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Suits LA cancelled: Why NBC pulled the plug on latest spinoff after just one season

NBC cancels Suits: LA after dismal ratings and poor reviews, despite returning Suits stars.

By: Entertainment Desk
New Delhi | May 11, 2025 12:19 PM IST

3 min read

NBC cancels Suits LA after one season. (Photo: Peacock)

NBC has axed the upcoming seasons of Suits LA, the spinoff of the popular legal drama Suits that made Meghan Markle a household name. Suits premiered on a local American network in 2011 and, a decade later, found crazy popularity again on Netflix last year, racking up 57 billion minutes of streaming time. This success led the makers to jump on the opportunity to double the cash, but unfortunately, they just couldn’t recreate that same magic with the spinoff. The show ended up receiving negative reviews, despite some of the original Suits cast members reprising their roles. Here’s what went wrong.

NBC pulls the plug on Suits LA

The television series created by Aaron Korsh premiered in February 2025. Gabriel Macht, Rick Hoffman, and David Costabile, the original cast members of Suits, returned for a few episodes as fan-favourite characters Harvey Specter, Louis Litt, and Daniel Hardman, alongside new cast members Stephen Amell, Lex Scott Davis, Josh McDermitt, and Bryan Greenberg. Though there was a lot of buzz about bringing the Duchess back to the show, the plan didn’t work out. The show followed the life of Ted Black, a former federal prosecutor from New York, and his ambition to run a new legal firm in LA that was struggling to make money.

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NBC tried hard to bring back the essence of Suits, but even a three-hour Suits: LA marathon couldn’t save the show, which kept drowning in low ratings from the very start and only managed to gain some traction in the middle before losing it again. According to Deadline, the viewership barely crossed 1 million on live TV. Even the show didn’t perform well on streaming, which wasn’t Netflix, and that may have played a role in the show’s poor performance. Critics weren’t in favour as well. New York Times critic Margaret Lyons called it “an attempt to turn an unanswerable question into a little money.” Meanwhile, Angie Han from The Hollywood Reporter wrote that Stephen Amell “flounders in NBC’s tonally confused, narratively jumbled legal drama.”

Also Read: Always expected show like Suits LA will come with some pressure: Bryan Greenberg

Many think the decision to not let the show air on Netflix backfired. According to Yahoo News, the makers wanted the spinoff to stick tightly to NBCUniversal’s own streamer, Peacock, which has seen a boost in its subscribers in recent years. The plan was to make Suits: LA a flagship show and draw in more views. As of now, NBC’s plan to extend the OTT rights, which are exclusively kept for Peacock, to Netflix has not been confirmed, but there are rumours that it might happen.

The cancellation also comes at a time when NBC needs to free up space in its content lineup. The network has reportedly signed a $2.5 billion-per-year deal with NBA, which means next season, a lot of airtime will go to basketball. So they’ve axed a bunch of shows to make room—Suits: LA, The Irrational, Found, Night Court, and Lopez vs Lopez all got the chop.