Warning: SPOILERS for the Suits LA episode “Dexter” are ahead!
The sixth episode of Suits LA has been released onto the 2025 TV schedule, meaning we’re now at roughly the halfway mark of this debut season’s 13-episode run. However, one multi-episode arc has already come to a close, as Lester Thompson’s murder trial ended with him being found not guilty. While not as heavily involved in the case as Ted Black, Erica Rollins did provide invaluable assistance on it throughout Suits LA’s first five episodes. Now that the trial’s out of the way, actress Lex Scott Davis informed CinemaBlend what’s next coming up next on the NBC series, including how she and Stephen Amell’s character are focused on saving their firm.
Having previously spoken with Davis prior to Suits LA’s premiere about topics like the opening episode’s twist for Erica, I had the pleasure of chatting with her again ahead of “Dester,” which can also be streamed with a Peacock subscription. Now that Thompson won’t be going to jail for the death of his producing partner, Simon, here’s what the actress told me about what this means for Erica in the latter half of the season:
It definitely sets her up to be able to be in the same conversation with criminal clients. There's obviously an intersection between entertainment and criminal law that happens with our firm, and because she was additive in this case, I think moving forward, there are new opportunities that will present themselves where she can also help the criminal side of things, even though her main focus is the entertainment law.
Erica has primarily been focused on her own work as head of entertainment at Black & Associates on Suits LA, including pairing The Office’s Brian Baumgartner and Patton Oswalt together. But in last week’s episode, “You’re on Your Own,” she figured out, with assistance from Rick Dodsen, that the statement Lester Thompson gave to the police on the night of Simon’s death was almost word-for-word ripped from dialogue he’d written in a script. This led Kevin, the investigator Ted brought on to work on the case, to pressure Lester into admitting he did indeed kill Simon, rather than him dying by suicide. More on that later.
Like Lex Scott Davis said, delving into such criminal law matters it outside Erica Rollins’ wheelhouse, but dipping her toes into this proverbial pool with the Lester Thompson case will allow her to expand said wheelhouse. However, that doesn’t mean that Ted and Erica woking alongside each other more often. Davis informed me that while they are both working to make sure Black & Associates stays afloat, they’ll be doing so with different tasks, saying:
There's a little bit of both. I think the real task at hand is saving the firm. And remembering [when] the the pilot opens up, there's a bomb that goes off. We’re losing clients, this case was a big deal breaker for the fate of our firm as well. So she's still on the path of saving [it]. We’ll get her and Ted together a few times, but for the most part, in great Ted fashion, he's sending her off to go handle something on his behalf. And she gives some crap for it too, like, ‘You always ask me to do your work!’ That's like a running theme for them. So a little bit of them together, but for the most part, they have different tasks at hand.
As far as how the Lester Thompson trial ended, Kevin recorded Lester revealing that he shot Simon in self defense after Simon attempted to kill him for learning about the stolen money. Kevin initially kept this information from Ted so as not to blow up his case, but he ended up learning about it anyway. He then switched to the self defense plea for the case, something he initially steered clear from, but it proved to be the right call.
Thanks to help from Stuart Lane, he utilized the transcript from Lester’s divorce negotiations, as Valerie Thompson was on the record saying that Simon wanted to kill Lester. That was aided by a witness the prosecution brought in who saw the shooting from afar that night and initially thought she overheard someone saying, “I’m going to kill you dead, sir.” That was actually Simon saying to Lester, “I’m going to kill you, Dester,” which was the defendant’s nickname. All this was enough to convince the jury to find him not guilty.
So that concludes this arc for Suits LA, but there’ll be more than enough to keep Erica and Ted occupied as we enter the latter half of the season. The future of Black & Associates remains rocky, so we’ll see how these two get the firm on steadier ground as new episodes air Sundays at 9 pm ET on NBC.
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