Spoiler warning for anyone who hasn't yet watched the series finale for Suits.
This week marked the end of Suits' eight-year run on USA, and fans had a lot to celebrate during the series finale, even if Meghan Markle's return as Rachel wasn't one of them. The character's existence was noted, and Rachel did appear during the montage moment near the end of the episode, but Suits didn't bring her back for a final appearance the way it did with Patrick J. Adams' Mike Ross this season.
Given her royal station in life, Meghan Markle's potential return for Suits' finale definitely wasn't guaranteed, but viewers might be surprised to learn that the series' creator Aaron Korsh decided not to even try to make it happen. Here's how Korsh put it:
Now that we already did it, I will tell you. I thought about asking, and I thought about even using audio footage that we have to come up with something, and in the end I didn’t ask, and I just thought, I’m going to respect her new life and not put her in the position of having to ask. We decided not to put her in that position so I never asked.
No one will technically ever know what might have happened had Aaron Korsh put in a request for Meghan Markle to return for a Suits finale appearance, which might spark some four-letter words. But considering how busy her life has been since she first exited the legal drama, it likely would have taken a lot of moving parts to usher Markle back. Granted, the producers likely would have crafted a plan to have her film a scene from the U.K. for a video call or something along those lines, as not to force any ocean-crossing travel plans.
In any case, creator Aaron Korsh decided at one point in the journey that he would prefer to respect all professional and personal boundaries by putting his Markle request to pasture before it even made it to the bargaining table. One the one hand, that's obviously disappointing for any fans who were hoping against hope for Rachel to return one more time. On the other hand, though, purposefully avoiding those conversations early on kept the Suits series finale spotlight (mostly) away from Meghan Markle, and instead fixed to the characters that viewers kept up with after Mike and Rachel left.
The finale definitely set up big stories for all those other characters, too. Harvey and Donna got married and decided to book it to Seattle for Harvey and Mike to become law partners again. Louis and Sheila both got married and experienced the birth of their new daughter, which should keep Louis smiling even though the firm is being flipped on its head.
When speaking with Deadline about the finale and all the thoughts that went into it, creator Aaron Korsh was asked about any other actors or characters that he was unable to bring back despite wanting to. The two he named will likely match up with what a lot of fans would have expected.
Abigail Spencer and I are always in contact every year. She had a tough scheduling road to hoe but in the end, it wasn’t really her scheduling. It was hard to figure out a way to fit Scottie in seamlessly. So that was more from a storytelling standpoint. I would have liked to have gotten her in but I couldn’t figure out a way to do it. Gina Torres, Jessica, she was worn out from the shooting of Pearson. We did have a scene for her. With her schedule we couldn’t make it work. That’s really probably the one I would have liked to have had.
Thankfully, Suits had previously found a way to bring Abigail Spencer's Scottie back in Season 8 already, thanks to the episode "Peas in a Pod" back in February. And while it may seem like it's been forever since Gina Torres' Jessica Pearson was rocking it in Chicago with everyone else, it's only been a year and a half, as the character left the same time that Mike and Rachel did. But the silver lining there is that the spinoff Pearson exists, and it actually just finished its first season last week.
Could there be a point in the future when Suits' cast members reunite for some kind of a follow-up special, either fictional or real-world? It's certainly possible, although Aaron Korsh claimed he isn't putting any more thoughts into what will happen to these characters beyond the finale's timeframe. I'm guessing it would come down to how loudly fans fall for it, so get those bullhorns out.
Suits has now concluded its eight-season run, but reruns will still air on USA for the foreseeable future, and the first seven seasons are available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.
