redefinition of self is present throughout, whether it’s Donna Paulsen’s ascension to COO strictly off skills she’s learned at Harvey’s right hand, or Louis being focused on his family rather than his career, or Katrina Bennett (Amanda Schull) returning. Suits took the question that the audience was asking, and pointed out that it’s the exact same question the characters have to ask themselves.

Suits season 8 isn’t about what it doesn’t have. It’s about how the characters move forward and write their next chapter with what they have left. It brings the audience on the same journey, thus helping viewers to understand the process and go through their own catharsis. By sticking to its mandate of scaring itself, doing what it has never done before but had to do, it’s created the show we needed.

“I learned that courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it,” Nelson Mandela once said. “The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” Suits has clearly conquered it.

Suits season 8 returns in 2019. Find the next Deeper Cut  every Wednesday in the Entertainment category at FanSided.