Patrick J. Adams’ return to Suits is a TV milestone in many ways

Suits welcomes back Patrick J. Adams tonight, and his return as Mike Ross matters for him, the show and TV as a whole. Find out why in this Deeper Cut.

Patrick J. Adams returns to Suits tonight, giving fans of the USA series what they’ve been asking for since he exited roughly 16 months ago. But what we’re about to see isn’t just about Mike Ross coming back — it means a lot more than that.

There’s plenty of excitement about Mike’s return to the firm. Fans watched for seven years and more than 100 episodes as he transformed from fake lawyer to legitimate litigator, and then got all verklempt at the end of season 7 when he married his longtime love Rachel Zane (Meghan Markle) and moved to Seattle to start a new venture. They have a lot invested in the character, and with Suits season 9 also being the show’s last, everyone wants to see the original band getting back together again.

Plus, in a true Law & Order-style twist, Mike is set to go up against his former mentor Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht) in a “best friend turned professional adversary” type story. Anyone who knows the show knows that there’s going to be some juicy drama there.

But anyone who knows Suits also knows how much more there is to Patrick J. Adams’ reprisal than that. Tonight’s episode is the conclusion that Mike never quite got because so much of his last episode was devoted to launching the show’s spinoff Pearson. It’s the culmination of those seven years that built his character, in leaps and bounds and with a prison sentence in between, because Aaron Korsh and his writers develop their heroes better than anybody.

The mere premise of this episode highlights how meaningful Mike Ross’s journey has been. When we met him, he was all about self-preservation, literally stumbling into law while trying to evade trouble. Now, he’s returning to Specter Litt Wheeler Williams as a lawyer whose entire focus is on helping those who can’t help themselves. He’s gone from selfish to selfless.

Yet that’s what happens when you grow up over the better part of a decade. While Mike did not graduate law school (at least in the conventional sense), his education was in the real world and both its shortcomings and its aspirations. He became empowered by the power of the firm. He also challenged its perceptions, proving that you can succeed — and fail spectacularly — without a Harvard degree. As much as the culture at the firm changed him, he also changed it.

In fairness, Mike also created a ton of trouble that wouldn’t exist either, thanks to the whole fake lawyer debacle that drove most of the show’s early years. The things people did to protect him, and the consequences everyone suffered when his secret finally came out, are scars the series is always going to carry. But that, too, proves a point. More than any other character, Mike shaped Suits as a series. The world we see today wouldn’t exist if he hadn’t bulldozed into it. So if we’re truly saying goodbye to the show, then he has to put a period on that sentence.

But there’s more to it than that. Past Mike’s story, one also has to look at what Patrick J. Adams has meant to Suits and to television as a whole. Remember that this series was Adams’ first-ever role as a TV series regular, and that he nabbed a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for the first season.

Adams is a special talent, and he served a special purpose that helped make the show what it is today. The way the series was originally structured, Mike was the audience’s way in. We were new to the story just like him, minus the brush with the law. We were, and still are, the blue-collar view of a white-collar world. So as Mike grew, the viewers grew along with him. Everyone else had lots of history together and they were already of a certain class. So it was up to Adams to make their world accessible and in a way, show us why we should care.

For a very long time, he was the heart of the series, not just in the sense that his character brought heart to the firm, but also separating Suits from being another legal show about attractive lawyers with pithy one-liners. Adams was the catalyst that hooked viewers to enable the rest of the show to flourish, which it did with the rest of its marvelous ensemble and razor-sharp writing.

That’s not something many actors could do. As crucial as Mike was to Suits, he could have easily been a stereotype himself. How many times have we seen the “irreverent hero comes in and shakes up the business” show, especially if that business is a law firm or other stoic institution? It gets done a lot, but the casting of Patrick J. Adams made all the difference. He may have been new to co-leading a series, but he’s talented beyond his years, and an even better person off-screen.

Even in those early seasons, Adams carried himself with the poise and maturity of a veteran, and it was clear he’d invested as much in Suits as the show had invested in him. He spoke often of how seriously he took the responsibility of being at the top of the call sheet, and whenever he talked about the character, it was clear he’d put a lot of thought into it, more than the average performer would.

One of the coolest things about the show was watching him flourish because every season he added another layer of nuance to his portrayal while also picking up credits as a director and producer, too.

Now he’s grown into a bonafide star. Adams is leading the cast of National Geographic’s upcoming series The Right Stuff, portraying legendary astronaut John Glenn, and it’s easy to imagine him playing one of the American heroes after seeing how he rose to the occasion on Suits.

He’s one of the most genuine actors in the business, an example of how working hard and being thoughtful pays off in spades. Just as Mike found success and happiness when we last left him, it’s been a pleasure to see Adams find new opportunities and be so embraced by fans after all that he gave to the show. He’s returning not as a fresh face, but as an established veteran who’s still got a long and fantastic career ahead of him, and this was his breakout role.

It all amounts to Suits season 9 being more than just a return appearance. It’s Mike Ross getting one last turn at the plate, Patrick J. Adams getting a chance to say goodbye, and TV fans having an opportunity to enjoy how an actor left an indelible fingerprint on the series—everything that we could ever possibly ask for.

Suits airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. on USA. Find the latest Deeper Cut every Wednesday in the Entertainment category at FanSided.