The highly anticipated Suits spinoff, Suits LA, has left critics deeply disappointed.
The new NBC legal drama, which premiered Sunday, comes after the original Meghan Markle-starring series concluded its nine-season run in 2019. It welcomes an entirely new cast led by Arrow alum Stephen Amell as former prosecutor-turned-entertainment lawyer Ted Black, who owns a Los Angeles-based law firm facing a major crisis.
It also sees the return of Suits star Gabriel Macht, who reprises his role of powerhouse defense attorney Harvey Specter. Macht made his first blink-and-you-miss-it cameo in the reboot’s pilot episode, where he was pictured alongside Ted in a photo sitting on the latter’s desk.
The spinoff was first confirmed in November 2024 after its predecessor experienced a surge in popularity the year prior when it became available on Netflix. It racked up an impressive 57 billion minutes of viewing time.
Still, it doesn’t appear the new series has conjured the magic of the original.
“Suits LA is flat and joyless,” New York Times critic Margaret Lyons wrote, adding that it felt more like a “seance” than a sequel. It “is an attempt to turn an unanswerable question into a little money,” she said.
Variety’s Aramide Tinubu concurred, joking that Suits LA “should be held in contempt.” Tinubu was left particularly dismayed by a “lumpy and confounding pilot episode” that she said included “grating dialogue, jarring camera angles and a bizarre twist.”
USA Today’s Kelly Lawler put her opinion plainly, declaring: “Suits LA is the dollar-store spinoff we didn’t need.
She added that it was “a big tonal jump from the original series, which was campy and lighthearted.”
Angie Han of The Hollywood Reporter criticized Amell’s performance, saying he “flounders in NBC’s tonally confused, narratively jumbled legal drama.”
“The actual premiere is so awful, and in such baffling ways, that it’s hard to imagine a lot of would-be fans sticking around to find out if it gets better,” she said.
Lastly, The Guardian’s Adrian Horton found the reboot to be “an unsexy disappointment.”
Speaking to People last month about his forthcoming appearance, Macht confirmed that he won’t be the only Suits actor returning. “There’s also some other characters that you’re going to see that were in the original. I don’t know if you’ve heard about any of them, but there are a few that are coming back. So those might be surprises,” he teased.
Suits LA airs on NBC on Sundays with a UK date to be announced.
