Suits intended to bring back former leading character Jessica Pearson for a series finale scene with Harvey Specter but couldn’t due to unavoidable conflicts with Gina Torres’ new show. Torres played Pearson, the charismatic partner of the major NYC law firm on which the series is based, through season 6, when she became the first main cast member to leave Suits early. As did her character, Torres left the Suits series behind for personal and professional reasons. In-universe, Pearson leaves her partner position in NYC for Chicago, where she feels she can pursue a more impactful type of law.

Behind the scenes, Torres struggled to maintain the constant commute between her Los Angeles home and Suits’ set in Toronto. Since her contract expired after season 6 anyway, she took the opportunity to exit the series. It wasn’t the last the Suits franchise saw of Torres, though, as she received the chance to reprise her character as the lead in the Suits spinoff series Pearson, which was Illinois-based and somewhat closer to her place of residence. The franchise even aimed to take her reprisal opportunities further, going so far as to write her into a Suits series finale scene.

Gina Torres’ Suits Finale Cameo Was Cut Due To Conflicts With Pearson

Suits’ Sinking Spinoff Hindered Torres’ Cameo

Unfortunately, the franchise shot itself in the foot before realizing it couldn’t effortlessly reintroduce Torres’ character back into Suits while the Pearson spinoff existed. In a 2019 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Suits’ creator Aaron Korsh spoke about his revelations of the doomed circumstance – admitting that if Pearson hadn’t been a part of the picture, Torres could’ve easily appeared in a great Suits’ cameo. Pearson and Suits aired back-to-back on USA, and Korsh’s biggest reservation occurred when thinking about how far-fetched Torres’ cameo would’ve been from the viewer’s perspective. Per Korsh:

…I felt like if I was a viewer watching TV, and one minute I’m seeing Jessica up to her eyeballs in intrigue and back dealings and fighting for the life of the city on Pearson, and then in the very next show acting like none of that is happening and she’s just in here waltzing in and saving the day and yucking it up at a wedding, it would lose the credibility that Pearson had.

Pearson’s reception was especially critical because it’d been flirting with cancellation concerns since its release. None of Pearson’s episodes attracted more than 570,000 viewers (via MovieWeb), and it needed to make production decisions with its best interests in mind. While keeping Torres from Suits was intuitive thinking, it was also in vain, as Pearson was canceled after its first season for low viewership. By the time the Suits team wrote Torres’ prospective cameo, all the Pearson sets for her to shoot on were gone, and flying her back to Toronto for a cameo was too excessive an option.

What Jessica Pearson’s Suits Finale Scene Would Have Been

Pearson Would Have Advised Harvey One Last Time

Torres’ cameo wouldn’t have hugely changed Suits’ finale, but the plans Korsh had for her would’ve complemented the flagship series with full-circle sentiment. Amid the last case on the TV show, which finds Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht) coerced into defending attorney Faye Richardson (Denise Crosby) after Samantha Wheeler (Katherine Heigl) sues her for wrongful termination, Specter would have sought Pearson out for advice. Korsh imagined a scene where Harvey calls Pearson the morning of the finale’s big conference scene, asking for her opinion on the matter while she simultaneously is preparing to deal with some heavy happenings in Chicago.

Pearson’s advice to Harvey would not have changed Faye’s fate in the series, but it would have been a great moment to witness. Pearson was Harvey’s trusted mentor throughout her entire six-season run, and having Harvey lean on her one last time before Suits ended for good would have been an incredibly heartwarming way to close out their character arcs. Because conflicts with the Pearson spinoff impeded Torres’ physical cameo appearance, Korsh instead incorporated her voice in Suits‘ season finale, which viewers can hear in the episode’s culminating memory sequence.

Source: Entertainment Weekly, MovieWeb